Guide 03 Asian cinema independent information
Korean cinema history and how it reached the world
South Korea's film industry grew from strict censorship to global recognition in a few decades. This guide explains the steps and the films that mark them.
Early masters
Korean cinema has a rich history before its recent fame. Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid (1960) is a claustrophobic domestic thriller that later directors, including Bong Joon-ho, have admired. For long stretches of the 1960s and 1970s, filmmakers worked under state censorship, which pushed many stories into allegory or melodrama.
The change of the 1990s
After democratisation the industry opened up. Big companies and young directors began to invest in films with strong plots and polished production, and Shiri (1999), a spy thriller about North and South Korea, showed that a local film could compete with imports at home. Busan International Film Festival, first held in 1996, became a major meeting place for Asian cinema.
Why is Korean cinema so good? Directors worth knowing
Park Chan-wook's Oldboy (2003) won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004, and he won best director at Cannes in 2022 for Decision to Leave. Bong Joon-ho made Memories of Murder (2003), a crime story based on real unsolved cases, and The Host (2006), a monster film with a family at its centre. Lee Chang-dong, a former novelist, made quieter and slower films such as Poetry (2010) and Burning (2018).
Parasite
Bong's Parasite (2019) won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2019. At the Academy Awards in 2020 it won best picture, the first non-English-language film to do so, along with best director, original screenplay and international feature. It is a good example of a film that is both a genre thriller and a pointed look at class.
Korean cinema classics and movies to watch first
Watch Memories of Murder for a taut mystery, Oldboy for stylised revenge (it is violent), and Parasite for the best known recent title. Then try Burning or Decision to Leave if you want something slower and more ambiguous.