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영어

There is a constant string tension between movie importers/distributors and the Korea Media Rating Board (hereafter KMRB) as to which rating an imported movie would be labelled, because the rating has a decisive impact on the ticket power and profit in South Korea (Park, 2013; Korean Film Council, 2014). Although ‘violence’ and ‘sexuality’, the two critical factors of Korean movie ratings as stipulated by the KMRB, can be judged not only by the screen but also its linguistic embodiments, few studies have addressed how the Korean subtitles of ‘bad language’ (Dobao, 2006), including choices of ellipsis, may influence the ratings in the South Korean context. With its focus on English DVDs rated as ‘PG15’ in South Korea, equivalent to ‘PG13’ in the US, this study explores Korean subtitles of English bad languages and their acceptability, influenced by, and dependent on, the rating. It focuses especially on the criterion of vulgarity of lines, one of the 7 criteria that KMRB stipulates for the movie rating. The study reveals KMRB’s very low acceptance tendency of sexual intercourse terms, resulting in increasing the rating of vulgarity of lines. In contrast, KMRB is tolerant of words containing violent semantic components, such as “shit” and “damn”.