Emily Liu 404172991 Trauma and Fantasy in South Korean Film Looking back, the 20th Century is perhaps most remembered as the era of devastating violence, and the world's struggle to cope and recover in the aftermath. From the world wars, to the holocaust, to the Arab-Israeli conflict, man's potential for violence and pain shook the world, leaving peoples who have been hurt to pick up the pieces ever since. Trauma, as E. Ann Kaplan points out, is inherently linked to modernity 1 , explaining the coincidence of such violence with the era of rapid industrialization and globalization. In fact, Kaplan and Wang believe modernity itself to be the trauma that has come to shape Western civilization, permanently "shattering" the nature of history as one that shapes our self-identity 2 . It is into this disconnect between past and present, brought upon by the traumas of the twentieth century, that cinematic representation come into play. Narratives and images, Kaplan and Wang point out, are "necessary responses to traumatic events", tools to help individuals and societies "come to terms with traumatic memory... and to shed light on the chronically trauma- producing social structures so as to forge the will to change them" 3 . In other words, art, cinema or otherwise, facilitates the healing process with trauma by helping victims revisit and recognize the traumatic event so as to be able to move on. As Alice Walker notes, "a common response to real trauma is fantasy…the most effective films and videos about trauma are [those that figure the traumatic past as meaningful yet as fragmentary, virtually unspeakable, and striated with fantasy constructions]" 4 . The use of fantasy in cinema has been explored extensively in world cinema. In this essay, I will discuss the ways in 1 Kaplan, 24 2 Kaplan and Wang, 2 3 Kaplan and Wang, 12 4 Walker,