The Gothic Gumiho K-drama with Dr Colette Balmain

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In this talk, I examine the figure of the nine tailed fox in K-dramas, Called the gumiho in Korea, the huli jing in China and the kitsune in Japan, it has often been depicted as a femme fatale whose dangerous sexuality situates her both metaphorically and literally as a man-eater, sucking the life-force out of her victims (Balmain: 2024). While we have seen a humanisation of the gumiho in South Korean popular culture, and particularly in kdrama (Gu Family Book: 2013 ; My Roommate is a Gumiho: 2021; Tale of the Nine Tailed (2020) and Tale of the Nine Tailed 1938: 2023), in North Korea it remains a fearful figure which “symbolizes hostile forces that should be rejected” (Lee, 2021) as demonstrated by the recent animation, Victory over the Oppressor Demon (2021). Indeed, in gothic gumiho dramas, the boundary between good and evil is permeable, marked by the existence and persistence of the redemption arc whereby sins can be expunged in future lives when and if reincarnation takes place. Further in terms of gender and sexuality, the contemporary gumiho’s fluidity disrupts the dominant discourse of heteronormativity that underpins the gothic gumiho kdrama as encapsulated through the foregrounding of romance as a structuring feature of the sub-genre. Therefore, the North’s rejection of the ambiguity of the gumiho is a rejection of capitalism underpinned by disavowal of gender as a shifting signifier and the associated disruption of gender norms that this connotes. In this talk, I focus on S1 and S2 of Tale of the Nine-Tailed, in order to demonstrate the subversive potential of the gumiho gothic.

Host or Publisher Sam Hirst