한국 TV 드라마 속 이계(異界)의 시공간적 특징에 대한 일고찰―「도깨비」(2016), 「호텔 델루나」(2019), 「쌍갑포차」(2020)를 중심으로―

Human resentment to overcome the conditions of reality has developed storytelling that uses time travel as a motif through the imagination of dreaming of transcendence between time and space. Since mid-2010, such motifs have become dominant in Korean popular culture. For that reason, fantasy dramas “Dokkaebie”, “Hotel Del Luna”, and “Ssanggapocha” received public response. The characteristic of these dramas is that they put characters with transcendent abilities beyond the constraints of time and space at the forefront. In addition, these characters dominate special spaces such as ‘teahouse of oblivion’, ‘hotel dedicated to the soul’, and ‘geuseung for abalone of reality’. In this paper, the location of the ‘another world’ space in three dramas is considered and the relationship with storytelling is closely reviewed.
Based on this, the primary goal was to understand the flow of modern Korean pop culture. Understanding the characteristics of the space described by each drama is a way to understand the deep structure of the storytelling.
The Grim Reaper, Jang Man-wol, and Wolju move toward the ‘future’ by reviving memories, facing their mistakes, and resisting the conditions of the given reality. Their choice proves that the ability to transcend time and space does not save their lives, and that the will and actions facing reality are the only way to overcome time and space constraints. Time travel motifs aim for fantasy storytelling that allows you to experience indirectly what is impossible in reality. However, no matter how enchanting magic is experienced in the fantasy world, fantasy itself does not solve our real problems. Future life does not start by running away from the given world conditions, but by changing one’s choice to cope with the world’s conditions and influence the situation of events. Just as the time of the past, present, and future is defined in the human mind, these fantasy shows that the question of how to use that time eventually depends on the decision and action of the human subject.