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Suddenly at Midnight

1981 film by Go Yeong-nam

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ7633656 ↗
Source-derived summary

Suddenly at Midnight (Korean: 깊은밤 갑자기; RR: Gipeunbam gapjagi; also known as Suddenly in the Dark or Suddenly in Dark Night) is a 1981 South Korean erotic horror thriller film directed by Ko Young-nam.

Plot

Kang Yu-jin, a wealthy biology professor doing a butterfly field study, takes in a new housemaid; the young woman, Mi-ok, is the daughter of a shaman priestess who recently died in a house fire. At first, Yu-jin and his wife, Seon-hee, welcome Mi-ok into their home, but Seon-hee begins to have misgivings when she sees a strange wooden doll that the maid has brought with her. Having suffered from nightmares about exactly the same doll, Seon-hee becomes increasingly suspicious and paranoid that Mi-ok is trying to kill her and usurp her household. In a sudden fit of madness, Seon-hee causes Mi-ok to fall to her death. From then on, Seon-hee is tormented horribly by visions of the doll attacking her and it starts to take a great toll on her sanity. Is it actually happening or just all in the girl's mind?

Cast

Kim Young-ae ... Seon-hee

Yoon Il-bong ... Kang Yu-jin

Lee Ki-seon ...

Editorial summary

“Suddenly at Midnight” enters the record as 1981 film by Go Yeong-nam. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Suddenly, Midnight and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive route into publication, performance and collection histories when the underlying object or edition remains clearly identified. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1981—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1981-07-17. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Suddenly, Midnight and film.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Suddenly at Midnight” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Suddenly, Midnight and film provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7633656. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Suddenly at Midnight”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Suddenly at Midnight primary sources, Suddenly at Midnight archive and Suddenly research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Suddenly at Midnight” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.