Korea
Entry updated 14 July 2025. Tagged: International.
After 1945, the history of Korean Science Fiction unfolds across two states with contrasting ideological frameworks: North Korea, where sf was shaped by revolutionary didacticism and the Juche ("self-reliance") state ideology; and South Korea, where the genre emerged in fits and starts, often reflecting the nation's rapid industrialization, eventual democratization, and ambivalent embrace of global capitalism. Despite its relatively late consolidation compared to sf traditions in nearby Japan or China, Korean sf has since developed into a distinctive and increasingly visible tradition, blending tropes of Western genre fiction with local historical memory, technological anxieties, and social critique. While North Korean sf has remained limited to traditional literature and an occasional film, the South Korean field now encompasses a growing corpus of web novels (Ebooks serialized online chapter and chapter, a format widely consumed across Asia) – as well as Cinema, Television, Comics (manhwa, the Korean analogue to Japanese Manga), webtoons (vertically formatted comics optimized for smartphones), and occasional ventures into animation, some co-produced with Japan (see Anime).
Proto SF motifs in Korea can be traced to the early twentieth century, as part of the Korean Enlightenment movement. Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870) was serialized in the Korean magazine Taegukhakbo in 1907-1908, offering the Korean readers their first glimpse of technoscientific imagination. Among the earliest native examples is Jeong Yeongyu's Ideal Village (1921), which featured futuristic Technology such as electric cars. However, sustained development of the genre was hampered during the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), as science education struggled, while technological modernity was often identified with colonial oppression. Early original Korean sf texts such as Kim Dong-in's grotesque "Dr. K's Research" (December 1929 Sinsoseol ["New Novel"]), about a researcher who attempts to address global food shortages by developing a shocking novel substitute food – processed human waste – remained isolated curiosities.
After the end of World War Two, Korea's partition into two states led to divergent sf traditions discussed in the entries for North Korea and South Korea. [PKo]
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