Virgin Road is an allegory of a human-creature hybrid conducting a wedding with itself. Bending gender norms that have embraced the clichéd use of wedding scenes for conflict resolution and happy endings in movies and TV shows, the video reinvents the trope in the guise of B-movie gore. Ryu uses cheap, commonplace materials to realize grotesque images of bodily mutilation, which are then composited with low-budget visual effects, sentimental scores, and shoddy chroma key backdrops to modulate between horror and humor. The wall drawing Chew-wing is influenced by the visual language used in cartoons to evoke sounds and motions, drawing attention not only to the visual elements of the video but also to its auditory and tactile elements. Derived from a Japanese-English neologism that has since made its way into Korean usage, the titular “virgin road” refers to the bride’s procession into the wedding ceremony.
