New Korean Cinema

After the censorship years, South Korean film changed fast. Independent producers appeared, Hollywood arrived in person, a new international festival opened in Busan, and then a financial crisis pushed the big conglomerates out and left room for a different kind of film industry. By 2000, Korean blockbusters were beating Hollywood at home. This chapter follows that change and ends with a street in Seoul.

What to Call It

This period has no single agreed name. The cinema article's own lead uses "Korean New Wave" for "the late 1990s to the present", but its renaissance section says "New Korean Cinema", and says glossy blockbusters and genre films "began to emerge in the late 1990s and 2000s." I use "New Korean Cinema" for the period and keep "Korean New Wave" as the term the lead gives. It is worth knowing that a different book may use either, and for different years.

The Opening, 1984 to 1993

• The law. The Motion Picture Law of 1984 "allowed independent filmmakers to begin producing films", and a 1986 revision allowed more imports (Chapter 4).
• Im Kwon-taek abroad. The article says his film Mandala (1981) won the Grand Prix at the Hawaii Film Festival, and Gilsoddeum was shown at the 36th Berlin festival (1986). The article on Im gives Gilsoddeum as 1985 in its filmography and 1986 in two award entries, and spells it differently in different places. Kang Soo-yeon won Best Actress at the Venice festival in 1987 for The Surrogate Woman.
• Hollywood arrives. A 1985 agreement lifted restrictions on foreign films, and by 1988 UIP and 20th Century Fox had offices in Korea. Fatal Attraction (September 1988) was the first film directly distributed by a United States company (UIP), and Korean filmmakers protested.
• Holding the line. The government re-enforced a screen quota of at least 146 days a year. Even so, domestic films held only 16 percent of the market in 1993.
• Money from the big firms. Samsung released Kim Ui-seok's Marriage Story (1992), the first film released by a chaebol (a family-run conglomerate).

Seopyeonje, 1993

Seopyeonje, directed by Im Kwon-taek and released on 10 April 1993, is about a family of pansori performers. Pansori is a traditional Korean narrative music form; the film is based on a novel by Yi Chong-jun. Its article says it was "the first South Korean film to draw over one million audiences", and its release section says "in Seoul alone", so the two sentences in one article say slightly different things. The article credits it with helping revive "popular interest in traditional Korean culture and pansori". It was shown at Cannes in 1993 and, per the article, won six Grand Bell Awards (dated 1993 in one table and 2002 in another place). Im used pansori again in Chunhyang (2000) and Beyond the Years (2007).

The article on Im Kwon-taek says he was born on 8 December 1934 and "as of spring 2015, he has directed 102 films". It calls Mandala "the turning point of his career". That article carries a banner saying it needs more citations, so its claims are unverified by the page itself.

Busan, 1996

The Busan International Film Festival article says: "The first festival, held from 13 to 21 September 1996, was also the first international film festival in Korea." It is held in Haeundae District, Busan, and the article calls it "one of the most significant film festivals in Asia" while its infobox says "the most prestigious film festival in Asia", citing Time. A promotion plan connecting new directors to funding followed in 1999. That article gives no reason for the festival's founding, and I do not guess one. The same year, the cinema article says a Film Promotion Law passed in 1996.

Crisis and Opportunity

The 1997 financial crisis (called the "IMF Crisis" in one place and the "Asian financial crisis" in another in the same article) hit the big firms. The cinema article says "many chaebols began to scale back their involvement in the film industry", but that they had already laid "the groundwork for a renaissance". It also notes that representation of women "drastically declined" after the crisis. Domestic films beat Hollywood at the box office in the late 1990s "largely due to screen quota laws", in the article's words.

Two Films That Changed the Market

The cinema article lists other blockbusters of the period: My Sassy Girl (2001), Friend (2001), Silmido (2003) and Taegukgi (2004). It says Silmido and Taegukgi were each "seen by 10 million people domestically", about "one-quarter of South Korea's entire population". The wording is the article's own rounding. Park Chan-wook's Oldboy (2003) won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes festival, and the cinema article reports 52 percent of the 217.3 million admissions of 2015 as going to Korean films, up from 16 percent in 1993.

Chungmuro

Chungmuro is a real avenue of 1.75 km in Seoul's Jung District. The Chungmuro article, a stub, says that since the 1960s it has been known as a street of culture, artists and film, and that although many studios have moved to Gangnam or elsewhere, it "still symbolizes the South Korean film industry" and "continues to be used as a metonym" for it, which it supports with a 2005 magazine review. It adds that Dansungsa, the cinema of Chapter 2, was established in 1907 in the area, known under Japanese rule as Honmachi. So the word that film people use for the whole industry is a street name, and the cinema where the first Korean films opened stood in it. Several of the article's own references are dead links.

Exercises

Next chapter: Television Drama: From Tabletop Sets to the Wave, which turns from film to the small screen and the first Korean dramas to travel abroad.