Urban Landscapes and National Visions in Post-Millennial South Korean Cinema by Gemma Ballard

alone, it is already clear why this text initiates a process of structural, stylistic and thematic oscillation, particularly with regard to the conventional blockbuster and its primary cinematic occupation. A level of cultural and political specificity is apparent here, designed to accommodate and satisfy a largely national audience . Shiri’s story concerns itself with a distinctively national and contemporary anxiety: the threat of North Korea and its potential presence within the expanding and diversifying city of Seoul. Through the focalisation of a culturally and socially exclusive narrative, Shiri effectively ‘Koreanises ’ its own (ostensibly) generic template. At the turn of the Twenty-first century, integration, cooperation and ‘constructive engagement policies’ occupied a significant space in South Korea’s political, social and national consciousness (Levin and Han 2002 , p. 23). The ‘Sunshine Policy’, introduced in 1998 during the administration of Kim Dae-Jung, was indicative of a broader, outward-facing, diplomatic move to help improve the relationship between the two Koreas and stagnate any potential military threat. However, many of the approaches embedded within this new agenda only served to intensify ‘long-standing, unresolved societal tensions and divisions’ and, more importantly, emphasise national differences (Levin and Han 2002 , p. 31). There was an apparent disparity between the superficial, external purpose of the policy and its internal goals. Above al