DIVArgues that although the last two decades of Korean history were a period of progress in political democratization, the country refused to part from a "masculine point of view" which is also mirrored in Korean cinema./div

“[T]his fine book . . . . enlarges our vision of one of the great national cinematic flowerings of the last decade.”—Martin Scorsese, from the foreword In the late 1990s, South Korean film and other cultural products, broadly known as hallyu (Korean wave), gained unprecedented international popularity. Korean films earned an all-time high of $60.3 million in Japan in 2005, and they outperformed their Hollywood competitors at Korean box offices. In Virtual Hallyu, Kyung Hyun Kim reflects on the precariousness of Korean cinema’s success over the past decade. Arguing that state film policies and socioeconomic factors cannot fully explain cinema’s true potentiality, Kim draws on Deleuze’s concept of the virtual—according to which past and present and truth and falsehood coexist—to analyze the temporal anxieties and cinematic ironies embedded in screen figures such as a made-in-the-USA aquatic monster (The Host), a postmodern Chosun-era wizard (Jeon Woo-chi), a schizo man-child (Oasis), a weepy North Korean terrorist (Typhoon), a salary man turned vengeful fighting machine (Oldboy), and a sick nationalist (the repatriated colonial-era film Spring of Korean Peninsula). Kim maintains that the full significance of hallyu can only be understood by exposing the implicit and explicit ideologies of protonationalism and capitalism that, along with Korea’s ambiguous post-democratization and neoliberalism, are etched against the celluloid surfaces.

New Korean Cinema charts the dramatic transformation of South Korea's film industry from the democratization movement of the late 1980s to the 2000s new generation of directors. The author considers such issues as government censorship, the market's embrace of Hollywood films, and the social changes which led to the diversification and surprising commercial strength of contemporary Korean films. Directors such as Hong Sang-soo, Kim Ki-duk, Park Chan-wook, and Bong Joon-ho are studied within their historical context together with a range of films including Sopyonje (1993), Peppermint Candy (1999), Oldboy (2003), and The Host (2006).

This book compares production and consumption of Asian horror cinemas in different national contexts and their multidirectional dialogues with Hollywood and neighboring Asian cultures. Individual essays highlight common themes including technology, digital media, adolescent audience sensibilities, transnational co-productions, pan-Asian marketing techniques, and variations on good vs. evil evident in many Asian horror films. Contributors include Kevin Heffernan, Adam Knee, Chi-Yun Shin, Chika Kinoshita, Robert Cagle, Emilie Yeh Yueh-yu, Neda Ng Hei-tung, Hyun-suk Seo, Kyung Hyun Kim, and Robert Hyland.

Hollywood films may dominate the world’s box offices today, but in Korea it’s the homegrown product that has been capturing the public’s attention. Korean films industry today and look inside of directors and stars. Korean film directors were getting major press at the world’s different film festivals. Exports were booming, and the films that reached overseas audiences found a warm reception there Contents Prologue Chapter One A Look Inside Korean Cinema The Korean Film Industry Today A Foreign Perspective Fostering New Talent Chapter Two Going Global Hallyu and Korean Film Working Internationally: Co-Productions Acclaimed Directors K-Movie Stars Chapter Three How Korean Film Got Here The Early Years (1920–1939) Golden Age: The 1960s and the ‘Literary Film’ Out of the Quicksand (1970–1989) Renaissance: 'Planned Movies' and Government Support (1990 to today) Chapter Four Film Festivals Busan International Film Festival Jeonju International Film Festival Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival International Women’s Film Festival in Seoul Jecheon International Music & Film Festival Other Festivals Chapter Five Ten Korean Films with Overseas Followings Appendix Further Reading Award-winning Korean Films at Overseas Festivals Park Chan-wook,Hong Sang-soo,Kim Ki-duk,Lee Chang-dong,Bong Joon-ho,Kim Jee-woon, Im Sang-soo, Byun Young-joo, Choi Dong-hoon, Na Hong-jin, Yang Ik-june, Yun Seong-hyeon, Yeon Sang-ho, Song Kang-ho, Jeon Do-youn, Sul Kyoung-gu, Lee Byung-hun, Jun Ji-hyun, Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), The Housemaid, The Coachman, Heavenly Homecoming to Stars, The Surrogate Woman, Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?, My Sassy Girl , Oldboy, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. . . and Spring, The Host, Poetry

South Korean Film: Critical and Primary Sources is an essential three-volume reference collection representing three distinct phases in the development of South Korean national cinema, foregrounding how epochal characteristics inform the way in which the national cinema represents the penetrating thematic concern of auteur-ship, genre, spectatorship, gender, and nation, as well as the way in which these themes find expression in distinct visual styles and forms.

Korean film has been heralded as the “newest tiger” of Asian cinema. In the past year, South Korea became one of the only countries in the world in which local films outsold Hollywood films, and Korean director Park Chan-wook was awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes. New Korean Cinema provides a comprehensive overview of the production, circulation, and reception of this vibrant cinema, which has begun to flourish again in the past decade, following the lifting of repressive government policies. In addition to providing a cultural, historical, and social context for understanding this burgeoning cinema, the book considers the political economy of South Korea's film industry, strategies of domestic and international distribution and marketing, and the consumption of Korean films throughout the world. The volume also includes a glossary of key terms and a bibliography of works on Korean cinema. New Korean Cinema gathers prominent critics from North America, Asia, and Europe to make sense of this exploding film industry. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the complex roles played by national and regional cinemas in a global age.

The rapid development of Korean cinema during the decades of the 1960s and 2000s reveals a dynamic cinematic history which runs parallel to the nation’s political, social, economic and cultural transformation during these formative periods. This book examines the ways in which South Korean cinema has undergone a transformation from an antiquated local industry in the 1960s into a thriving international cinema in the 21st century. It investigates the circumstances that allowed these two eras to emerge as creative watersheds, and demonstrates the forces behind Korea’s positioning of itself as an important contributor to regional and global culture, and especially its interplay with Japan, Greater China, and the United States. Beginning with an explanation of the understudied operations of the film industry during its 1960s take-off, it then offers insight into the challenges that producers, directors, and policy makers faced in the 1970s and 1980s during the most volatile part of Park Chung-hee’s authoritarian rule and the subsequent Chun Doo-hwan military government. It moves on to explore the film industry’s professionalization in the 1990s and subsequent international expansion in the 2000s. In doing so, it explores the nexus and tensions between film policy, producing, directing, genre, and the internationalization of Korean cinema over half a century. By highlighting the recent transnational turn in national cinemas, this book underscores the impact of developments pioneered by Korean cinema on the transformation of ‘Planet Hallyuwood’. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars of Korean Studies and Film Studies.

South Korean cinema is a striking example of non-Western contemporary cinematic success. Thanks to the increasing numbers of moviegoers and domestic films produced, South Korea has become one of the world’s major film markets. In 2001, the South Korean film industry became the first in recent history to reclaim its domestic market from Hollywood and continues to maintain around a 50 percent market share today. High-quality South Korean films are increasingly entering global film markets and connecting with international audiences in commercial cinemas and art theatres, and at major international film festivals. Despite this growing recognition of the films themselves, Korean cinema’s rich heritage has not heretofore received significant scholarly attention in English-language publications. This groundbreaking collection of thirty-five essays by a wide range of academic specialists situates current scholarship on Korean cinema within the ongoing theoretical debates in contemporary global film studies. Chapters explore key films of Korean cinema, from Sweet Dream, Madame Freedom, The Housemaid, and The March of Fools to Oldboy, The Host, and Train to Busan, as well as major directors such as Shin Sang-ok, Kim Ki-young, Im Kwon-taek, Bong Joon-ho, Hong Sang-soo, Park Chan-wook, and Lee Chang-dong. While the chapters provide in-depth analyses of particular films, together they cohere into a detailed and multidimensional presentation of Korean cinema’s cumulative history and broader significance. With its historical and critical scope, abundance of new research, and detailed discussion of important individual films, Rediscovering Korean Cinema is at once an accessible classroom text and a deeply informative compendium for scholars of Korean and East Asian studies, cinema and media studies, and communications. It will also be an essential resource for film industry professionals and anyone interested in international cinema.

For the past decade, the Korean film industry has enjoyed a renaissance. With innovative storytelling and visceral effects, Korean films not only have been commercially viable in the domestic and regional markets but also have appealed to cinephiles everywhere on the international festival circuit. This book provides both an industrial and an aesthetic account of how the Korean film industry managed to turn an economic crisis—triggered in part by globalizing processes in the world film industry—into a fiscal and cultural boom. Jinhee Choi examines the ways in which Korean film production companies, backed by affluent corporations and venture capitalists, concocted a variety of winning production trends. Through close analyses of key films, Choi demonstrates how contemporary Korean cinema portrays issues immediate to its own Korean audiences while incorporating the transnational aesthetics of Hollywood and other national cinemas such as Hong Kong and Japan. Appendices include data on box office rankings, numbers of films produced and released, market shares, and film festival showings.