Archaeological Narrative; or, Nostalgic Fascination with the Obsolete in the South Korean TV Drama <i>Reply 1988</i>

Abstract This article considers how a Korean television drama, Reply 1988 (tvN, 2015–16), functions as a form of public archaeology through its on-screen display of obsolete TV sets and televisual footage, treating television as a historical medium to illuminate the lives of those whom television has influenced since the 1980s. Reply 1988 also extends this recollected medium into emerging hypermedia and intertextual contexts, enabled primarily through contemporary digital technology. Viewers therefore find themselves in a puzzle-like structure—a temporal doubling. This raises questions about television's development in today's rapidly changing media environment. This article examines Reply 1988 as an archaeological narrative to seek to understand the show's response to cultural crises playing out in today's post-network, post-media era, casting new light on television's ethical role in generating communal values and informing an inquiry into the human condition in the contemporary moment.