THE DEVIL AND THE BEAUTY

When we think of 3D these days, the first things that come to mind are normally big VFX-heavy blockbusters, but the technology existed long before superheroes and not just in Hollywood. In Korea, there have been several 3D projects over the years, the first of...

QUIT YOUR LIFE

Until the middle of the last decade, when films such as The Silenced (2015), Assassination (2015) and The Age of Shadows (2016) appeared, cinematic depictions of the Japanese Colonial Occupation of Korea (1910-45) had been considered taboo. However, decades be...

SCARY HOUSE

Movies come in all shapes and sizes but are seldom quite as small as Scary House (2005), a no-budget horror-comedy from director YANG Byoung-khan, starring GU Yun-hee. Beyond directing, YANG also performed writing, production, photography, editing, and sound d...

SUDDENLY IN DARK NIGHT

For rabid genre film fans at the turn of the millennium, K-horror quickly cemented itself as a buzzword for an innovative, terrifying and often gruesome new breed of horror features being produced in the booming Korean film market. Yet whereas the contemporane...

FLAME IN THE VALLEY

The late 1960s were a time of furious production schedules in the Korean film industry and some of the proven directors of the day were pushed to focus on quantity rather than quality. This was particularly thanks to a successful domestic market, but mostly be...

GILSOTTEUM

For people living in Korea in the 1980s, one of the most memorable events of the decade was a series of special broadcasts on KBS in 1983, which sought to reunite families that had been separated by the Korean War. Some western viewers may recognize this from ...

THE PHANTOM DETECTIVE

Though the development of the Korean film industry has advanced unabated for over two decades, one crucial aspect of the local field has become a point of concern for some. Following the rise of filmmakers such as BONG Joon-ho, PARK Chan-wook, and KIM Jee-woon...

THE POLLEN OF FLOWERS

Director HA Gil-jong was one of the great trailblazers of Korean cinema in the 1970s. Yet he wasn’t viewed quite so kindly during his lifetime, which ended prematurely when he succumbed to a stroke at the age of 37 in 1979, the same year that another person, w...

WHALE HUNTING

When student protests changed the direction of politics in Korea in 1987, the local film industry welcomed the ‘Korean New Wave’, a group of politically charged works from filmmakers who were afforded greater laxity than anyone in the industry had in the past....

THE WORLD OF US

2016 was a year filled with cinematic marvels from Korea, including acclaimed new works by PARK Chan-wook, NA Hong-jin and KIM Jee-woon, but beyond the big names, the year also set the stage for one of the most important indie debuts in the local film industry...