Where Is the Burning Greenhouse: South Korea’s Neoliberal Racialization and Invisible Racism in Lee Chang-dong’s Burning (2018)

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper is built upon the premise that Lee Chang-dong’s 2018 film Burning is a critical reflection of South Korea’s late-stage neoliberalism of the 2010s. With an aim to expand on this premise, the paper further investigates the significance of using burning as a metaphor for a certain affect that represents the millennial youth as the first generation to become adults in the 2010s. In doing so, it aims to shed light on the reterritorializing desire depicted in Burning’s Korean millennials amid their struggle to avoid becoming “surplus.” This desire manifests in scapegoating of the racial/cultural Other, whose new placement on the social ladder threatens the millennial precariat. In this reading, Burning serves as a harbinger of the post-pandemic world where increasing backlash against neoliberal globalism radicalizes the working-class youth in favor of nationalist protectionism.