Counter-Narratives of Gwangju: South Korean Film as a Medium of Resistance and Memory

IThe May 18 Gwangju Uprising remains one of the most pivotal and traumatic events in modern South Korean history. Suppressed for nearly a decade by the Chun Doo-hwan regime, Gwangju was framed as insurrection rather than civic resistance, its memory silenced through censorship and political repression. Yet as South Korea transitioned to democracy, the uprising re-emerged as a symbolic foundation for national identity, civic courage, and democratic values. Central to this re-articulation has been South Korean cinema, which played a crucial role in transforming silenced trauma into collective memory. This thesis investigate how South Korean films has represented the Gwangju Uprising and explores the ways cinema has contributed to shaping public memory, democratic discourse, and cultural response to trauma. It considers cinema not as a passive reflection of history but as an active agent that mediates between erased events and the ethical imperatives of remembrance. The research adopts a qualitative, interdisciplinary methodology that combines historical contextualization with close textual analysis of four representative films: A Petal (1996) by Jang Sun-woo, Peppermint Candy (1999) by Lee Chang-dong, May 18 (2007) by Kim Ji-hoo, and A Taxi Driver (2017) by Jang Hoon. These films span different decades of post-authoritarian Korea and reflect distinct aesthetic and narrative strategies. Together, they trace an evolution from introspective, trauma-cantered storytelling to more collective and internationally resonant forms of memory-making. The theoretical framework draws on trauma and memory studies, particularly Cathy Caruth’s model of belated and fragmented trauma (1996), Aleida Assmann’s theory of cultural memory (2011), and Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory (2008). Caruth’s work sheds light on how films like A Petal and Peppermint Candy convey trauma not though direct depiction, but via narrative disjunctions, silence, and psychological disintegration; signalling how Gwangju survives as an unresolved wound. Assmann’s distinction between communicative and cultural memory highlights how cinema, especially in May 18, stabilized suppressed history into publicly shared narrative, converting private grief into national remembrance. Hirsch’s postmemory theory further explains how directors distanced from 1980 nonetheless engage with its legacy through mediated, empathetic storytelling, constructing what this study terms a civic postmemory. This thesis also argues that Western trauma theory, while useful, must be adapted for post-authoritarian Asian contexts, where trauma is not only personal but structurally imposed through censorship and state violence. South Korean cinema becomes a site where psychological rupture and institutional silence are negotiated simultaneously. Furthermore, the inclusion on transnational elements, especially in A Taxi Driver, illustrates how Gwangju’s memory circulates globally with online platform such Netflix or VikiTv, becoming legible in the language of human rights and democratic struggle without losing its national specificity. This study contends that South Korean cinema has not only documented Gwangju but has participated in its ethical reactivation. Through formal innovation, affective appeal, and narrative engagement, these films position viewers as moral witnesses and reinforce the uprising as a touchstone for democratic accountability. In doing so, cinema transforms memory into democratic practice, enabling societies to remember violence Reist erasure, and continually renegotiate the meaning of freedom.