스릴러 장르 웹툰 <똑 닮은 딸>의 비선형 서사 구조와 서술 트릭 연구

초록

With the advancement of digital media technologies, webtoons have developed into a sophisticated artistic medium that integrates literary and cinematic narrative techniques. Thriller webtoons, which rely heavily on tension and reversal, require refined narrative strategies that fully exploit the medium’ s formal characteristics to sustain reader engagement. This study examines Part II of The Identical Daughter, a prize-winning work by Idam, to explore how it combines the visual grammar specific to webtoons with narratological concepts to construct intricate narrative trick strategies. The analysis reveals that the work employs a double-track, non-linear structure interlacing the timelines of “Myung Somin (1991)” and “Gil Somyung (2021).” Through the deliberate anachrony between fabula (chronological order of events) and syuzhet (order of narration), the author manipulates cognitive perception, inducing the reader to misinterpret two distinct timelines as simultaneous. Visually, vertical scrolling is utilized to control information exposure, while narratively, shifting focalization conceals the narrator’ s identity and amplifies suspense. Moreover, by exploiting genre conventions and readers’ prior knowledge, the author induces intentional misreading, utilizing information asymmetry to transform readers into active interpreters. Ultimately, the reversal revealed at the conclusion restructures the reader’ s narrative comprehension and produces strong cognitive catharsis. This study elucidates how webtoons can employ their medium-specific grammar to achieve sophisticated non-linear narration, thereby contributing to the theoretical expansion of webtoon narratology.

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