![]() Character List Mrs Park (Yong-Nyeo Lee) Mr Oh "Mad Dog" (Roe-Ha Kim) Eun-Young (Mi-Yeon Lee) Jung-Soon (Ji-Hye Yun) Ji-Oh/Jin-Ju (Gyu-Ri Kim) Jae-Yi (Kang-Hee Choi) The film bases itself within a female boarding school in which teachers practice strict discipline and is home to the ghost of Jin-Ji, a student who committed suicide years previous. She then continues to haunt the school every four years, in disguise of a new student and commits brutal murders of the older generation teachers. New teacher and previous student, Eun-Young then learns the deep and dark secrets of her friend Jin-Ju and the reason behind the murders. Although Whispering Corridors may not be considered the most enjoyable film for western audience, it serves as a good starting point for the study of South Korean new wave as 1998 was the kick-start year of the new wave. It is also set ten years and was released ten years after the transition from military rule. As the film is almost twenty years old, it does look dated with the mies-en-scene and stylistic features somewhat old, resembling what would have been used years previously within western film making. Yet saying this, when released, Whispering Corridors was the highest grossing film of 1998 in South Korea. As the film is set in a high school, there is no surprise that 30% of the audience were high school students. To add to this, the Korean National School Board tried to get the film banned as they dislikes the depiction of teachers in the film, who influenced suicides of students due to brutal disciplinary. However, the request was refused. It is also considered that films like Whispering Corridors kick started the Asian horror bomb of the late nineties, which usually consists of binary opposites of past and present and tradition and modernity.
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