• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.37
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• pp.463-489
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• 2014

Virtually unanimous praise poured over him notwithstanding, critical discussions of Yeon Sang-ho's animation works largely remain amorphous. Except for scattered reviews, no serious work of engagement with his works has yet to exist. In seeking to fill this yawning void, this paper insists his works be treated as oeuvre. By analyzing the two animated features along with his shorts, I will show how radical Yeon's works remain vis-a-vis contemporary Korean society. At their narrative core, his works, I argue, revolve around the problem of solidarity, or lack thereof among the abjected people. In contradistinction to the critical common sense whereby the supposed continuity between the two works is casually bypassed, I insist on the peculiar ways in which both resonate with difference. Further, and perhaps more importantly, I will demonstrate how these otherwise merely thematic concerns are rendered formally in his animated works in terms of what I call "abyssal surface". Despite his allegedly "realistic" style, Yeon's works rather embody the utter lack/excess of trust among the abjected people as animation, i.e., ominously superficial surface beyond whose facade lurks abyssal lack/excess of mutual trust. Precisely in this double sense of the term, i.e., that thematically they touch on the roots of society, and, formally, those of animation as such, Yeon's animation works are radical.