KIM SEUNG-OK’S STORY A JOURNEY TO MUJIN AND KIM SOO-YONG’S FILM ADAPTATION MIST

Abstract

This is a story that begins with a meeting of writer Kim Seung-ok and film director Kim Soo-yong. Their joint work was a kind of collaboration in the experimentation and the practice of the cultural phenomenon known as the New Beginnings of the 1960s. What are the special features of the story that Kim Soo-yong came up to an idea of its adaptation? This story was a fresh departure from the entrenched literary circles of the 1960s, where the standard literary values were conferred to the realistic representation of the post-Korean War ruins and most authors tended to focus on social problems and morality. At the same time, there were changes in situation with film industry in Korea. Both literature and film rushed to embrace the new possibilities of new beginnings and under Kim Soo-yong’s guidance Korean film of the 1960s entered the era of “literary film”, novel adaptation became a trend.