It’s less than two decades since the turn of the century, but if we look at how far Korean cinema has come today, the 20th century seems like ancient history. Changes in the domestic film industry have been immense in the 21st century. And yet, Korea has still not marked out its own territory on the world’s movie map.

The red carpet event for the VIP screening of “Train to Busan,” held on July 18, 2016 at the Yeongdeungpo Time Square, in Seoul, attracts a huge crowd. This gala event for the opening of a Korean disaster blockbuster shows a slice of Korea's film industry of the 21st century.

In Korea, up until the 1980s it was not hip to go see Korean movies. For a long time, most Koreans tended to dismiss domestic productions for being down-market tearjerkers. In the 1960s, Korean movies were diverse and distinctive in their own way, but over the next 20 years the industry’s development was hampered by restrictions and censorship under dictatorial regimes, as well as the fast growing popularity of television. Political and social changes thereafter sparked a renaissance in Korean cinema in the mid-1990s. New movements were led by intelligent, and intrepid, young producers and ambitious directors with an artistic eye. Korean movies achieved huge advances in terms of artistry and commercial appeal.
International perceptions began to change as well. In the mid-1990s, a Korean studying film in Paris might well have been asked, “Do you make movies in Korea?” Except for a handful of film experts, very few foreign film enthusiasts had even seen a Korean production. But things changed markedly entering the 21st century. Korean works were invited to prestigious international film festivals and won major awards. And a new generation of directors who had debuted in the latter half of the 1990s, such as Hong Sang-soo, Kim Ki-duk, Park Chan-wook, and Bong Joon-ho, attracted a sizeable following among overseas audiences.

Im Kwon-taek’s “Chunhyang” (2000) is the first Korean movie ever selected for the main competition section of the Cannes Film Festival.

Rapid Development
Few countries have seen such rapid growth of their film industry as Korea. The number of movie tickets sold exploded from 61.69 million in 2000 to 217.3 million in 2015, while the number of domestic productions jumped more than fourfold, from 57 to 232, and the number of screens surged from 720 to 2,424 during the same period. Box office revenues hit 2.11 trillion won (about $1.83 billion) in 2015, compared to 1.52 trillion won in 2005. (No accurate box office data prior to 2005 is available.) Still, this is nothing compared to China’s film market. After recording an unbelievable 64.3 percent growth rate in 2010, China’s film industry has continued to surge 30 percent per year. And with the number of movies viewed per capita standing at a mere 0.92 in 2015, robust growth is forecast in the years ahead. Except for China, however, Korea has experienced more rapid expansion of its film industry than almost any other country.
The most remarkable growth is found in the number of movies viewed per capita. In 2000, each Korean saw an average of 1.3 movies. This figure more than doubled to 2.95 in 2005, and then reached 4.17 in 2013, and 4.22 in 2015. These numbers are especially noteworthy compared to the corresponding figures for 2013: 4.0 in the United States, 3.14 in France, 2.61 in the UK, 1.59 in Germany, and 1.22 in Japan. Even in India, which produces more movies than any other country in the world (1,602 titles in 2013), the per capita figure stood at 1.55.

A scene from Lee Chang-dong's “Oasis” (2002), the love story of a woman with cerebral palsy and a social misfit.

Choi Min-sik acts as the genius artist Jang Seung-eop of the late 19th-century Joseon Dynasty in “Painted Fire” (2002), director Im Kwon-taek’s 98th feature film.

So, what is the driving force behind these amazing numbers? One possible answer is the government’s film promotion policies. Under a strict screen quota system, each movie screen must show local movies for at least 73 days a year. Directors also receive support from various sources, including the Korean Film Council, regional film committees, local governments, and international film festivals. Once again, aside from China, which imposes strict restrictions on the import of foreign movies, Korea provides the highest level of support for promotion of domestic films.
Thanks to a variety of support measures, the box office has come to be dominated by Korean productions. In 2013, domestic titles held a market share of 59.7 percent and have since continued to account for around half the market, standing at 50.1 percent in 2014 and 52.0 percent in 2015. Aside from the United States and India, where domestic films captured market shares of 94.6 percent and 94.0 percent respectively in 2013, Korea is a rare country where local titles are more popular than American movies, along with China (58.6 percent) and Japan (60.6 percent). Corresponding figures were 33.8 percent in France and 22.1 percent in the UK (including co-productions with other countries).
Other factors contributing to expansion of the Korean film market include the lifting of censorship and the emergence of a growing number of talented young directors. Of course, the market has now clearly entered a new phase. As thresholds are reached in the number of movies viewed per capita and the number of available screens, and as film promotion policies run their course, growth patterns are bound to change in the future.

A scene from “The Face Reader” (2013), directed by Han Jae-rim. Kim Hye-soo acts as Yeonhong, a seductive entertainer and face reader.

An iconic scene from “The Thieves” (2012), directed by Choi Dong-hoon, a comic action thriller featuring 10 thieves chasing one diamond.

State of Korean Cinema
In 2000 Im Kwon-taek’s “Chunhyang” became the first Korean film selected for the official competition section of the Cannes Film Festival since the festival’s inauguration in 1946, marking a breakthrough for Korean cinema. While a nomination for Cannes’ Palme d’Or is by no means the ultimate standard, it can be said that heretofore Korean productions simply did not exist on the world’s movie map, charted out by Western film professionals and critics. “The Oxford History of World Cinema” (Oxford University Press), published in 1966, does not mention a single Korean movie; in other film-related publications Korea was invisible as well.

But things started to change at the turn of the century. In 2002, Im Kwon-taek won the Best Director Award at Cannes for “Painted Fire.” In 2004, Park Chan-wook won the Grand Prix for “Oldboy” and in 2009 the Jury Prize for “Thirst.” Meanwhile, in 2007 Jeon Do-yeon won the Best Actress Award for her role in Lee Chang-dong’s “Secret Sunshine”; the director himself won the Best Screenplay Award in 2010 for “Poetry.” Three of Hong Sang-soo’s works and two of Lim Sang-soo’s works were selected for the main competition at Cannes, though they failed to receive any prize.

At the 2002 Venice Film Festival, Lee Chang-dong’s “Oasis” won the Special Director’s Award and lead actress Moon So-ri won the New Actress Award. Kim Kiduk earned the Best Director Award for “Samaritan Girl” in 2004 at the Berlin Film Festival, and for “3-Iron” at the Venice Film Festival the same year. He also captured the Golden Lion for best movie at the 2012 Venice Film Festival for “Pieta.”
With these notable achievements over the past 10 years or so, Korean cinema has been earning high acclaim from international audiences in the 21st century. And yet, we can’t really say Korea has carved out a prominent position for itself on the world’s movie scene. Every 10 years the British film magazine Sight & Sound releases a list of “The Greatest Films of All Time,” based on a survey of film critics and directors from around the world. For the 2012 list, no Korean film made it into the top 100. Of course, this was not unexpected. But of the six Asian films that have made the annual top ten lists since 2000, none are Korean.
There’s no real need to take these lists too seriously. They will continue to change in the future, and many movies, as always, will come to receive greater acclaim in the days ahead, rather than at the present. But Korea’s absence from these lists seems to indicate that many film experts do not regard Korean works to be at the vanguard of film aesthetics.
Here, we need to reflect on the designation “Korean movie.” It contains a subtle dualism, as do the tags “Indian movie” or “British movie.” That is, it’s not clear whether these labels simply denote country of origin or express some greater common point of reference. Attempts to generalize the character of movies originating from a particular region can preconceptions that lead people to overlook the unique strengths of individual films. Nevertheless, an indefinable regional color is ingrained, sometimes indelibly, in movies sharing a common origin. Then, what is it that makes Korean movies Korean? In other words, what regional character can be found in the creations of filmmakers such as Hong Sang-soo, Bong Joon-ho, and Lee Chang-dong, as well as those of Park Chan-wook and Kim Ki-duk?

Actor Song Kang-ho and actress Kim Ok-bin in a scene from “Thirst” (2009), a thriller featuring a priest turned vampire, directed by Park Chan-wook.

There is no simple answer to this question because their movies actually have very little in common. The works of Hong Sang-soo and Kim Ki-duk may belong to a branch of European modernism, while those of Park Chanwook and Bong Joon-ho (and occasionally Kim Ki-duk) can be seen as aesthetic variations of “Asian extreme.” In other words, Korean cinema is a conglomeration of diverse film types that cannot be defined by any single regional character, an aspect that makes Korea’s location on the world’s movie map unclear.

1	Hwang Jung-min acts as a shaman in “The Wailing” (2016), directed by Na Hong-jin, set in a rural village where a series of mysterious killings take place.
2	A scene from “The High Rollers” (2006), directed by Choi Dong-hoon, featuring a band of underground gamblers.
3	A scene from “King and the Clown” (2005), directed by Lee Joonik, which claimed to be the “first royal court burlesque” in Korean film history.

Directors with Diverse Leanings
Korean cinema today is so diverse that it cannot be summed up in a few general characteristics. For the sake of discussion, they can be divided into four broad categories.
The first category can be called “national realism.” Without question, the leader here is Im Kwon-taek. This giant, who has long been the poster boy of Korean cinema, concentrated on mainstream fare in his youth, but from the mid-1970s he struggled to bring a new aesthetic to “national cinema.” He released his 102nd movie, “Revivre,” in 2012. Another legitimate member of this group is Lee Changdong, a moralist who stands on the opposite side of inveterate pleasure-seeking in film. He has been inactive since his release of “Poetry” in 2010. Im Sang-soo, who directed “The Housemaid” (2010) and “The Taste of Money” (2012), also belongs here, though he is much more of a free spirit. These directors have focused on Korea’s regional characteristics in their depictions of historical incidents and reallife absurdities. Also tying them together is the priority placed on theme over style and form. An upcoming younger-generation director who is willing to take on this type of national cinema has yet to appear.

Jun Ji-hyun plays a lead role in “Assassination” (2015), directed by Choi Dong-hoon. Critics praised it as the first Korean movie to feature a woman at the center of the resistance movement against Japanese colonial rule.

The second category is “modernism.” Hong Sang-soo and Kim Ki-duk can be placed in this category but their differences are greater than their similarities. Through innovation of form, Hong Sang-soo seeks to a new sense of reality, whereas Kim Ki-duk is engrossed with the notion of salvation through physical suffering. A handful of younger directors are making films that could be seen in this light, but none of them is widely known yet.
The third category is “genre innovation.” Directors who belong here are those who have earned a measure of popular and critical acclaim, including Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, Kim Jee-woon, and Ryoo seung-wan. With a fanboy background, they are all captivated by B-grade movies, or genre movies. Their own mixed-genre creations are based on thrillers or action movies with a smattering of comedy and horror and other elements thrown in. Though mass-audience-friendly, these films at times also reveal aspects of the stubborn stylist. In this category as well, the directors show noticeable differences from one another. Park Chan-wook reinterprets classical tragedies as genre movies while Bong Joon-ho fuses regional politics with genre film dynamics. Ryoo Seung-wan and Kim Jee-woon never abandon fanboy tendencies even when tackling relevant issues. Of these genre innovation films, Bong Joon-ho’s “The Host” (2006) and Ryoo Seungwan’s “The Berlin File” (2015) attracted over 10 million viewers each and have come to serve as a model for many of their fellow filmmakers. Among them is Na Hong-jin who has come to notice for “The Chaser” (2008), “The Yellow Sea” (2010), and most recently “The Wailing” (2016).
The fourth category is mainstream movies, under which the greatest number of directors fall. For some time, the leader was Kang Woo-suk, but from the mid-2000s he has been replaced by such figures as Choi Dong-hoon and Youn Je-kyun. Indeed, Choi Dong-hoon already has two 10-million-viewer mega-hits under his belt, and all five of his films, from his 2004 debut work “The Big Swindle” to “Assassination” in 2015, have enjoyed commercial success.
It is hard to say that any one category speaks for Korean cinema better than the others. The very diversity generated by these directors is shaping the dizzying yet dynamic face of Korean cinema.