A Symphony of Black Comedy and Political Satire: On the Absurd Narrative and Power Deconstruction in Byun Sung-hyun’s Film Good News

Abstract

Released in 2025, the South Korean film Good News is director Byun Sung-hyun’s latest political satire and dark comedy. Based on the 1970 Japan Airlines Flight 351 hijacking, the film uses absurdist narrative techniques and a multi-layered satirical structure to sharply critique bureaucracy, international politics, and individual identity. This paper analyzes the dialectical relationship between the film’s historical prototype and its artistic fiction, examining how it deconstructs power discourse through dark comedy and constructs a postmodern allegory about truth, power, and identity through a unique visual language and metaphorical system. The study finds that Good News not only continues the consistent social critique of South Korean cinema but also reaches new heights in genre fusion and narrative innovation, revealing the essential absurdity of political discourse and historical narrative through its “absurdist realism.”