Little Forest (Liteul Poleseuteu, 2018), director Yim Soon-rye's Korean remake of a Japanese film of the same title (directed by Mori Junichi, adapted from Igarashi Daisuke's manga series Ritoru Foresuto [2002–2005], and spread over two feature-length instalments: ‘Summer/Autumn’ [2014] and ‘Winter/Spring’ [2015]), offers a distinctive lens onto the various sociocultural and industrial factors involved in the reworking of a text across spatial and temporal boundaries. While it represents one of the most commercially successful examples of South Korean cinema's recent trend of remaking Japanese motion pictures (on the heels of Lee Gye-byeok's action-comedy Luck-Key [Leokki, 2016], which was based on the 2012 production of Key of Life [Kagi Dorobō no Mesoddo] and followed by Kim Jong-kwan's romantic drama Josée [2020], based on the 2003 production of Josee, the Tiger and the Fish [Joze to Tora to Sakanatachi]), the production was driven less by its boxoffice potential than by a desire to serve a particular social function. Namely, Yim's film provides a sense of ‘healing’ to a young generation of Koreans and a model of rural life as an alternative to a competitive and alienating existence in Seoul and other large metropolitan areas. This owes something to the evocations of rural life found in the original Japanese film, which was released in two parts (in 2014 and 2015) and was an adaptation of a manga about a young woman who retreats to her hometown in a remote village after a series of disheartening encounters. Through a self-reliant life of physical labour and food preparation, the female protagonist regains confidence and the deep sense of belonging she has pined for, but not found, in the city.

Both the original Japanese film and the Korean remake share this basic plot and setting; how each work portrays her rural life, cooking and search for identity, however, differs considerably. The fundamental difference between the two, which I will elaborate in this chapter, lies where the protagonist finds the ‘power of healing’.