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Storming the Big Screen IT'S A COMEBACK worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster. Last year, South Korea's movie industry was writing its own obituary as the government, under U.S. pressure, considered scrapping a law that requires theatres to screen local movies on at least 106 days a year. Local film makers took to the streets. Movie stars dressed in black dabbed tears from their eyes and held a funeral for their industry outside the U.S. embassy. "It might as well be dead if the quotas are removed," one actress said from behind sunglasses. But a year on, Korean film-making is anything but dead.
South Korea's previously moribund film industry finally finds the spotlight at home and abroad
By Suh Kyung Yoon/SEOUL
Far East Economic Review
Issue cover-dated July 20, 2000
The quota, attacked by the Motion Picture Association of America as anti-competitive, stayed in place. More significantly, the Korean film industry--perhaps galvanized by the perceived threat to its existence--has roared to life to become Asia's latest hotbed of cinematic success.
Forty percent of all tickets sold in Korea last year were for local films, one of the highest percentages in today's Hollywood-soaked world. Koreans watch more home-grown movies than even the Japanese and the French.
But Koreans aren't the only ones watching Korean films. Last year, movies like Swiri and Christmas in August were box-office hits in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. Revenue from film exports is expected to be nearly $4 million this year, up five-fold from $775,000 in 1998, according to the Korean Film Commission, or Kofic. The critics are enthusiastic too. From Sundance to Cannes, Korean films have been among the most talked-about on the film-fest circuit.
"You know what they're saying in international film circles these days? 'It's Korea's time,'" says Jason Chae, president of Mirovision, the first company to handle international distribution of Korean films. "After Japan, Hong Kong and China, it's finally Korea's turn to be in the spotlight."
For decades, Korea was the lost child of Asian cinema. While Akira Kurosawa, Ang Lee, John Woo and Zhang Yimou were putting Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China on the map, Korean directors were strangled by censorship. From 1960 to 1988, strict laws ruled not only what films could be made--only prim and propagandistic, please--but also what could be screened. Many of the ground-breaking films produced in Europe in the 1960s and Hollywood in the 1970s were banned, depriving Korean film makers of their artistic influence. "Those 25 years were a death blow to Korean film-making," says Kim Hyae Joon, a Kofic researcher.
Fast-forward to the mid-1990s, when young film makers in the "386 generation" (in their 30s, graduated in the Eighties, born in the Sixties) entered the picture. Armed with foreign techniques, film-school theories and experience as short-film and music-video makers, they jumped into the director's chair, refusing to spend years as apprentices as their predecessors had done. Their bluster paid off: Rookie films so dominated the box office from 1996 that people started talking about "the first-time-director syndrome"--only novice film makers produced hits.
And then came Swiri. A blood-drenched blockbuster about North and South Korean spies facing off in love and war, the film overtook Titanic to become the biggest hit of 1999 in Korea and eventually the most-watched movie in Korean film history. Its director, Kang Jae Kyu, has become the 386 generation's poster boy--he's 37, studied at New York University's film school, and had directed only one previous movie.
AS GOOD AS HOLLYWOOD
"Swiri was the final evidence in the case for Korean movies," says Cassie Yu, a programmer at the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival. "They could be just as good as any Hollywood production."
If the run had ended with Swiri, Korean film would have been little more than a one-hit wonder. Instead, 1999 ended with a bang--Attack the Gas Station, Tell Me Something and Happy End were all box-office smashes in Korea. The streak has continued this year: Foul King has beaten American Beauty as the best-selling movie so far. "There's so much energy, excitement and interest about the Korean film industry these days," says Gina Yu, a film-studies professor at Dongguk University in Seoul. "It's a refreshing change."
Korean films have been garnering critical acclaim as well. Lies, which explores the sadomasochistic relationship of a sculptor and his teenage mistress, gained notoriety at the Venice film festival, while Foul King and Attack the Gas Station were crowd-pleasers in Hong Kong. The New York Times dubbed Nowhere to Hide "one of the biggest hits at this year's Sundance Film Festival." Hollywood is now courting its director, Lee Myung Se, says Mirovision's Chae, whose company is handling overseas distribution for Foul King and several other top-selling releases. The Cannes festival invited a record five Korean movies this year, with one, Chunhyang, becoming the first Korean entrant ever in the main competition section.
A classic tale about young star-crossed lovers, Chunhyang reveals another reason why Korean films have improved so dramatically in recent years: money. Directed by Im Kwon Taek, known as the godfather of Korean films, the movie was funded by Mirae Asset Management, a financial-services company, and it shows. The plush, visually striking re-creation of 18th-century Korea--complete with 8,000 extras and 12,000 costumes--cost $3 million to make.
That used to be a lot of money in Korea, where films were slapped together for less than $500,000. But since the success of Swiri, money has been flowing into the industry. Chaebols like Cheil Jedang, Internet start-ups like Locus, venture capitalists and even the government are rushing in with cash in hand. Even foreign investors are getting into the game: Earlier this year, Warburg Pincus invested $18 million in Cinema Service, a production company.
"The business dynamics have changed dramatically," says Moon Hae Ju, managing director at Cinema Service, which recently spent more than $4 million to make Bi Chon Moo, a summer blockbuster. It plans to spend an additional $1 million for marketing. "Korean movies turn huge profits so of course investors are willing to put their money down."
All signs point to a renaissance for Korean film. But Kim, the Kofic researcher, says that even with the boom, only 49 films were made locally last year, compared with more than 100 annually in the 1950s and 60s. With the United States continuing to press for greater access for its films, Kim thinks the industry remains under threat. "It won't survive without the screen quotas," he says. "And aren't the recent movies enough proof that Korean movies really are worth preserving?"
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