Korean Critical Realist Cinema and the Construction of a Simulacral Order in a Fragmented Society

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_14How to use a DOI?

Keywords

South Korean film; simulation order; ideological state apparatus

Abstract

This article delves into how Korean critical realist films achieve cultural and social effects of “the more critical, the more cohesive” by constructing a “simulated order” in the context of a highly fragmented society. The research reveals that Korean critical realist films, through highly artistic reconstruction of reality, establish a hyper-real narrative system with psychological comfort functions, transforming sharp social criticism into social consensus and emotional resonance. Korean domestic films emphasize immediate response and emotional compensation to local real-world issues, forming a unique “reality-simulation-reality” interactive model. The government, through institutional transformation and branding strategies, integrates critical films into the social governance and cultural export system, achieving the dual goals of domestic emotional relief and international image building. This article, through an in-depth analysis of representative films such as Parasite, Silenced, and The Defender, systematically explains how Korean films achieve real-world response and social cohesion through a simulated order, providing a new theoretical perspective for understanding the function of critical art in a fragmented society.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Zhaoyang Dong
AU  - Jiayi Wang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/15
TI  - Korean Critical Realist Cinema and the Construction of a Simulacral Order in a Fragmented Society
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 137
EP  - 146
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_14
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_14
ID  - Dong2026
ER  -