Shiri (1999) was director Kang Je-kyu's sophomore feature after 1995's The Gingko Bed (1996) (known for being the first Korean production to make significant use of CGI), embracing a directorial style that intentionally leaned into creating bombastic action sequences in the same vein as Hollywood blockbusters. It was an approach that worked, with its US$5 million-dollar budget going on to make more than 5 times that at the local box office, and smashing the global box office sensation from the same year, Titanic, by more than 2.5 million admissions.

Tickets weren't the only thing that were selling fast in its native South Korea, with the movies use of fish as metaphors doing for kissing gourami sales the equivalent of what A Better Tomorrow did for toothpicks in Hong Kong a decade prior. The box office returns only grew when it became the first Korean production to get a mainstream cinema release in both Japan and Hong Kong in 2000, which was enough to grab the attention of western distributors, leading to releases in the UK and U.S. 3 years later. The decision by Kang Je-kyu to make a Hollywood inspired action movie was a bold one, daring to compete against the very same big budget imported movies that inspired it, but the gamble paid off.

Shiri (1999)

After Shiri's release the floodgates opened for investment into the film industry. Industry insiders called the phenomenon 'Shiri Syndrome', and soon movies like JSA (2000), Silmido (2003), and Je-kyu's own Taegukgi (2004) were hitting Korean cinema screens, productions which would likely never have been green lit otherwise. The story itself concerns a pair of intelligence agents, played by Han Seok-kyu and Song Kang-ho. Both established actors who debuted in the mid-1990's, they'd already shared the screen together in the gangster drama's No.3 (1997) and Green Fish (1997), both from 1997, with Seok-kyu also playing the lead in Je-kyu's previously mentioned The Gingko Bed.

The Gingko Bed (1996)

The pair were joined by another No.3 alumni in the form of Choi Min-sik, playing a North Korean commander who, six years earlier, had sent a female sniper to integrate into South Korean society with the goal of assassinating several key South Korean targets. Min-sik had also shared the screen separately with the 2 leads before as well, acting alongside Seok-kyu in Mom, the Star and the Sea Anemone (1995), and alongside Kang-ho in The Quiet Family (1998). The ace up the sleeve in Shiri’s casting though was that of Kim Yun-jin, an actress who’d emigrated to New York aged 10, and spent most of her early acting career in bit parts. In 1996 she returned to Korea, and after featuring in a couple of local TV series, it was Shiri that provided the break she was looking for on the big screen. Ironically for the majority of western viewers, it’s not Shiri that Yun-jin is most well-known for, but rather her role as Sun-hwa in the American TV series Lost.

Green Fish (1997)

On the surface level it's surprising just how un-Korean much of the first half of Shiri feels. The trio of Seok-kyu, Kang-ho, and Yun-jin hang out in an Italian restaurant together, with their drink of choice being beer, marking it as surely the only time in Korean cinema history for the distinctive green soju bottle to fail at making an appearance. In another scene Seok-kyu and Kang-ho are sipping coffee in an outdoor café, the setting looking for all intents and purposes like if the camera was to zoom out, they'd be on some street corner in Paris. The intelligence office Seok-kyu and Kang-ho work at has the obligatory Hollywood style 'quirky character' whose role is to feed the fish, deriding the colleagues who kill them by throwing cigarette butts and leftover cookies into the tanks, and there's a lot of serious talk about a bomb called CTX.

After a shootout in an auditorium that almost leaves Min-sik's North Korean commander cornered by Seok-kyu and Kang-ho, the mysterious assassin makes an appearance, providing a brief window for him to escape. With the assassin injured in the crossfire, Seok-kyu trails the mysterious figure through the backstreets of Seoul, only to lose her around the same area where his fiancé's fish store is located. It's a classic moment in Korean cinema when Seok-kyu ends up on the corner across from the shop, already closed for the day, and as he glances at the building, the lights suddenly come on. A brief expression on his face gives away that he's contemplating the unthinkable – is the woman he's planning to marry the assassin they've been trying to find for all this time?

It's the kind of melodramatic twist that K-dramas were already known for, and could easily be said to be more bombastic than any of the action in its outlandish nature, delivering the intended gut punch regardless of its feasibility. Seok-kyu ultimately decides to let her go, and we only see he and Yun-jin share the screen one more time before the end credits roll, with the reveal feeling like it fundamentally changes the type of movie that Shiri is. Suddenly it no longer feels like a riff on the Hollywood action genre, with the good guys attempting to stop the bad guys from using a bomb to blow up the city, but rather it narrows down its focus to become a story of 2 doomed lovers heading towards their eventual inevitable confrontation. In short, it begins to feel like Korean cinema.

The Quiet Family (1998)

Shiri takes the metaphor of a divided Korea and renders it more heart breaking than any previous attempts, delivering a plot twist only possible now that directors no longer risked being arrested for portraying a North Korean character in a sympathetic light. This was largely thanks to the introduction of then President Kim Dae-jung's Sunshine Policy, which was introduced only the year prior in 1998, intended to improve the relationship between the 2 Korea's and move away from hostility. Only a few years earlier South Korean cinema was still subject to significant censorship challenges, with the governments anti-communist stance having a strict policy around how any North Korean characters were portrayed onscreen.

More than 2 decades on its still the character driven moments that resonate the most in Shiri. There are several dramatic standalone scenes in the latter half that have lost none of their power and impact - the scene in Yun-jin's apartment when Min-sik questions her loyalties, throwing her a gun with the expectation she should kill herself if she's really fallen for Seok-kyu. Similarly Min-sik's impassioned speech to Seok-kyu about the conditions in North Korea, becoming increasingly red faced as he furiously rages about parents eating the flesh of their dead children. What hits home the most though is still the closing scene usage of Carol Kidd's 1985 released cover of When I Dream (originally sung by Crystal Gayle in 1975), which remains one of the most haunting soundtrack choices to compliment the scene it appears in from any movie, continuing to play as the credits roll.

It's a testament to Je-kyu's script and direction that the most powerful scenes are the ones that take place post what would traditionally be considered the action finale, here a race against time to find the CTX planted in the football stadium. Here it's these closing scenes that provide Shiri its emotional core, and are the ones that have remained most deeply ingrained as the lingering parts that stay with you long after the credits roll. Much like Seok-kyu's famous line, Shiri itself can be seen as the Hydra of Korean cinema in the late 1990's – giving us both a 90's Hollywood action movie aesthetic, and a distinctly Korean tale of tragedy and longing. The subsequent years since its release have only proven what a unique proposition Shiri is, one that proved the Korean film industry had a place on the world stage.

Parasite (2019)

The world we live in now is one where a Korean movie holds the honour of being the first ever foreign language production to win the Academy Award for Best Picture (Parasite at the 2020 Oscars), while the most popular movie ever released on Netflix is one that's inspired by Korean culture (2025's K-Pop Demon Hunters). Could any of this have been predicted when Shiri first opened on Korean cinema screens in February 1999? Unlikely, however without it the spark that ignited the early 2000's K-wave would never have happened, and every subsequent infiltration of Korean culture into the global mainstream in the decades after. Sometimes going back to see where it all began can result in disappointment, but in the case of Shiri, it's as powerful today as it was upon its first release, and remains essential viewing for any fans of Korean cinema.

Written by William Schwartz
Edited by kofic