Acting ‘like a woman’: South Korean female action heroines

ABSTRACT Since the early 2000s, South Korean cinema has been dominated by action-noir and blockbuster ‘bromance’ films. However, after the intervention of feminist organizations into mainstream discourse since 2015, one could detect more demands for films featuring female protagonists with adequate gender representations. Beginning with The Villainess (Aknyeo, dir. Jeong Byeong-gil, 2017), women protagonists began to appear in high-budget South Korean action films and are no longer relegated to exclusively passive roles as supporting characters. However, although these new female action films feature spectacular action sequences, they revolve around a narrative structure that falls back on heteronormative and patriarchal conceptions of femininity and represent female characters as erotic spectacles. This paper analyses recent South Korean female action films The Villainess, A Special Lady (Miok, dir. Lee An-gyu, 2017), No Mercy (Eonni, dir. Im Gyeong-taek, 2019), and The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion (Manyeo, dir. Park Hun-jeong, 2018) to diagnose the current state of female action films in South Korea and interrogate what it means to perform ‘like a woman’ in South Korean action films.