Cinema of South Korea

Liberty (1945–50) and War (1950–53) eras

With the surrender of Japan in 1945, and the subsequent liberation of Korea, liberty itself became a predominant theme of Korean cinema. Choi In-gyu's Viva Freedom! (Hangul: 자유 만세; Jayu manse!), which is about Korean freedom-fighters during the waning days of the colonial period, is considered the major film of this era.

According to the Korean film archive, 14 movies were produced during the Korean War, of which only four or five were produced each year from 1950 to 1953.

Golden Age (1953–73)

During the armistice of 1953, South Korean president Syngman Rhee made an effort to rejuvenate the film industry by exempting it from taxation. The movie renaissance that was seeded in 1945 advanced as a result of director Lee Kyu-hwan's successful remake of Chunhyang-jeon in 1955. Within two months, 10% of Seoul's population—over 200,000 people—had seen the movie, giving the film industry further impetus.

1955 also saw the release of Yang san Province (Hangul: 양산도; Yangsan-do) by Kim Ki-young, marking the beginning of a film career that would remain productive until the director's death in 1998.

The quality and quantity of films in South Korea increased throughout the 1950s. In the early 1950s, five movies were made per year, whereas 111 films were produced in 1959.

Korean cinema enjoyed a brief period of freedom from censorship during the 1960–61 year interval between the administrations of Rhee and Park Chung Hee. This year saw the production of Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid (Hangul: 하녀; Hanyeo), and Yu Hyun-mok's Aimless Bullet (Hangul: 오발탄; Obaltan), which have both been listed among the best Korean films ever made.

With the ascension of Park Chung Hee to the presidency in 1962, government control over the film industry increased substantially. Under the Motion Picture Law of 1963, a series of increasingly restrictive measures were enacted. The number of films produced and imported were limited under a strict quota system. The new regulations reduced the number of domestic film-production companies from 71 to 16 within a year. Government censorship at this time also became very strict, focusing mainly on any hint of pro-communist messages or obscenity.

Despite these governmental policies, however, a consistently large and devoted theater-going audience, and the production of numerous films continued to sustain South Korean cinematic culture throughout the 1960s. The Grand Bell Awards was also established in 1962, and to this day remains a prestigious awards ceremony in South Korea.

"Revitalizing Government" era (1973–79)

Governmental control over the film industry reached its height in the mid- and late 1970s, nearly destroying the vibrant film culture that had been established in the preceding decade and a half. This time period can also be called as "the winter of the sixty years in Korean film". This was due to the fact that South Korea had a very authoritarian political system that was led by Park Chung-hee. His program of Yusin Restoration (Revitalizing Reforms) caused Korean Cinema to enter a period of oppression through censorship. Because the government feared that cinema would disrupt the public's good taste or customs, harm the pride and dignity of South Korea, praise or support North Korea and Communism, or criticize the government's policies, filmmakers were wary of this censorship and were not allowed to produce films that they wanted. During this period, directors or movie-workers were blacklisted or even imprisoned. Writing in 1981, the International Film Guide said of South Korean cinema, "No country has a stricter code of film censorship than South Korea – with the possible exception of the North Koreans and some other Communist bloc countries."

The "Korean Motion Picture Promotion Corporation" (영화진흥위원회) was created in April 1973, replacing the Union of Korean Film Promotion. The authoritarian government of Korea said that the MPPC was created to support domestic films and promote the Korean film industry. However, this organization was primarily created to control the film industry and promote "politically correct" films in order to support censorship and the government's ideals.

These propaganda-laden movies (or "policy films") proved unpopular with audiences who had become accustomed to seeing real-life social issues in the quality films of the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to dealing with government interference in the making of their films, Korean filmmakers began losing their audience to television ownership, which increased suddenly beginning in the late 1960s. Movie-theater attendance dropped by over 60% from 173,043,272 in 1969 to 65,518,581 in 1979. Nevertheless, talented filmmakers like Im Kwon-taek and Kim Ki-young were able to survive this era and occasionally even produce works of value.

Recovery (1980–96)

After a turbulent year from 1979 to 1980, which included the assassination of president Park Chung Hee, the Coup d'état of December Twelfth, and the Gwangju massacre, South Korea experienced political turmoil. Although theater attendance remained low throughout the 1980s, the government's relaxation of censorship and control over the film industry enabled the production of more adventurous and interesting movies. Also, during this decade South Korean film began reaching an international audience for the first time, in large part through the recognition of director Im Kwon-taek's work. After his 1981 film, Mandala won the Grand Prix at the Hawaii Film Festival, Im became the first Korean director in years to have his films shown at European film festivals.

In 1988, president Roh Tae-woo began the gradual elimination of the government censorship of political expression in films. Directors were quick to begin re-exploring social and political themes in their films. During this period, producer Lee Tae-won made domestic films just to get an import quote. This import quota system controlled the films and restricted directors to producing films that would support the government's policies. Because the import quota system was controlled by the MPPC and because the government mainly controlled the MPPC, the government basically had total control of the screening of whichever films they wanted and the exclusion of whichever films would go against their views. Filmmakers were instructed to present the positive aspects of social reality and to focus mainly on the cultural traditions of school and public life based on traditional virtues.

However, the audience for domestic films reached a low point, due partly to the opening of the market to films from overseas, especially the United States and Hong Kong. By 1993, only 16% of the films seen by South Korean audiences were made domestically. However, the local film industry persevered through this lean period.

Current (1997 through present)

From the late 1990s, South Korean cinema managed to attain domestic box office success exceeding that of Hollywood blockbuster movies due largely to laws placing limits on the number of foreign films that could be shown per theatre per year. This government-enforced screen quota system has stood since 1967, and limits the number of days per year that non-domestic movies can be shown on any one movie screen in South Korea. This practice has come under fire from non-Korean film distributors as unfair. As a prerequisite to open negotiations with the United States for the Free Trade Agreement, the Korean government cut the screen quota for domestic films in half (from 146 days to 73 days per year), thus allowing more foreign films to enter the market. In February 2006, South Korean movie workers staged mass rallies to protest a quota cut resulting from a deal with the United States. Today, according to Kim Hyun, "South Korea's movie industry, like that of most countries, is grossly overshadowed by Hollywood. The nation exported US$2 million-worth of movies to the United States last year and imported $35.9 million-worth". A recent study by Park (2016) reveals several consequences of this screen quota cut. From 1997 to the present is considered to be the golden age for Korean films, and now Korea is being considered an Asian film powerhouse, producing movies of various genres, which find their market not only in South Korea, but throughout Asia.

The 1999 film Shiri, which is about a North Korean spy preparing a coup in Seoul, was the first movie in Korean history to sell more than 2 million tickets in Seoul alone. The movie's popularity, coupled with the screen quota, helped Shiri to surpass Hollywood box office hits such as Titanic, The Matrix and Star Wars in South Korean theaters.

In 2000 the film JSA (Joint Security Area) was a huge success and even surpassed the benchmark set by Shiri. One year later, the film Friend managed to do the same. The romantic comedy My Sassy Girl outsold the movies The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter , which ran at the same time in South Korea. As of 2004, new films have continued to outperform older releases, and many Korean productions have attracted bigger audiences than Hollywood films. To cite just two examples, movies such as Silmido and Taegukgi were each viewed by over 10 million people domestically.

Films such as Shiri have been distributed in the US. In 2001, Miramax bought the rights to an Americanized remake of the successful Korean action comedy movie, My Wife is a Gangster. Other Korean movies, such as Il Mare (remade as The Lake House), Oldboy, My Sassy Girl, and Joint Security Area have also been bought by Hollywood firms to be remade.

The 2003 psychological horror A Tale of Two Sisters was successful as well, leading DreamWorks to pay $2 million (US) for the rights to a remake, topping the former highest-record for an Asian movie, Infernal Affairs by USD 1.75m.

Festival success

Korean film first garnered serious international recognition in 2002 at the Venice Film Festival, where the film Oasis won second prize. The film tells the story an isolated young woman with cerebral palsy that falls in love with a simple-minded man who has recently completed a term in prison for the hit-and-run accident that killed her father.

Oldboy was another Korean film to achieve international acclaim when it came in second place in the Cannes Film Festival, second to Fahrenheit 9/11. The story traces the life of a man who is put into solitary confinement by someone he does not know. He lives there for 15 years until he is released and given 5 days to discover the bizarre reason for his cruel entrapment. Dark and gloomy, Oldboy experiments with the themes of madness and sexual perversity.

In February 2004, Kim Ki-duk won the award for best director at the 54th annual Berlin Film Festival for Samaritan Girl, a film about a teenage prostitute. In addition, he won the Silver Lion award at the Venice Film Festival for his 2004 movie, 3-Iron.

In 2010, Poetry won the Best Screenplay Award and was selected for the main competition at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. In November 2011, the leading actress, Jeong-hee Yoon, won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress for her performance.

In 2012, Kim Ki-duk won the Golden Lion award for his film Pietà. Pietà became the first Korean film in history to win the top prize at one of the world's three most prestigious film festivals, the Venice Film Festival.

New wave films

There are three important dates in new wave Korean films: first, in 1992, Marriage Story was financed by Samsung; it was the first Korean non-government funded film. Second, in 1999, Shiri was released, and led to Korean films taking over 50% of the local market. Third, My Sassy Girl became the most popular and exportable Korean film in history.

Korean Horror

Korean horror movies in Korea are different from those of the United States. Korean horror films tend to focus on the suffering and the anguish of characters rather than the "gore" aspect of horror. In the Asian film markets there is a demand for "action, melodrama, or horror content" Conrich, I. (2010). Korean horror movies have been around since the early 1960s and 1970s. However it was not until the late 1990s that they made a comeback (So-Young, K., Kim, S., & Berry, C. 2000). According to an interview with Korean film historian, Chong Jongwha, during the 1960s and 1970s horror films mostly targeted women who were middle aged and middle income (So-Young, K., Kim, S., & Berry, C. 2000).

The notion of Korean horror comes from the word seolhwa, which means "tales". The genre is further broken down into myth, legend and folklore. There are several types of gwishin- or ghosts- in Korean horror movies. The first type is the cheonyeo gwishin, which is a female virgin ghost. Ghosts of this type usually wear a sobok. They also have long black hair, which is because single women traditionally used to wear their hair up. The male version of the cheonyeo gwishin is the chong-gak gwishin. These two types of ghosts are cursed to walk the earth because they had unfinished business relating to their gender, the women taking care of the men in her life and the male being married. According to folklore, there are certain rituals that a shaman can do that marry the two spirits so that they may have peace. The next type of ghost is the mul gwishin or water ghost . These ghosts are usually associated with death by drowning. In addition, there is the dalgyal gwishin, or egg ghost, which is usually located in the mountains. In Korean folklore these are the most horrorific and deadly of the ghosts. These ghosts usually go after campers and hikers, targeting them primarily at night.

Korean horror also has the equivalent of the Grim Reaper, which is known as Joseung Saja. According to tradition, he only appears to people whose lives are almost over, and most often appears at cemeteries and hospitals. However, Jeosung Saja is merely a henchman of King Yeomna, king of the underworld.

Another type of ghost is Gumiho, a nine-tailed fox that is able to shape-shift. More often than not it takes the form of a beautiful young woman. Gumihos can usually be identified by their pointy noses or nine white tails, which they cannot hide. Gumihos usually seduce men and then eat their liver.