Ecology and disaster: Korean society at the End of the World as We Know It

This chapter will examine two genre-blending films and a television series, both were released in 2023: the films Concrete Utopia and Jung-E and the series Goodbye Earth (2024). Like their counterparts elsewhere in East Asia, such as the Japanese post-disaster anime series, Coppelion, South Korean films focused on ecological topics deal with the dystopian consequences of two sources of impact upon social and natural ecologies: first are the consequences of human activity upon the environment, especially industrial pollution and resource depletion, biochemical experiments gone wrong, and misguided genetic manipulation; second are natural disasters beyond human control. The films and drama are human-centric, post-disaster narratives concerned not so much with the cause(s) of the disaster but with the impact on social relationships in a highly collective, androcentric and misogynistic cultural context which degenerates into social, economic and moral chaos. Through their representations of particularly Korean social formations confronted by disaster situations, the films and dramas offer a unique perspective on familiar tropes and genres and strive to foster a mentality that is more environmentally aware.