After the Japanese colonial rule, where the making of Korean movies was prohibited, the Korean film industry was off to a slow start. The Korean film industry was not up to date with the newest technology, and the supply of celluloid film was low. Two movies that represent this era of Korean movies are Choi In-gyu’s Hurrah! For freedom (kor.: 자유만세) in 1946 and Yun Yong-gyu’s A Hometown in Heart (kor.: 마음의 고향) in 1949. During the Korean War filmmaking was mainly limited to war documentaries, so only after the war in 1953 film became popular in Korea.
After the Japanese colonial rule, where the making of Korean movies was prohibited, the Korean film industry was off to a slow start. The Korean film industry was not up to date with the newest technology, and the supply of celluloid film was low. Two movies that represent this era of Korean movies are Choi In-gyu’s Hurrah! For freedom (kor.: 자유만세) in 1946 and Yun Yong-gyu’s A Hometown in Heart (kor.: 마음의 고향) in 1949. During the Korean War filmmaking was mainly limited to war documentaries, so only after the war in 1953 film became popular in Korea.
The 1960s are often referred to as the renaissance of Korean cinema or the era of cinema. Cinema admissions at that time were higher than they are today. When TV started spreading in the 1970s, the number of cinema visitors went down drastically, and with it the number of movies that were made. The recession of the film industry from 1970 deepened in the 1980s, and under the military regime under General Chun Doo-hwan all films were monitored and censored by the Performance Ethics Committee (PEC). This screening process was applied to all domestic and international movies, and since this censorship took 2-3 months, it made releasing films hard at this time.
In 1996 South Korean Constitutional Court declared film censorship to be illegal. With the help of the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), Korean cinema made a comeback and even dominated the domestic market, which is rarely found worldwide. At that time, Blockbusters like Swiri (kor.: 쉬리, 1999), Joint Security Area (공동경비구역, 2000), and Memories of Murder (살인의 추억, 2003) were produced in Korea.
From 2007 to 2008, a crisis hit the Korean film industry, which led to mainly low-budget movies being produced at that time. The movie which is often mentioned for ending the crisis and also being the movie with the until then biggest budget in Korean film history is the 2009 Blockbuster Haeundae (kor.: 해운대) (English title: Tidal wave).
Most movies that were produced in Korea after the film crisis were low-budget movies, but a few high-budget blockbusters were also produced. For example, the 2013 blockbuster Snowpiercer (kor.: 설국열차) was produced mainly in English and even starred famous Hollywood actors like Chris Evans. Snowpiercer was directed by Bong Joon-ho and was his English-language debut.
In 2020, the Korean film Parasite (kor.: 기생충), directed by Bong Joon-ho, won four Oscars. It was the first Korean movie that was nominated for the Oscars and the first non-English language film that has won the top prize for best film.
I will talk more about Korean movies in the future blogs. Please stay tuned.