“We’re a detective membership that has been round since August 2006,” says Noh Younger-wook, who runs the RS Reasoning Membership. “We have now round 30,000 members who love investigating.”
Noh Younger-wook runs a Seoul detective membership. Since 2006, it has attracted 30,000 members who, of their spare time, like to resolve true crime re-enactments. Supply: SBS
Right this moment’s whodunit entails following a sequence of clues from one location to the subsequent, by means of the Gangnam backstreets, to hopefully lead the group to a criminal offense scene. This is not an actual homicide investigation, in fact, however a re-enactment of a historic case.
A part of the attract lies within the authenticity of the expertise. Noh’s fellow organisers are all sporting black bulletproof vests worn by crime investigators, crime scenes are draped in police tape and the warehouse is peppered with life-like proof of a criminal offense.
“My ardour is second to none,” says Park, afterwards. “I as soon as wished to turn out to be a police officer. There are such a lot of circumstances that I watch with curiosity.”
Park Ji-hye says she follows many crime circumstances with curiosity. Supply: SBS
Crime as leisure
“It appears that evidently many individuals have turn out to be extra concerned about mystery-solving actions like ours after watching these reveals on TV.”
Crime thrillers like Reminiscences of Homicide and The Chaser have been native hits within the early 2000s. Extra lately, Netflix reveals equivalent to Inspector Koo, The Good Detective and Voice have helped feed a worldwide urge for food for Korean thrillers and crime dramas.
What’s behind the true crime craze?
“As a result of the detection charge for crimes is excessive, the incidence of significant crimes is low and society is protected … a tradition of having fun with crime-related content material has been fashioned.”
Detective Kim Jin-ku from the Korean Nationwide Police Company says many Koreans have turn out to be obsessive about true crime after years of repression, when harsh censorship legal guidelines stored tales of crime and corruption beneath wraps. Supply: SBS
The thirst for true crime content material has propelled police detectives like Kim to stardom. He has appeared as a forensics knowledgeable on a raft of TV reveals, together with the nation’s hottest true crime present, Need to Know That.
However as liberalisation arrived within the ’90s, Korean filmmakers slowly started treading into previously forbidden territory.
Kim says there’s one other issue propping up true crime programming: an enormous feminine viewers.
RS Reasoning Membership is understood for its practical recreations of crime scenes. There is a make-shift medicine lab, pretend blood, weapons, DNA proof and, in fact, a “sufferer”. Supply: SBS / Dateline
One cause for that’s that South Korea has the next ratio of feminine victims of violent crime than many different nations, together with Western nations.
In 2020, ladies accounted for 44.8 per cent of murder victims in South Korea, in contrast with 20 per cent in the US and round 30 per cent in Australia, based on statistics from the Korean Nationwide Police Company.
True crime over-exposure
“In doing so, the victims are erased and decreased to things … and the victims and their members of the family will likely be very traumatised by it.”
Tutorial and tradition critic Han Yu-Hee believes seeing plenty of graphic crime by means of an leisure lens may be harmful as a result of victims turn out to be objectified. Supply: SBS
These re-enactments may also give individuals concepts.
Jung Yoo-jung, 23, had been obsessive about crime reveals and novels earlier than changing into fixated with the thought of homicide.
It’s problematic that we see [crime] as some type of leisure.
Han Yu-Hee
“As increasingly stimulating and unusual and brutal crimes are dedicated, individuals assume committing this a lot crime isn’t an enormous deal.”
Making ‘the world a greater place’
However for passionate true crime hobbyists like Noh Younger-wook and Park Ji-hye, the enigmatic attract of crime scene investigation will at all times characterize a type of distinctive mental stimulation.
Passionate true crime hobbyists Noh Younger-wook (left) and Park Ji-hye (proper) say fixing true crime re-enactments expands their thoughts. Supply: SBS
For Park, it isn’t nearly leisure; it is about increasing the thoughts for the better good.
“I am going to sum it up in only one sentence: You, too, may be Sherlock Holmes!”
