Korean cinema was born at a time when the peninsula was still under Japanese control (since 1910). It immediately became a tool of resistance, with communists, especially, seizing on this opportunity. Na Un-gyu directed, in 1926, the first known (but since lost) film, “Arirang.”

And yet, cinema as we know it today was borne of the civil war (1950-1953), a conflict that resulted in the country being split. North Korean cinema exists mostly because of the undeniable passion of the DPRK’s successive leaders for the big screen. It includes some curios in the realistic-socialistic style, but nothing that could be called any kind of a memorable contribution to the seventh art. South Korean cinema, on the other hand …

At the end of the war the Southern lands were a dictatorship, directly subservient to the United States, which ensured their economic growth while, at the same time, the brutal crushing of the opposition. The zealous tools of American policy in an exacerbated cold war context, Korea’s leaders nevertheless wished to display the nationalism from which they claimed themselves. One of its more explicit demonstrations was the establishment of a quota system (made into law in 1967) establishing that for every foreign film distributed in the country, two Korean films had to be released as well. Koreans were able to impose this on the Americans who until then had managed to bend to their will nations less directly subjected to Hollywood’s supremacy. Perhaps it was thought, in Washington as in L.A., that the South Koreans would not be able to keep up with the great Hollywood surge. Major fail on their part.

From the end of the fifties a significant industry was developing that produced, in rapid-fire succession in order to comply with the “twofer” rule, a slate of movies (melodramas, police procedurals, historical adventures, war movies, etc.) that were often called “quota quickies,” predictably second-rate fare. The industry, placed within the narrow ideological confines of the state, was, for the most part, under the economic control of local mafias.

And yet, in almost mechanical fashion, quantity sometimes ended up breeding quality, and the first names of notable filmmakers became known. Thus, the talented Shin Sang-ok (“Flower in Hell,” 1958, “My mother and her guest,” 1961). Shin would become the main player in a madcap adventure that saw him becoming, for a time, an official state filmmaker under Kim Il-sung, without anyone ever finding out whether he had voluntarily crossed into the North or he had been kidnapped, as he would later claim after managing to escape to the U.S. Same, also, for the extraordinary Kim Ki-young, author of a transgressive work pregnant with connotations of both a social and sexual nature, whose masterpiece remains “La Servante” (1960), worthy of a Buñuel. Same, also, for the one who is now considered the greatest filmmaker of his country, Im Kwon-taek, with 104 films under his belt, who readily says that the first seventy films, made within the context of quota quickies, aren’t worth the film they’re printed on, which is an exaggeration, some of those films being far from mediocre. But, they’re no match for the great works of the later years, including “The Hidden Hero” (1980), “Mandala” (1981), “Gilsoddeum” (1985), “Come Come Come Upward” (1989) or “Fly High Run Far” (1991). Starting with “The Pansori Singer” (1993), his talent finally became recognized in the West, especially with “Chunhyangdyun” (2000) and “Painted Fire” (2002), which earned him the Best Director prize at the 2002 Cannes Festival.

Im Kwon-taek’s incredibly rich and diverse filmography on its own covers almost every facet of his country’s political, cultural and religious history. With the supression of democratic forces, culminating in the 1980 Kwangju massacre, protest was accompanied by a semi-clandestine cinema in which committed filmmakers made polemical films calling out the dictatorship. These set a new tone and were enriched by the influence of European and Asian new-wave movements. Most of these films were made anonymously or were the work of filmmakers’ collectives, Jang Sun-woo (“Seoul Jesus,” 1986) and Park Kwang-su (“Chilsu and Mansu,” 1988, among them. By the former, “A Petal” (1996), “Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie” (1998) and “Lies” (1999), a film in which political criticism pairs with transgressions in the areas of good behavior and directing style. As example, Jang entrusted small cameras to the street urchins of “Bad Movie.” By the latter, “Black Republic” (1990), “The Starry Island” (1993) and “The Insurgents’ (1999), he sets the current protest against the long history of revolt movements. Meanwhile, economic development and modernization have landed the country’s economy in the hands of large conglomerates, known as chaebol—the best-known of which, like Samsung and Daewoo, also control the film industry.

From 1987 on, with the democratic transition that would lead, ten years later, to the election of the historical opponent Kim Dae-jung, cinema launched into a new phase. As a counter-power to the political-economic domination of which Seoul was the seat, filmmakers and others in cultural areas, entrepreneurs and politicians would collaborate in Pusan, the great southern port. In 1996, they created an international festival that would rapidly become the largest in Asia. In 1999, the regime set up a new state film agency, the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), in some respects comparable to France’s Centre du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée. Professionals were broadly associated with regulating a sector that was endowed with funds for educational assistance, cultural legacy, and some of the boldest artistic endeavors.

Between 1995 and 2012 this system would go on to sustain cinema’s remarkable scaling, as much for genre movies—including a cornucopia of horror and fantastic movies—as for more unusual explorations. A particular genre that should be added to that—connected to the pain of the division of the Koreas and eliciting a strong reaction from the moviegoing public—is exemplified by such films as “Blood Brothers” (“Kang Je-kyu,” 2004), “Silmido” (Kang Woo-seok, 2003), “Joint Security Area (JSA)” (Park Chan-wook, 2000) and “Welcome to Dongmakgol” (Park Kwang-hyun, 2005).

This scaling is part and parcel of the overall rise of South Korean cultural productions, the most visible of which being K-pop. Increased pressure from Washington ultimately had the better of quotas, reducing them significantly: starting in July of 2006 Korean exhibitors could screen national productions for just seventy-three days out of the year, down from 146. But South Korean cinema had become strong and diverse enough to continue on its successful creative momentum. The chaebol, like Lotte or CJ, dominate commercial distribution while ensuring great stability for the sector. Pusan has become ground zero of South Korean cinema with the construction of a film school, sound stages, a film library and gigantic buildings devoted, among others, to the festival itself. Film studies are undergoing significant development in the universities, magazines are being created and theme-based festivals are flourishing.

At the moment, Korean cinema is dominated on an artistic level by five major authors: Park Chan-wook (“Sympathy For Mister Vengeance,” 2002, “Old Boy,” 2003, “Mademoiselle,” 2016), imposing a Baroque style that resorts willingly to the kind of ultraviolence inspired by comic books. Lee Chang-dong, originally a writer (and, for a time, the country’s culture minister), is a nuanced stylist who hasn’t forgotten his youthful commitment against the dictatorship, as shown in “Green Fish” (1997), “Peppermint Candy” (1999), and the more recent “Burning” (2018).

Mastering the police procedural genre (“Memories of Murder,” 2003) just as much as monster movies (“The Host,” 2006) director Joon-ho Bong is a very well-rounded director whose biggest film to date remains “Mother” (2009), a film that combines melodrama with thriller with touching virtuosity. He now seems to be geared toward an international career (“Snowpiercer,” 2013 and Okja,” 2017).
A long-time favorite at festivals, currently in quasi-retirement, Kim Ki-duk embodies to the extreme some of the traits shared by many other Korean filmmakers. His films—”Address Unknown” (2001), “The Coast Guard” (2002), “Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter … and Spring” (2003), “Tenants” (2004) and “Pieta” (2012)—bear witness to the rawness of physical and verbal contact and power plays between the generations, genders and social classes. This brutality manifests itself in confrontations just as much as it does in romantic relationships; his films narrate, under the guise of intensifying personal clashes, the social and political conflicts that are for the most part inherited from the division and years of dictatorship.

Altogether different is the tone of the opus of the most prolific, and doubtless, most important South Korean filmmaker alive today, Hong Sang-soo. Ever since “Daijiga umule pajinnal” (“The day the pig fell into a well”) in 1996, he has been pursuing a highly original vein of daily conversations, often sopped in alcohol, betrayal, and collusion between men and women, making up a lively fresco pulsating with humor, despair and an attention to internal mechanisms. A practitioner of a cinema that has strong autobiographical tendencies, he is also a great inventor of narrative forms. Occupying a special place, off-the-grid, he’s directed twenty-four feature films in twenty-two years. In France, three of his films were released in 2018 alone (“Alone on the beach at night,” “Claire’s Camera” and “Grass”).

In 2013, the return to power of the hard right-wing, with the election of Park Geun-hye, daughter of former military dictator Park Chung-hee, weakened cinema. The scale of KOFIC’s purview has been reduced and some festivals have disappeared. Even Pusan was threatened after showing a film that blew the lid off the state’s inactions and lies after a ship sank in 2014, taking the lives of three hundred people, essentially high-school students.
The film world’s firm reaction, along with support by film professionals the world over, has helped to keep the festival in place, until the demise of President Park in 2017 (which was followed by her jailing). Pusan remains one of the biggest international film festivals, along with Cannes, Berlin, Venice and Toronto.

In a country that is perhaps the most connected one in the world, box office receipts remain at an all-time high: 1.56 BN dollars in 2017, half of which accounts for local fare, which testifies to both the health and the specificity of this cinema. If there is indeed a South Korean “cultural exception” in the field of cinema, it is more oriented towards local fare than towards a defense of filmmaking in general. South Korea nonetheless has been playing a major role throughout the Far East region.

If, in 2016, we witnessed a rare event, that of the local and international success of a South Korean zombie movie, “the Last Train for Pusan,” directed by Yeon Sang-ho, the local market is especially, there as elsewhere, sustained by franchises (movies that will give way to sequels), such as the fantastic saga inspired by an online animation series (webtoon) “Along With the Gods”, whose two episodes dominated the box office in 2017 and 2018.

The scale of KOFIC’s purview has been reduced and some festivals have disappeared. Even Pusan was threatened after showing a film that blew the lid off the state’s inactions and lies after a ship sank in 2014 that cost the lives of three hundred people, essentially high-school students.

The film world’s firm reaction, along with support by film professionals the world over, has helped to keep the festival in place, until the demise of President Park in 2017 (which was followed by her jailing). Pusan remains one of the biggest international film festivals, along with Cannes, Berlin, Venice and Toronto.

In a country that’s perhaps the most connected one in the world, box office receipts remain at an all-time high: 1.56 BN dollars in 2017, half of which accounts for local fare, that which testifies to both the health and the specificity of this cinema. If there is indeed a South Korean “cultural exception” in the field of cinema, it is more oriented towards local fare than towards a defense of filmmaking in general. South Korea nonetheless has been playing a major role throughout the Far East region.

If, in 2016, we witnessed a rare event, that of the local and international success of a South Korean zombie movie, “the Last Train for Pusan,” directed by Yeon Sang-ho, the local market is especially, there as elsewhere, sustained by franchises (movies that will give way to sequels), such as the fantastic saga inspired by an online animation series (webtoon) “Along With the Gods”, whose two episodes dominated the box office in 2017 and 2018 (this article was originally published in the march issue of Le Monde Diplomatique, translation by A.N., additional edits by S.P.; reprinted with permission).

Jean-Michel Frodon is a film critic and historian. He is associate professor at Sciences Po (Paris) and a professorial fellow at St. Andrews’s University, Scotland. He previously led Les Cahiers du Cinéma (@JMFrodon)

(featured image: “Haryu insaeng” by Im Kwon-Taek; 2004)