KOREA SCREENING SERIES PRESENTED BY KOREA CENTER-KING SEJONG INSTITUTE 코리아센터-세종학당 AND AUBURN WORLD LANGUAGES, LITERATURE, AND CULTURES

6:00 PM // Memories of a Murder (2003) is a brilliant, haunting crime thriller by Bong Joon-ho that completely subverts traditional Hollywood detective tropes. Years before his global phenomenon Parasite, the film showcases the director’s trademark tonal control, seamlessly blending dark, absurdist comedy with bone-chilling tension. Loosely based on South Korea's first confirmed serial killer case (the Hwaseong murders between 1986 and 1991), the film captures the socio-political pressure of late-1980s military-ruled South Korea and unlike standard Hollywood procedurals that wrap up neatly, this film confronts the frustrating, messy, and haunting reality of an incomplete investigation where simple answers do not exist.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER: Dr. Hyongrae Kim is an assistant professor of Korean and translation studies in the Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the Auburn University College of Liberal Arts. He earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2014–2019) and a Master's degree from the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. His research interests focus on interpreting during the Korean War, the sociology of translation and interpreting, and comparative literature.