Narrative of traumatic memory in Spirits’ Homecoming (2016) and Tuning Fork (2014)

This article analyses two South Korean feature films representing the traumatic memories of the ‘comfort women’ – Spirits’ Homecoming (2016) and Tuning Fork (2014). While both of these films share some thematic and stylistic similarities as depictions of the sexually enslaved women by Imperial Japan during the Second World War, there is a crucial contrast in their narrative structure. This article analyses Spirits’ Homecoming as a fiction whose narrative structure conforms to Amsterdam/Bruner’s conservative account, while Tuning Fork illustrates Strejilevich’s account of victims’ stories that defies traditional narrative conventions. Although both films find creative ways to disseminate the once-silenced stories of the victims and hold different sociocultural meanings, this analysis suggests Tuning Fork highlights a distinctive intergenerational remembrance of the ‘comfort women’, which eschews dominant nationalistic discourse.