The Representation of Historical Memory Through the South Ko¬rean Series Gyeongseong Creature (Netflix, 2023)

Historical television series not only seek to entertain their audiences, but also play a crucial role in the recovery of collective memory by articulating a pedagogical approach that allows historical issues to be addressed in a revisionist manner. This perspective has recently emerged in South Korean audiovisual fiction after decades of censorship that silenced narratives about the past. A paradigmatic example is the series The Monster of Old Seoul (Netflix, 2023), a historical drama that combines elements of fantasy and horror set at the end of the Japanese colonial occupation. Its protagonist, a horrible and violent monster, the result of scientific experiments on humans by the Japanese army, is a reinterpretation of historical memory from the present. The TV series, which addresses the (re)construction of South Korean cultural identity, is open to a global audience interested in learning more about the country’s recent history.