Exploring historical trauma in South Korean videogame narratives
Traditionally, the United States and Japan have been the hegemonic powers within the video game industry, alternating their roles and significance during different periods. As a result, it can be said that video game narratives have often been influenced by this fact. However, in recent years, China and South Korea have emerged as major producers of mobile games. South Korea's case is also notable for its unique Esports culture, organized around PC Bangs. In this talk, Professor lvaro Trigo Maldonado will offer an overview of the Korean video game industry over the years, and then focus on analyzing how games recently published by independent studios are conveying historical traumas experienced in the country and serving as a counter-narrative to the dominant narratives of AAA games.
Speaker Bio
lvaro Trigo Maldonado is an Associate Professor of Korean Studies and the East Asian Studies B.A. Coordinator in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Salamanca. He is also a Visiting Professor in the Korean Studies M.A. program at the University del Salvador (Argentina). He holds an M.A. in Korean History and Culture from the Academy of Korean Studies and earned his Ph.D. in Modern Korean Literature from the University of Salamanca. In 2017, he won LTI Koreas prize for aspiring translators after completing two years of study in LTI's regular course. In 2024, he was awarded the Daesan Literary Prize in the translation category. He has translated novels by writers such as Kim Kyeong-uk, Chang Kang-myoung, O Jeonghui, and Kim Aeran, among others. His main areas of research include modern Korean literature and history, as well as their relationship with contemporary culture.
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