First steps
The first Korean film, Promise of Love Under the Moon, was released in 1923. For a long time, however, Korean cinema remained in the shadow of its Japanese neighbor. Crushed by the occupying forces until liberation, then completely destroyed by the war, it was then muzzled by dictatorships. Korean 7th art was then mainly realist: see Yu Hyeon-mok's Une balle perdue (1961), a film noir about the malaise of former soldiers after the war, which is the perfect expression of this. The renaissance came in the 1980s, with the emergence of a more committed cinema, like the literature from which it was often adapted. This renaissance even led to international recognition, especially from the 1990s onwards. One example is the Korean director Bae Yong-gyun and his film Why did Bodhidharma go to the East? (1989), about the reflections and daily lives of 3 monks - an old man, a man in his thirties and a child - living in a remote hermitage. Why did Bodhidharma go to the East? was one of the first Korean films to win awards in the West, notably at the Locarno Film Festival that same year. Im Kwon-taek's films also marked the revival of Korean cinema in the 1980s. He directed Mandala (1980, awarded at Berlin), La Mère porteuse (1986, awarded at the Venice Film Festival) and Sopyonje (1993), an absolute masterpiece about a family of pansori singers. In 2000 and 2003, the filmmaker won critical acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival for his last two films, the polished Le Chant de la fidèle Chunhyang and Ivre de femmes et de peinture.
The 1990s and 2000s
The late 1990s brought a wave of innovative and talented young directors. Almost all were preoccupied with everyday life, the difficulties of modern living, and some expressed the absurdity of our condition through elaborate structures reminiscent of the New Wave. Director Hong Sang-soo, one of the most promising representatives of this period, has been selected several times in various categories at the Cannes Film Festival, notably for his films The Power of Kangwon Province (1998) and A Tale of Cinema (2005), and Hahaha (2010), which won the Prize in the Un Certain Regard section. A number of filmmakers have shown a desire to transcribe reality in a more poetic way. These include Hur Jin-ho's lovely Palwolui Christmas(Christmas in August). Writer and critic Lee Chang-dong, who was once Minister of Culture, is enjoying well-deserved commercial and critical success with his films Peppermint Candy (2000) and Oasis (2002). The latter revisits contemporary history with an interesting flashback system. In 2004, director Park Chan-wook's Old Boy won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, marking the first major accolade for South Korean cinema. Unsurprisingly, the film's choreographed, highly manipulated violence particularly appealed to the president of the Cannes jury, Quentin Tarantino. One of the masters in the art of provocation, director Kim Ki-duk succeeds in turning the bland, wholesome image of Korean cinema on its head by instilling it with highly critical pearls about its society, its mores and the conservatism of its elites. His films include The Island (2000, selected at the Venice Film Festival), Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring (2002) and, more recently, One on One (2014) and Between Two Shores (2016). Kim Ki-duk's Pieta won him the Best Director award at the Venice Film Festival in 2012.
Nowadays
In recent years, South Korean cinema has been divided between Hollywood-style mainstream films (although not always interesting, such as Shiri, JSA, Les amis, and numerous spy films between the two Koreas) and true genre masterpieces. This cinema, probably Asia's most promising, is led by directors such as Bong Joon-ho, South Korea's most celebrated filmmaker of the last five years. Bong Joon-ho began his career in the early 2000s, with works such as Barking Dog (2000) and Memories of Murder (2003), inspired by the true story of a serial killer. In 2006, the Korean director directed The Host, which Cahiers du Cinéma ranked as its third most important film. Two years later, he teamed up with renowned directors Leos Carax and Michel Gondry for Tokyo! a feature-length film made up of several shorts set in the eponymous city. In 2013, he brought together a very American cast (Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton, Ed Harris...) for the film Le Transperceneige, an adaptation of the French comic strip of the same name. In 2017, his Okja was one of five Korean films in the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, alongside Hong Sang-soo's The Day After, which had the rare distinction of having two films screened during the prestigious festival. The ultimate accolade came to Bong Joon-ho in 2019, with the disturbing Parasite, which not only won the Palme d'Or unanimously from the jury at the Cannes Festival that year, but also the Golden Globe and César for Best Foreign Film, as well as four Oscars (including Best Director and Best Film) in 2020. South Korean cinema is therefore one to watch very closely, undoubtedly promising new works of great finesse and quality.
On the small screen
The South Korean small screen is no stranger to quality programs, with the Netflix streaming platform giving a major window to Korean TV works. In recent years, we've seen series like My First First Love (2019), a remake of the South Korean series My First Time. This 2-season series will delight fans of K-pop (an Asian music style very popular with teenagers), as its cast includes singer Jung Chae-yeon (from the group DIA) and Jung Jin-young (from the group B1A4). Other series include Love Alarm (2019), Memories of the Alhambra (2018) and Kingdom (2019). The latter sets its plot during the Joseon period of Korean history, combining historical content with a zombie invasion. And last but not least, it's impossible not to mention the must-see Squid Games series created in 2021 by Hwang Dong-hyuk for Netflix. With its unique concept, it has created a worldwide craze, rapidly becoming a cultural phenomenon and triggering passionate discussions on social inequalities and human nature.
