Ephemeral (mis-)encounter, or male melancholia for the mother in jinho hur's christmas in August (1998) and one fine spring day (2001)

This essay explores changing gender tropes in Korean cinema of the early 2000s. Since its inception, Korean cinema has tended to portray a male protagonist who clings to his mother, reflecting unfortunate historical events in the twentieth century that in effect "castrated" postwar males. However, this tendency changed as Korean cinema evolved into New Korean Cinema in the late 1990s. Korean cinema has in that advancement fully developed a conventional film style, staging a male subject's presumed Oedipal trajectory towards having a "lawful" relationship with a woman other than his mother. Hur Jinho's two films, Christmas in August and One Fine Spring Day, seem to bracket this transition in Korean cinema. They dramatize this change in the male subject in a highly stylized mode, depicting their male subjects' love and separation as well as their melancholy for their lost mothers and sublime release towards growth. The films also utilize various cinematic tropes- especially maternal faces framed in cameras, windows, and photo albums. This essay seeks to understand the cultural significance of these cinematic tropes that in effect symptomatically demarcate and extend the fluctuating cultural boundaries of gender and related cultural politics in South Korea.