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As the local industry reaches saturation point at home, with Korean films looking to breach the 100 million admissions mark for the third straight year, alternate avenues for growth are being explored by studios and talent. New projects by BONG Joon-ho, PARK Chan-wook and KIM Jee-woon have drawn international media attention but just as prevalent in the news these days is news of Korean co-productions, most prominently with neighboring China, whose market became the world’s second largest last year and is already tracking 40% of its 2014 total this year.

 

While dozens of Korea-China co-productions are filling column inches, these collaborations are still in their infancy, with the first reported project between both nations dating back just nine years, to My Wife is a Gangster 3 : HK Edition (2006), though exchange of talent predates that by many years.  However, that is not to say that co-productions are a recent fad in the Korean film industry. Officially, they date back to the propaganda pictures made at the behest of Japan during the Colonial Era in the 1930s and 40s but true creative partnerships have also been cropping up over the last few decades.

 

To put today’s co-production bonanza into perspective and take stock of the trend’s progress over the years, here are seven landmark Korean co-productions, listed chronologically. By no means a comprehensive list, the following highlight Korea’s activity with certain high profile partners and recognize the recent changes to the landscape of film distribution in Asia. These titles only feature fully creative partnerships, thus discounting the many Hollywood films that have featured Korean investment partners.

 

 

 

Korean-Japanese co-productions date back to the 1930s but as propaganda films they don’t exactly fulfill the criteria of real cultural exchange. As SHIM Ae-gyun and Brian YECIES argued in their tome ‘Korea’s Occupied Cinemas, 1893-1948: The Untold History of the Film Industry:’ “Whilst a number of films made in this period could be called collaborative co-productions (made with both Korean and Japanese crews and actors), they failed to achieve the level of cultural diversity and mutual economic benefit that official co-production efforts embrace today.”

 

Following Korea’s liberation from Japan on August 15th, 1945, ties between the nations remained scarce for decades. It wasn’t until 1998 when a Japanese film was again screened commercially in a Korean theater, an honor granted to KITANO Takeshi’s Hana-bi, the Golden Lion winner at the previous year’s Venice International Film Festival.

 

Just two years later, the first modern instance of a mutual collaboration between both industries came about with E J-yong’s sophomore feature Asako In Ruby Shoes, which featured cast members from both countries and was shot in Japan and Korea. Though not a commercial success, the film received a positive critical reception and was applauded for its navigation of the complex identity issues surrounding the tenuous rapprochement of the Far Eastern neighbors.

 

 

 

Projects hatched between America and Korea have appeared sporadically over the years, most recently with Benson LEE’s Sundance teen comedy Seoul Searching, but the most significant examples of exchange occurred in 2007, when Gina KIM made the indie Never Forever, starring Vera Farmiga (fresh from her breakthrough turn in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed the year before) and HA Jung-woo, and produced by brothers LEE Chang-dong and LEE Joon-dong, which debuted at Sundance.

 

Then in summer came the fantasy-action blockbuster D-War, from famed comedian SHIM Hyung-rae. Shot in Los Angeles and starring Robert Forster and Craig Robinson, who was on the cusp of breaking out, the film was the most successful of the year in Korea, drawing 7.86 million viewers (USD 47.49 million) and remains the most popular Korean film at the US box office with USD 10.98 million. However, despite these returns, SHIM’s film, which fared poorly with critics, lost money as its initial USD 30 million budget (by far the most expensive in Korean cinema history) ballooned to USD 75 million. SHIM, who is preparing a D-War sequel with Chinese participation, remained in the US for his next film, the gangster comedy The Last Godfather (2010) starring Harvey Keitel.

 

 

 

Given the French film industry’s well-documented support of arthouse Asian film, it’s hard to pinpoint one French-Korean film of particular note, as the list of their co-productions include works by HONG Sang-soo, JEON Soo-il and more, but perhaps A Brand New Life, also produced by brothers LEE Chang-dong and LEE Joon-dong, can be seen as one of the most interesting instances of cultural exchange between both nations. A 2009 indie drama that debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, French-Korean director Ounie Lecomte uses her own life as a model for the film, which sees a young girl (played by KIM Sae-ron) abandoned by her father at an orphanage.

 

A Brand New Life received the OKF Fund award (worth USD 10,000) from the 11th Pusan Promotion Plan (which ran during the Busan International Film Festival), a prize presented by the Overseas Korean Foundation and designated to a project from a Korean living overseas.

 

 

 

While directors like SHIM Hyung-rae and studios like Redrover (The Nut Job, 2014) have been trying to make a dent in the US market, Hollywood studios of late have also been trying to crack the lucrative Korean market. The first major player to do so was 20th Century Fox, whose subsidiary Fox International Productions (FIP) has been busy activating local productions in promising markets.

 

Their excursion in Korea began with a partial financial investment in NA Hong-jin’s follow-up to The Chaser (2008), the Cannes-invited thriller The Yellow Sea (2010). Following that film’s success they’ve been busy fully financing and distributing Korean made films, which began with 2013’s action film Running Man and has continued with the high concept comedy Slow Video and IM Sang-soo’s action-comedy Intimate Enemies. Unfortunately, these solo efforts have each floundered at the local box office. FIP will be hoping to turn the tables on their tribulations in the market with Gokseong, NA’s new film, which is currently in post-production, while Warner Bros. is also getting into the game after backing KIM Jee-woon’s upcoming Colonial Era action film Secret Agent, which will go into production in October in both Korea and China.

 

 

 

CJ Entertainment was among the first Korean companies to set its roots in the burgeoning Chinese market but after testing the waters with a few co-investments, such as Sophie’s Revenge (2009), the Korean major struck gold with its first fully-financed film for the Chinese market, 2013’s A Wedding Invitation. Directed by OH Ki-hwan and essentially a remake of his earlier film Last Present (2001), the romantic comedy starred BAI Bai he and Eddie PENG and adapted the Korean brand of romance cinema to suite the tastes of modern Chinese filmgoers.

 

The venture became a watershed moment for Korean studio involvement in China, ultimately grossing USD 31.4 million. CJ, which also operates CJ CGV cinema chains on the mainland, has doubled up its efforts in China and has subsequently been involved in a number of local language productions, including their popular Miss Granny remake 20, Once Again (USD 59.25 million).

 

 

Showbox, one of CJ’s main rivals in Korea, has also been looking to their western neighbors for greener box office pastures after making a big push with the ambitious 3D family film Mr. Go, released in the summer of 2013. Budgeted at USD 25 million with 25% participation from Chinese major Huayi Brothers, the film featured proven hit maker KIM Yong-hwa at the helm (Take Off, 2009) and sported the most sophisticated visual effects in Korean cinema history with its motion capture baseball-playing gorilla protagonist Ling Ling.

 

Mr. Go didn’t catch on in Korea and only proved a modest success in China but it did pave the way for VFX outfit Dexter Studios, which was set up specifically for the film, to enter the Chinese market. Korean VFX experts are in high demand in China and Dexter has been leading the charge, receiving credits on major Middle Kingdom blockbusters such as Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon, The Monkey King and The Taking of Tiger Mountain.

 

 

Not content with their market dominance at home and their growing profile in China, CJ Entertainment has also spent the last few years setting up shop in various Southeast Asian countries. They’ve encountered the most success in Vietnam, where they acquired the Megastar theater chain in 2011, making CGV the leading exhibitor in the market, and have also turned to bankrolling local productions, including Three Girls and particularly last year’s Let Hoi Decide, which became the most successful Vietnamese film of all time.

 

CJ is also active in Thailand, having inked co-production deals with Transformation Films and Major Cineplex, and in Indonesia, where it operates the second largest theater chain and recently co-produced Joko ANWAR’s A Copy of My Mind, which will bow at the Venice International Film Festival in the coming weeks.