THIRST

For Korean film fans in 2009, far and away the most anticipated projects at the time were BONG Joon-ho’s Mother and PARK Chan-wook’s Thirst. Both debuted at the Cannes Film Festival but whileMotherwas quickly embraced by viewers around the world, PARK’s film, ...

THE BERLIN FILE

Occasionally in cinema, a group of similar films will emerge outside of any obvious trend. One example of this occurred in the Korean film industry in 2013, when an unusually high number of films featuring North Korea spies emerged. One was a low-budget comedy...

TUNNEL

Before turning his attention to Joseon Era zombies in Netflix’s Kingdom, director KIM Seong-hun scored a late summer hit in 2016 with the disaster film Tunnel (2016). Starring HA Jung-woo, BAE Doo-na and OH Dal-su and released just two years after the sinking ...

WHATCHA WEARIN'

Romantic dramas and romcoms were for many a year one of the top draws in the Korean films industry. With so many easy-on-the-eyes performers and a strong female viewership in Korea, not to mention their relatively low productions costs, they were cost-effectiv...

RIGHT NOW, WRONG THEN

Prolific arthouse filmmaker HONG Sang-soo entered a new phase of his career in 2015 with the release of his 17th film Right Now, Wrong Then (2015). Stylistically it bears many of the trade-marks that HONG had built up over the years, but it netted him his bigg...

IEOH ISLAND

Sometimes a film comes out decades ahead of its time and has to wait for the rest of the world to catch up before it gets its proper due. KIM Ki-young’s thunderous island mystery masterpiece Ieoh Island(1977) is just such a film. A bold work that stitches toge...

THE FLOWER IN HELL

In the wake of the Korean War, the nascent South Korean film industry was beginning to find its feet. Filmmakers such as KIM Ki-young got their start making films with US Army equipment (The Boxes of Death, 1955) and viewership steadily began to rise as the go...

BUNGEE JUMPING OF THEIR OWN

The recent release of the twisty thriller CALL on Netflix is reminding viewers of the popularity of time-shifting romantic dramas such as Ditto (2000) and Il Mare (2000), but phones and letterboxes that could bridge different timelines were far from the only p...

POETRY

By the time his fifth film came into being, LEE Chang-dong was already recognized as one of, if not the, greatest Korean filmmakers. Yet with Poetry (2010) the director managed, in many people’s eyes, to surpass himself. Invited to the competition section of t...

CHRISTMAS IN AUGUST

When looking to pinpoint the beginning of the renaissance of Korean cinema, we often look to blockbusters like Swiri (1999) and Joint Security Area /JSA (2000) or genre works like The Quiet Family (1998) and Whispering Corridors (1998), but just as important w...