Affective Reconstitution and Platform Logics in Border-Crossing Narratives: Literary and Screen Adaptations of I Met Loh Kiwan and Pachinko

초록

Conducting a comparative analysis of Cho Haejin’s novel I Met Loh Kiwan (2011) and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko (2017) alongside their respective screen adaptations—the Netflix film Loh Kiwan (2024) and the Apple TV+ drama Pachinko (2022)—this study examines how diasporic identity is differently represented and emotionally articulated across literary and audiovisual media. Synthesizing Sara Ahmed’s affective politics with contemporary platform theory, the study positions diaspora as the empirical object under analysis, platform logic as the structural condition through which the object is mediated, and affect as the analytical register through which the relation between object and condition becomes legible. Methodologically, the study combines comparative textual analysis with close cinematographic reading—attending to camera distance, framing, editing rhythm, sound design, and mise-en-scène—and discourse analysis of author and director interviews. The research investigates, first, how localized narratives of diaspora are reframed and distributed through global OTT platforms, and, second, how the process of media adaptation reshapes not only structural elements of the story but also its emotional depth and political implication. The findings suggest that the Netflix adaptation of I Met Loh Kiwan compresses the original text’s reflection on identity and loss, reframing it through melodramatic and action-driven conventions, whereas Pachinko retains some of the emotional multiplicity of diasporic life through its non-linear structure and sensorially dense audiovisual strategy, although it, too, risks compressing complex lived experience into marketable images of immigrant struggle. Media transformation thus operates as a structural reconfiguration of diasporic representation under the influence of platform strategies and global audience sensibilities, opening further inquiry into the politics of emotion and the ethics of representation in contemporary transmedia storytelling.

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