Reply 1988

A hard decade, remembered warmly

Today’s drama

Reply 1988 (응답하라 1988) — five neighbouring Seoul families, in the last years of the decade, foregrounding ordinary domestic life over the politics happening around it.

That choice is itself worth examining.

Three questions

  1. What was ordinary life like under authoritarian rule, for people not directly involved in politics?
  2. How did working-class and middle-class families experience rapid economic change in this period?
  3. How does nostalgia affect historical memory — what does a warm retelling make easier to forget?

A show can be historically situated in an authoritarian, rapidly developing country while barely mentioning either directly.

Take from this week

  • 1980s Korea as a period of both authoritarian rule and rapid growth, simultaneously
  • democratisation, which the period is building toward without the show dwelling on it
  • neighbourhood culture as a form of social organisation the show treats as central
  • nostalgia, and what a fond memory of a hard decade tends to leave out