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Film Comment, a specialized American publication, wrote a special with a focus on Korean films ten years ago. This year, a decade after that special was published, they prepared an updated report on the current trends of the Korean film industry. By basing the report on six key words that describe today’s Korean cinema, Film Comment put together six features, four of which we’re pleased to include in this Cannes edition of Korean Cinema Today.
 
The Only Way to Move is Forward
    
A decade in the life of Korean cinema 

It’s been ten years since Chuck Stephens wrote about Korean cinema’s perpetual renaissance, in his introduction to Film Comment’s Nov/Dec 2004 midsection “Korea Prospects: Inside an Asian Cinema Powerhouse.” Since then, the perpetual renaissance not only continued, but reached new levels of growth and success, breaking domestic box-office records, and gaining ever wider international acclaim and recognition for Korean films—both mainstream and independent—and the people who make them. While there were bumps on the road, South Korea’s film industry overcame a complex set of challenges, rapidly globalized its operations, and significantly increased its presence in foreign markets, especially with respect to its long-term strategy for China. And following in the footsteps of their Hong Kong counterparts, Korean directors and actors have started making forays into Hollywood.
 
The Korean film industry didn’t develop in a vacuum. It benefited significantly from the country’s rise as an economic and political power (it’s now among the 20 largest economies in the world) and the proliferation and popularity of Korean exports (both consumerist and cultural), especially in Asia.
 
In many ways mirroring Hollywood, the Korean film conglomerates (CJ Entertainment, Showbox/Mediaplex, and Lotte Entertainment) have come to dominate the domestic market through vertical integration. But faced with the limited size of that market and heavy dependence on theatrical box office, they have also been forced to seek out new revenue streams internationally. With the groundwork set by the popularity of Korean TV dramas in the region, Japan became Korea’s top foreign market, and in 2005 there was a feeding frenzy over film distribution rights, resulting in USD 60 million worth of exports to Japan. The lure of easy money, contingent on the casting of popular stars, upended the economics of Korean film production. But the boom proved short-lived, and soon the interest from Japanese buyers dried up.
 

In 2006 there was a change in the screen quota system, which had been in place since 1966 to protect the domestic industry. The South Korean government, under pressure from U.S. trade negotiators, reduced movie theaters’ quotas for Korean films from 30-40 percent down to 20 percent. The protests of local filmmakers went unheard, but 2006 ironically turned out to be a record year for domestic films, which accounted for 64 percent of the market, thanks to the blockbuster performances of BONG Joon-ho’s monster movie/political satire/family film The Host, LEE Joon-ik’s period drama King and the Clown, and CHOI Dong-hoon’s gambling movie Tazza: The High Rollers, each of which outperformed Mission: Impossible III.
 
After the highs of 2006, the industry entered a troubled three-year period, with a reduced market share for domestic films, declining foreign sales and the box-office failure of many big-budget productions that emphasized spectacle at the expense of story. The conglomerates carried the industry on their backs over these lean years, but emerged controlling a much larger part of it at the end of the crisis. There’s an obvious downside to this near-monopoly, and in 2014 the two largest theater chains CJ-CGV and Lotte Cinema, operated by CJ Entertainment and Lotte Entertainment respectively, were fined the equivalent of USD 5 million by the country’s Fair Trade Commission for favoring releases by their sister distribution companies.
  
Not everything was bad news in 2007. JEON Do-yeon was crowned Best Actress at Cannes for her turn in LEE Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine. And far more important than any international recognition, the industry’s first and much needed labor deal was finally signed. The pact between the Federation of Korea Movie Workers’ Union (launched in 2004) and the Korea Film Producers Association covered working hours, overtime pay, mandatory insurance, etc. While this marked a significant step in the right direction for improving the working conditions and alleviating the exploitation of the men and women who are the backbone of the industry, the full implementation of the rules still remains a somewhat distant prospect.
  

The conglomerates’ domination of the market paradoxically invigorated the independent sector, as 2009 proved to be a banner year for indie films, with 64 low-budget features receiving a theatrical release. These included sleeper hits like LEE Chung-ryoul’s documentary Old Partner, YANG Ik-june’s brutal gangster/domestic-violence drama Breathless, and NOH Young-seok’s black comedy Daytime Drinking. Old Partner, an unassuming look at an 80-yearold farmer and his 40-year-old cow, received a limited release after screening at Sundance, but eventually flourished at Korean multiplexes with a stunning three million total admissions, fueled by word of mouth. From this point on, the number and quality of independent releases rose steadily, introducing a new generation of filmmakers with distinct personal styles and visions (JANG Kun-jae, KIM Kyung-mook, LEE Su-jin, O Muel, PARK Jung-bum and others).
  
At the other end of the spectrum, the undisputed box-office champion of 2009 was JK YOUN’s disaster movie Haeundae (Tidal Wave), which showcased Korea’s homegrown digital effects capabilities. Developing alongside the film industry, Korean effects houses (such as Digital Idea and Mofac Studio) were increasingly being sought to work on foreign feature and TV projects, from Rob Minkoff’s The Forbidden Kingdom (2008) and Jon Favreau’s Iron Man 2 (2010) to the recent Chinese 3-D fantasy The Monkey King and Daniel LEE’s period action film Dragon Blade.
  
In 2013 and 2014 English-language projects from three of Korea’s most prominent filmmakers were released in the U.S.: BONG Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, KIM Jee-woon’s forgettable Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle The Last Stand, and PARK Chan-wook’s gothic psychological thriller Stoker. However, in Hollywood, cultural, linguistic and working style differences remain an issue for Korean directors, who are used to having a much greater degree of autonomy and control. On the acting side, while the country hasn’t produced a major crossover star comparable to Jackie CHAN, a number of actors have recently become more visible through their work in major Englishlanguage films, including BAE Doo-na in Jupiter Ascending and Cloud Atlas (2012), LEE Byung-hun in Terminator: Genisys and the G.I. Joe franchise, and CHOI Min-shik in Luc Besson’s
Lucy.
  
As KIM Han-min’s Roaring Currents became the most watched film in Korea’s history with an unprecedented 17.6 million tickets sold, the industry hasn’t been resting on its laurels. Looking to the future, it has focused on strengthening ties with China. South Korea benefits from its neighbor’s vast and growing market, where Korean content is popular and in demand, while China benefits from Korea’s technical know-how and creative and marketing expertise. Various deals, acquisitions, joint investments and MOUs have culminated in last year’s signing of a film co-production agreement between the two countries, which allows coproductions to bypass China’s foreign-film import quota.
  
These days, Korean cinema’s mainstream is not as filmmaker-driven as it once was—a price that was paid in order for the industry to mature and get through the rough patch of 2007-2010. However, the studios are still willing to take risks and give new talent a chance, especially when it comes to courting young independent filmmakers such as JANG Cheol-soo, JANG Hoon, JO Sung-hee, and YOON Jong-bin. But one can’t overlook the fact that Korea is among those rare countries with a strong and vibrant national cinema, producing a variety of stories and genres made for adults. While American multiplexes are bombarded with comic-book and young-adult-novel adaptations, and family-friendly CGI animation, Korean cinema offers a wide variety of thrillers, period epics, gangster films, adult dramas and comedies, i.e., a significant number of midrange productions that allow for a degree of creative risk-taking.
  
Technically and stylistically, these films feel familiar and approachable, but the country’s unique cultural and historical experience and the traumas caused by the clash of tradition and modernity over a short period of time have infused Korean cinema with a vitality, relevance and explosive energy that have captured the attention of the world. The same drive, resilience and ambition to catch up with the rest of the world and rebuild the country in the aftermath of the Korean War has also been responsible for transforming the film industry into a global force. And despite any current and future sociopolitical challenges that the country and its people may face, Korean cinema is here to stay.