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Korea’s content industry is vibrant covering feature films and dramas. While these tend to attract the most attention in the local and overseas media, it’s a diverse sector that also includes animation and documentary filmmaking.  Korea’s animation industry is also often overshadowed by Japanese anime and the work of Hollywood’s Pixar Animation Studios. Indeed, films like The First Slam Dunk (2022) and Suzume (2022) have struck a chord at the local box office, while Elemental (2023) also proved popular.  

Nevertheless, locally as seen with the success of Heartsping: Teenieping of Love (2024), Korean animation continues to play a role in an industry that is rapidly evolving. It was one of eleven local commercial titles that broke even last year accruing 1.2 million admissions.

Internationally, Korea is having a growing footprint when it comes to animation made evident with international co-productions such as The Nut Job films and The King of Kings (2025) that was released in the US in April. Netflix’s first Korean-language animation Lost in Starlight (2025) directed by Han Ji-won will drop on the streaming platform later on this year. Furthermore, Joung Yu-mi’s Glasses will be competing in the short film competition in the Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival in May. This is in a year where (at the time of writing) no features have been invited. Joung is a graduate of the Korean Academy of Arts (KAFA) having studied animation directing there.

Documentaries, too, remain prevalent at film festivals. Lee Taewoong’s Korean Dream: The Nama-jinheung Mixtape (2024) and Kim Mooyoung’s The Sense of Violence (2024) were invited to Rotterdam and Berlinale, respectively this year. Streaming, too, has increased accessibility to Korean documentaries with films like Yellow Door: ‘90s Lo-fi Film Club (2023) and there have also been several documentaries on K-pop groups like Blackpink and BTS underscoring the market potential for them.

This week we will track the growth of animated films and documentaries and their potential going forward. We will begin with the international co-productions The Nut Job and The King of Kings (2025) before profiling Bong Joon Ho’s eagerly anticipated animation The Valley (working title). We will then turn to documentaries: The Murmuring (1995), Factory Complex (2014), and Yellow Door: ‘90s Lo-fi Film Club (2023).

The Nut Job (2014)

Upon its release in North America in 2024, Peter Lepeniotis’ The Nut Job (2014) that features voices of Will Arnett, Brendan Frazer, Liam Neeson and Katherine Heigl generated much local media attention because it was produced by local production company Red Rover International. The film centers on a squirrel called Surly who is kicked out of a park and puts together a plan to rob a nut store so he can have enough food for the winter. The character is based on Lepeniotis’ short film Surly Squirrel (2005).

The film was a box office hit popular with children accumulating $120m on a budget of $30m leading to a sequel in 2017 titled The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature (2017). Directed by Cal Brunker with Redrover returning, it was again an international co-production- this time between South Korea, Canada (ToonBox Entertainment), US (Open Road Films) and China (Shanghai Hoongman).

The Korean animated industry has a long history with animations targeting children and families with television series like Doorly the Little Dinosaur in the 1980s and more recently the famous EBS penguin Pororo.  It has spanned numerous series and also films including Pororo, The Racing Adventure (2013) that sold over 900,000 tickets in Korea.

The King of Kings (2025)

While The Nut Job films were helmed by Canadian filmmakers, The King of Kings (2025) was directed and written by Jang Sung-ho – the South Korean CEO of the local effects company MOFAC Studio that were behind the CGI in Haeundae (2009), The Admiral: Roaring Currents (2014) and also participated in the US series Spartacus. MOFAC Studio also produced The King of Kings.

Many of the professionals involved in the film including cinematographer and producer Kim Woo-hyung 1987: When the Day Comes (2017) along with composer Kim Tae-seong are from South Korea while the voices are from leading actors in Hollywood: Oscar Isaac, Kenneth Branagh, Uma Thurman, Mark Hamil and Pierce Brosnan. The film based on Charles Dickens’ The Life of our Lord is a retelling of the life of Jesus Christ. According to the director, it’s a project that was in development for a decade.

Released ahead of the Easter Holiday it has performed strongly in North America setting a box office record for an animated faith-based film earning $19m from 3,200 sites on its opening weekend (April 11-13) beating The Prince of Egypt (1998) ($14.5m). With a cinemascore of A+ it looks to build on its domestic gross of $45m.

It is being distributed by Angel Studios that scored a major financial success with the thriller Sound of Freedom (2023) that accumulated $184m in North America alone in 2023. The success of The King of Kings potentially represents a new chapter for Korean animation in the world’s leading film market.

The Valley (working title)

An animation currently in the works that could be a further turning point for the industry in Korea is Bong Joon Ho’s The Valley that is expected to be released in 2027. Little about the plot is known but it is said to be about the relationship between deep-sea creatures and humans. Bong got the idea after his wife brought home a copy of The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss (2007) that features stunning pictures of ocean creatures taken by Claire Nouvian with experts in oceanography guiding readers through the habitats in the depths of the sea.

The film is already making history becoming the most expensive Korean film to date budgeted at 70 billion won (approximately $50m). It’s being produced by 4^th Creative Party. Co. Ltd, a leading effects studio in Korea The Host (2006), Snowpiercer (2013) and Barunson C&C (Subsidiary of Barunson E&A). The film’s producer and CEO of Barunson C&C  Seo Woo-sik revealed to The Korea Herald in December last year, that Bong – who is known for extensive storyboarding  – drew the entire storyboard by hand.

With films by Bong Joon Ho coming at significant points for the Korean film industry illustrated through Snowpiercer, Okja (2017) and Parasite (2019), The Valley too could take Korean animation into a new era with appetite for animations showing little sign of subsiding in markets across the world as seen with the Chinese record-breaking hit Ne Zha 2 (2025).

The Murmuring (1995)

Turning to Korean documentaries, as the Korea’s independent film industry was taking shape in the 1990s and the 2000s, Korean docs were beginning to be invited to festivals in increasing number - though it would be in the 2010s when documentaries would take a more prominent position both domestically and internationally.

Byun Young-joo’s The Murmuring (1995) is an early example of a documentary that was significant for not only being the first 16mm to be theatrically released in Korea, but it also was invited to Berlinale in the forum section. It was the first film of Byun’s so-called “comfort women” trilogy that focused on survivors of forced sexual labor by the Japanese military during the Second World War. The subsequent film Habitual Sadness (1997) also screened in Berlin while My Own Breathing (2000) was invited to the 1999 Busan International Film Festival.

Byun’s trilogy, therefore, was a breakthrough for Korean documentaries and wider independent Korean cinema. They were also important in shedding light on the trauma experienced by these women that were seeking a formal apology and compensation from the Japanese government.  

Factory Complex (2014)

By the 2010s Korean documentaries were traveling further across the globe as Korean cinema became a common fixture at leading festivals in Europe, North America and elsewhere. Im Heung-soon’s Factory Complex (2014) won the Silver Lion at the 56^th Venice Biennale in 2015 marking the first time a Korean artist had won the award. After premiering at the Busan International Film Festival in the Wide-Angle Documentary Competition it also screened at other festivals including Shanghai International Film and TV Festival and Montreal World Film Festival. It had its US premiere at the Lincoln Center, New York.

Focusing on female workers the film documents the horrific working conditions they experienced during Korea’s industrial boom between the 1960s and 1980s. It also turns to women working in Cambodia facing similar conditions after Korean conglomerates outsourced labor, while it also addresses discrimination faced by migrant workers in Korea and those working in the service industries. The film articulates its argument not through narration but through a compelling mix of interviews, footage and stills.

With Park Kyung-kun’s A Dream of Iron (2014) and Jung Yoon-suk’s Non Fiction Diary (2014) invited to Berlinale in the same year along with Park Moon-chil’s My Place (2014) and Park Chan-kyong’s Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits (2014) securing festival invitations it was an exciting time for Korean documentaries.

A year later, the international co-production Reach for the SKY (2015) premiered at the Busan International Film Festival, which also resonated on the festival circuit. Since then, Korean documentaries have continued to be part of film festivals as demonstrated with The Sense of Violence that was invited to this year’s Berlinale’s Forum.

Yellow Door: ‘90s Lo-fi Film Club (2023)

As well as financing narrative films and limited series, Netflix has also produced documentaries for its platform that gives overseas subscribers access to documentary features with English subtitles such as Choi Jin-seong’s Cyber Hell: Exposing an Internet Horror (2022). K-pop groups in particular, chiefly Blackpink and BTS (and their members) are also the subject of several documentaries on Netflix and Disney Plus including Blackpink: Light up the Sky (2020) and j-hope IN THE BOX (2023).

Netflix was also behind Lee Hyuk-rae’s slickly produced and edited documentary Yellow Door: ‘90s Lo-fi Film Club (2023) that explores cinephilia among students at universities and film schools in Seoul. It includes interviews with members of the Yellow Door film club. Viewers will recognize Bong Joon Ho who would search high and low for films and then analyze them with his peers. Appetite for cinema as the documentary clearly highlights was a defining point of this generation; one that would lead the industry over the coming years ushering in a new era opening it up to the world. The members also discuss Bong’s first film, an animation Looking for Paradise (1992) – a film only they had seen.

Indeed, one of the manifestations of cinephilia in Korea was the birth of Korea’s major film festivals. These emerged in the late 1990s led by the Busan International Film Festival, which is where the film premiered ahead of its release on Netflix in October 2023. It captured a complex position the industry currently finds itself in where streaming platforms led by Netflix present the industry of Korean documentaries with an opportunity given Netflix’s wide global reach and significant financial resources. But Netflix as a streaming platform is often viewed as a disrupter to the established ecosystem of exhibition and the traditional exclusivity window, which is where documentaries have also thrived.

Written by Jason Bechervaise

Edited by kofic