Introduction

This is a remarkable feat considering the K-film industry’s infamous self-isolation from international film markets until the 1980s and the global dominance of Hollywood since early in film history. K-film’s shift into the global mainstream makes now a prime time to start moving towards a richer understanding of meaning in K-film, as with more fans worldwide there is less of a need to domesticate the English subtitles to attract foreign viewers. This introduction also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book brings together strands from national film studies, Korean film studies, Korean-English translation, Korean linguistic and cultural studies, and multimodal film analysis. It provides an inventory of common Korean expressions and the social reasoning behind their usage. The book provides formalisms to illustrate more systematically the workings of socio-pragmatic primitives and lay the groundwork for a framework that can be developed by English-speaking researchers.