Jeonseorui Gohyang – Ieodo

Korean Ghost Story was a popular TV series telling tales of the eerie and the uncanny. This episode took its inspiration from a legend that originated on Cheju island, whose inhabitants claim that fishermen who vanished around Socora Rock were now in Ieodo, an empire ruled by women who didn’t allow any man to leave. The legend, it seems, was popular in the 1970s.

Celebrated writer Yi Ch’ongchun published a novel based on it in 1974, which was adapted for cinema three years later by grandmaster Kim Kiyǒng. However, teleplay auteur Choi Sangsik’s version of the Ieodo Island legend has nothing to do with Yi’s book; his is a melancholic tale about the joys and sorrows of common people vis-a-vis a strange utopian matriarchy. We chose Korean Ghost Story – Ieodo to screen alongside Modern Korea: The Age of Beasts on the suggestion of its producer-director, Jeong Jaeeun, who quotes extensively and lovingly from it.