It’s a global world, and you are a global person. You know where the art house cinema is. You’ve been to Europe, or Europe’s identical twin: Canada. You order Chinese food and drink Mexican tequila regularly. And you even remember a bit of that high school romance language you had to take four years of. You are global.
Maybe you are more than global. Maybe you’ve actually been to that art house cinema to see what Pan’s Labyrinth was all about. Maybe you even used that rusty French on your last trip to Paris. And maybe you can instantly tell the difference between Thai, Chinese, Japanese, and Malaysian dishes. You are more than global; you are worldly.
Well, even if you’re global, even if you’re worldly, you aren’t watching Korean cinema. Now don’t feel left out; truth is, pretty much no one but Koreans are watching Korean cinema. That’s because their domestic box office has a quota system in place and their international trade policies have bad luck. But before I go into the nuances of Korea’s intense industry, let me start with world cinema as a whole, otherwise known as How Hollywood Looks to the Outside World.
From the medium’s get-go, we Yankees took over the game. Even in the early days of Edison vs. Lumiere, when Edison completely tanked and it looked like the Lumiere brothers were going to take the cake, the silver screen still drew the spotlight stateside. I don’t know if France has ever forgiven D.W. Griffith for stealing the thunder their brilliant invention caused at its inception, but ever since even they can’t deny that Hollywood is THE dominant force in the film world. Now I’m taking two cinema classes in a foreign country of whose language I can actually use nuance and sarcasm in, and have been given an incredible insight into how Hollywood is perceived by the outside. In short, I am the resident Hollywood expert because of my accent, when there are a number of students of every nationality who have seen more summer blockbusters than I. Hollywood really is everywhere. It’s become synonymous with film as a whole.
Now I could make a number of conjectures about how this notion has affected the American psyche and foreign relations — while it would be naïve to expect international waters to host every comfort of home, it must be noted that in the case of American comforts, pretty much every international water does host our establishments, from McDonald’s to Visa, and both Hollywood and the American music industry are no exceptions — but instead I’m going to put it in perspective. It is said that there are three countries in which the domestic industry overtakes the international one. Only three countries in the entire world where the local Blockbuster has an overwhelming number more natively-produced films than any other. Which three countries?
Well, the United States is obviously first on the list, though to my dismay it is often assumed that Hollywood is our national cinema, which is not exactly the case, and while I am proud of what Hollywood has given the world, I also grow frustrated that it is always seen as an omnipotent monolith, a domineering aunt you can’t get rid of but succumb to anyway, when America has so many great other niches outside of Hollywood that are overlooked.
The second on the list is, unsurprisingly, India and her Bollywood media. If you underestimated the power of one billion people interested in the lifestyles of the rich and the famous, you wouldn’t be alone. After all, Bollywood cinema is unassuming as a powerful force; it is admittedly difficult to take movies made in Ed Wood haste on drive-in budgets with breakaway musical numbers seriously, but while Hollywood is criticised for its happy endings, Bollywood is the epitome of riding off into the sunset. It’s an entire country interested in fantasy, escapist cinema, a country that is a good deal larger and more supportive of its films than Australia or Canada or Russia, which, while larger in size than India, are a mere 2% the population.
So what’s third? Hong Kong? China? England? Japan? Nope, as you’ve probably surmised from my opening paragraphs, it’s South Korea. Unlike Hong Kong, China, Japan, and England, Korea has been (to put it politely) xenophobic for a good deal longer and on (to put it even more politely) less than friendly terms with other countries to a larger degree in recent decades. Add to that a…er…restrictive government and you get a set of cineplexes that offer home brew romcoms, domestically-specific action flicks, and a series of heart-wrenching tragedies adapted from national literature. And the audiences flock in droves.
Okay, I recognise that just because a cinema is popular doesn’t mean you should fall for it immediately. But Korean Cinema is well worth taking a gander at. I give you ten excuses as to why you should start threatening to your local video shop that you’ll switch to Netflix if they don’t start wising up (or ten reasons why you actually should switch to Netflix), ten quips to make you sound like an expert at a cocktail party, ten new vocabulary words you can’t even pronounce and ten fresh stars you’ve never heard of, and most of all ten reasons you should start loving Korean film. Right now. And if that wasn’t enough, ten films to get you started on the road to your newfound favourite film genre.
1. The number one reason you should not skip from Japan directly to China is that Korean film is underestimated. Do not be one of those people who overlooks such a strong national cinema, which through modest means in the last two decades can produce a similar volume to Hollywood films that are just as vehemently attended, within their home country at least. And don’t ignore the fact that the cinema can contend with the production values and narrative arc of not only Hollywood but England, France, and Italy. Now I’m not saying Korean film has it’s own style yet, at least nothing to rival Brit Grit Social Realism or French New Wave, or Italian Neo-Realism, but they’ve glossed over the whole grassroots establishment and gone directly to world recognition, collecting $200,000,000 along the way in profits. Why is this impressive? Because they’re the first Asian country to do it in such a short time. In short, Korean cinema isn’t as old as Hong Kong’s, or as well established as Japan’s, but it’s a whole lot faster. And while it may not seem like it, Korean films have to constantly assert their Koreanness while still trying to be mindful of their confusing identity. Case in point: Le Grande Chef is well-made, well-paced, mindful of foreign cinematic influences, but still distinctly Korean. It’s about Korean cooking and Japanese reconciliation in a Chinese culinary world. Watch it and you too will discover just how how much overlooking you’ve been doing not just on Korea’s film industry, but on their culture as well.
Before I continue, I should explain now that there are three main types of genuine South Korean films you can rent (i.e., not horror film attempts at imitating the Japanese speciality). The first is the tear jerker. These stories are meant to play your heartstrings like a cello on a sinking ship, but while the narrative may be hokey beyond your ability to suspend disbelief, the method in which Korean films strike that final chord before the last splash is more than just admirable. The time they take to develop the characters, the motifs they invariably plant, the decisively unhappy endings but only after two-hours worth of close calls; the South Koreans know how to cry. And while movies that offer the watery-eye-inducing pretense at the onset (Sad Movie anyone?) abound in the South Korean market, there are a fair few films that you aren’t expecting to wrench your heart, even if it was painfully obvious the love interest was going to die since that scene halfway through.
2. But beyond just nailing the tear-jerker genre (among others) that someone else created, let’s not forget that Korean movies did it first in oh so many cases. Thought Frequency was a truly original concept? I give you the ham-radio drama of Ditto. Convinced 2007’s Juno was the most unique film written in ages? Try 2005’s Jenny, Juno, which also explored the pregnancy of a witty but unwed fifteen-year-old girl and her awkward boyfriend with good intentions long before Ellen Page made a name for herself. Excited about Jesse Bradford’s new film, My Sassy Girl? It’s a remake of the quintessential and most famous South Korean teen flick of the same name. What about Sarah Michelle Gellar’s newest, Possession?. Yup, a remake too from the 2002 South Korean thriller Possession/Addiction. Case in point: The Lakehouse was an abject failure, while the original Korean version five years prior, Il Mare, is not only better narratively, but breathtaking beautifully. The cross-cut cooking scenes will make you pine for your own time-travel experience in a way that Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves never could.
3. It’s not just Il Mare that is beautiful enough to make you cry. Korean films look like Hollywood films, with their beautiful stars, incredibly high production values, elabourate sets, and impeccable costuming. This may seem like a trivial thing; after all, global, worldly audiences such as yourself surely can overcome the shortcomings of low-quality visuals, but it cannot be denied that it isn’t just us that are used to Hollywood glitz and glamour. The world is conditioned to associate cinema with Hollywood gloss. When we see the hair and the makeup and the big names and the great lighting, it signals to us “these people know what they’re doing.” Let me assure you, the Koreans know what they’re dong. Case in point: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring looks akin to The Last Samurai only with no Tom Cruise. As you can imagine, the seasonality of the land plays a huge role in the film, which centres only on one location: that of a Buddhist hovel in a valley. If I tried to explain the premise to you, you’d think it was terribly slow and never go and watch it, but any preamble I give won’t do justice to the film’s real purpose: to showcase nature and beauty in Korea’s passing of ages.
4. So they’re original and beautiful, and they can make you blubber like a baby. But Korean movies can also make you grip the edge of your seat, flinch and grab your neighbour’s hand, or provide the perfect backdrop for the romantic date of your dreams. Another huge plus for Korean cinema is the incredible range provided by Korean movies. Oh yes they’ve got the tear-jerker down pad, but they’ve also mastered horror and suspense, rewritten the book on epic war dramas, and vaulted the “first love” romcom/chick flick to a whole new status. You’re certain to find your favourite film genre in Korean cinema. While Hollywood is associated almost exclusively with high-concept filmmaking, and Hong Kong with kung-fu flicks, South Korea is not tied down by such convention and within the industry a remarkably diverse group of movies are produced. Unlike Japan, which evokes the lonely stoic film, or India, which conjures over-the-top musicals, Korea reminds us of…well…everything. From this tiny country you’ll find equally well-developed genres of horror, romantic comedy, family melodrama, action blockbuster, war saga, art house films, romance melodrama, and science fiction. Strokes of Fire sits on the shelf right next to Project Makeover and across from Woman on the Beach. Case in point: Peppermint Candy shows that an industry with a bit of a reputation for fluffy teen movies (e.g., My Boyfriend Is Type B, A Millionaire’s First Love and My Girl and I) can take the same sets of events and circumstances and also produce a moving, tragic, beautiful film in a completely different vein. You’ll be astounded.
Aside from the heart-wrencher, the second type of Korean film you’ll come across is the war blockbuster. Rife with non-stop action and military themes, these films are meant to blow your mind, not just with all the shoot ‘em up explosions and insane car chases, but also with the twisty and occasionally shocking stories and characters you are actually invested in. Imagine Infernal Affairs (aka: The Departed) all the time. When you tire of the CIA-like inquisitions and wartime setting, remember that South Korea is always thinking of war. It’s fresh on the culture’s memory, as they have not only fought wars on their own soil, but among their own political turmoil also had their country split down the middle, and are constantly afraid someone’s about to blow them up.
5. Watching Korean movies will help you get a dose of cultural insight into the whole affair. If, like me, you aren’t living anywhere near Korea, you’ll find it hard to really understand the South Korean situation without sounding condescending or giving up your current citizenship. But, beyond just the obvious war films, there’s an undercurrent to the Korean industry that’s altogether too unusual to ignore. By watching Korean movies not only will you gain a respect for the politics and history and traditions of the culture (as you would to some degree by watching any national cinema), but you’ll come to see how the culture looks upon its own politics and history and traditions, which given the privileged western view is normally impossible to ascertain. Current affairs issues that most South Koreans are reluctant to talk about come to the surface in their films; topics like suicide and bullying and their previous political regimes are open for debate. Whether it’s a drastically different school system, family structure, or institution of marriage, Korean films make it easy to see more to the culture than just Kimchi and BBQ. Case in point: JSA: Joint Security Area asks whether or not the gap between North and South Korean can be bridged, and what part other countries have to play, even alleged neutrals like Switzerland and Sweden. Even if it does grow a little dramatic towards the end, it gives you a feel for why reunification won’t be as easy in Korea as it was in Germany (if you could call that easy).
6. You have to hand it to them, Korean films are never boring, either. No really. I don’t know if it’s the industry’s desperate tendency to underdevelop screenwriting, or the fear that audience attention span is likened to that of a beta fish, or the need to compete with both Korea’s degeneration of older generations and their traditions as well as the array of omnipresent modern conveniences (like insanely fast internet, wicked mobile phones, and online gaming communities), but with the exception of Railroads, pretty much every Korean film I’ve seen is thoroughly entertaining. I used to joke that Korean films employed the theme of time travel (which shows up alarmingly often) just to keep their movies from getting too boring or too predictable. Sure you’d expect Oldboy to be mind-blowing the whole way through, but you wouldn’t expect a film like The Classic to keep your interest the entire time, but it does. I pin it the fact that you don’t really know what to expect, even if you know what kind of movie you’re getting into. Case in point: Memories of Murder, a film about a small town serial killer and the futility of 1980s police force in a murder mystery that is anything but cliché. It isn’t strictly a detective crime thriller, but when the screen isn’t spewing mystery action at you, it’s cracking you up. Unusual, but far from boring.
7. Another reason to blow the dust off your DVD player is that Korea is legitimate, no longer just a helpless entity, even if South Korea is convinced North Korea is going to blow them all into oblivion and turn them into communists (their films reveal numerous close calls, Northern attempts that our stout and loyal undercover Southern operatives manage to sabotage), while the U.N. is in a playground standoff with the country and the U.S. can’t stop writing about Kim Jung-Il’s harem. But I’m talking about domination of a different sort. Back in the ’80s Korea was just one of those Asian Tiger countries with an economic boom quietly civilised and as well developed as its neighbours, yet even now that the bubble’s burst, Korea registers more on the world radar than it ever did back in the day. Politically it may have been a huge point of contention in the ’50s, but culturally it was just another place of atrocity, another Vietnam, another Cambodia. Slowly though, Korea has culturally bucked off those ideas, relinquishing the image of the farmer in the rice patty and placed itself among the technologically and economically elite, redefining its national identity in the process. And Korea will no longer lie by quietly. Case in point: Shiri is the new embodiment of the age old Korean struggle. The film has intrigue, thrill, action, romance, and one hell of an ending. Thus it is fitting that Shiri broke all box office records at the time of its release. If South Korea is to take its place among the pantheon of highly relevant countries and cultures, shouldn’t you at least be well versed?
By this point down the list you have a number of films to name-drop regarding the tear-jerker and the wartime-action movie. The last main type of Korean film out there is, not surprisingly, the intense teen romance-cum-melodrama. It starts as a lighthearted romantic comedy, a fun summer flick if you will, and inevitably some external pressure compacts the fluff into something substantial, and the comedy becomes full on romantic melodrama. I should mention the idea of the “first love” here, an elusive concept endlessly called upon in Korean cinema. It is believed, more or less, that in every man, woman, and coming-of-age-child’s heart his or her first love, and their first romantic entangle will remain forever. Many a South Korean film is made on this premise, with feelings for the high-school sweetheart either developed and retained for life even when circumstances are far from fortuitous, or these feelings resurged mutually until death forces one to move on. In Korea, the first love is sacred. And it usually starts out innocently and comically, but, unlike the American coming of age movie, it is eventually seen as a serious and real thing. Rather than youthfulness displayed in the fickle in and out of love romantic antics, love is always everlasting and youth is personified in the comedy of these Korean films. It’s the best of both worlds really, and while the comedy certainly isn’t in tune with the Hollywood or ’70s British meanings of the word, South Korean comedies are undeniably worth a laugh.
8. Perhaps the secret weapon of South Korean cinema is that the jokes translate. I often find myself confused with foreign films, especially if there are parallel stories, jumps in time, or actors that look alike. It’s even worse when you’re trying to watch a foreign movie with subtle humour. 2 Days in Paris has a few distinctly French jokes, while Little Britain is only entertaining if you are privy to the infamous British humour. No sweat with Korean movies. All the jokes translate well, even without subtitles. So you aren’t limited by your lackluster knowledge of hangul and are free to the entire extensive library of comedies coming out of South Korea. Moreover, you’ll find comedy is used unusually often, even in melodramatic films to provide contrast. You won’t be lost in any of it. Case in point: My Sassy Girl is perhaps Korea’s most famous romantic comedy. The poor protagonist is mistakenly identified as the boyfriend of a drunk girl on the subway, and you will laugh along with the comedy that ensues; every pratfall will be yours to treasure and you’ll feel the full effect of every embarrassing and awkward situation presented.
9. The industry is young, really young, and I don’t mean the actors. I mean Seoul especially is becoming an epicentre of youth culture and the filmmakers in South Korea are not the sixty-five-year-old fogies that make up a “golden era” like Hollywood’s power players. The identity of Korea’s national cinema has yet to be formed, so what results is a series of highly developed films with highly experimental natures. There aren’t a lot of big name directors and writers out there, so the entire industry has a sort of “anything goes” feel to it, an attitude that is reinforced in the cinema’s products. Case in point: House Husband isn’t just a good old fashioned disguise comedy about family values and the love of your life, it’s about gender equality/disparity, relationship stereotypes, filial pressure, and critique of modern values. It’s an entertaining film about a stay at home dad, but while the premise is offhand, you cannot forget that such a film’s production (and indeed success) is possible because it is a product of a young industry staffed by young individuals and observed a young audience.
10. And perhaps the most overlooked reason to move to Seoul right now just for the cinema choices, you haven’t heard this one before… Let’s talk about formula. Like Hollywood filmmakers, South Korean filmmakers know there’s a formula. They see a movie succeed and they want to duplicate that kind of success. But unlike Hollywood filmmakers, South Korean filmmakers aren’t out of ideas yet, and, though they understand there can only be so many ways to end a romantic entanglement, thy never try to make the same movie again (i.e., aren’t Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, and Must Love Dogs the same movie?). Moreover, Korean films are incredibly innovative. They present new takes on a genre you thought you knew to the letter. And while you may know how it’s going to end, you never know how they’re going to get there. Case in point: The Young Bride might seem formulaic — our two lovers hate one another at first and eventually through a series of events grow to love one another — it’s rare that one of them should be underage, and rarer still that they should be married at the start of the film rather than end. So I say again, you haven’t heard this one before.
So there you have it. Ten reasons to start taking an interest in yet another east Asian export. Sure Korean films will never be released to American movie theatres unless the directors hand deliver the reels themselves, but because the movie-going, pop-obsessed, disposable income-earning South Korean population will keep seeing these films, and because the government isn’t about to abolish the 80% rule anytime soon, you can bet that more Korean films will be made, and that they’re only going to get better as their industry matures. In filmic terms, South Korea is the place to be. It’s the most exciting, the sexiest, and, in my opinion, the best developing industry. It’s got great potential. More than potential. It’s got great start value. And now you’re in on it too.
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