by Darcy Paquet

Whichever way you look at it, 2001 was an unforgettable year for Korean cinema. The industry either entered a new golden age, or took a dangerous plunge towards commercialism, depending on who you talked to. Either way, Korea’s film industry is currently changing very quickly. Diversity is the word, as big-budget genre pictures proliferate and smaller, more artistically-inclined films try to elbow their way past light comedies and the occasional melodrama.

The overwhelming popularity of local films in 2001 took everyone by surprise. The craze started on March 31, when Kwak Kyung-taek’s gangster-noir Friend opened at number 1 and stayed there for nine weeks. The film was a hit in Seoul and other cities, but it became an outright cult in Pusan, the seaside port where it was set. With shooting locations turning into overnight tourist attractions and crowds lining up for multiple viewings, the film easily broke Joint Security Area’s record to become the biggest movie in Korea’s history with 8 million tickets sold. That amounts to $44 million in total for a film which cost about $2 million to make.

The fever continued into the summer, when two Korean films —My Sassy Girl and Kick the Moon — managed to outperform all of Hollywood’s summer fare. My Sassy Girl, in particular, seemed to cut right at the heart of Korean youth culture, with a story plucked from real-life love tales posted on the internet. Autumn was dominated by high-concept gangster comedies. First My Wife is a Gangster, the story of a female gang boss who reluctantly agrees to get married, hit; then Hi, Dharma, which featured a crowd of gangsters hiding out at a monastery and picking fights with the monks. In mid-December My Boss, My Hero entered the mix, featuring a resourceful but dumb-as-a-nail gangster who is ordered back to high school to complete his degree. All of these films drew well above three million admissions (My Wife is a Gangster topped five million), a figure that Korean films could only dream of a few years back.

By December 31, five Korean films stood at the top of yearly attendance figures: Friend, My Wife is a Gangster, My Sassy Girl, Kick the Moon, and Hi, Dharma! Shrek was the highest grossing Hollywood film at number 6. Not even Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, which sold most of their tickets in 2002, were able to match the top four Korean films. Market share for local films in Seoul was 46.5% to Hollywood’s 47%, but for the nation as a whole, 49% percent of the tickets sold were for Korean films.
Where does this kind of success come from? In some ways it has been building slowly over a period of years. In 1997, most Koreans would have told you that local films were boring, or only for watching on video. But since then, a younger generation of directors and producers have created movies that speak more directly to audiences in their teens and twenties. Together with improvements in film technology, which have given local films a Hollywood sheen, this has enabled audiences to gravitate towards films from their own culture — films that they feel speak to them directly.

Star power has also played a role — for directors as well as actors. Before his 1999 surprise hit Attack the Gas Station!, director Kim Sang-jin was virtually unknown to ordinary viewers. But by the time his follow-up Kick the Moon hit the screens in June 2001, audiences were lining up in front of theatres, curious to see his next movie. In this way, each smash hit paves the way for another successful film in the future.

Other trends have emerged. One is an exploration of new genres which were off-limits in the past, either because of a lack of technology, or because they weren’t economically viable. Korea’s relatively small size places a limit on the amount of money a film can make at home, but with the market’s recent expansion (a 20% rise in ticket sales last year, on top of a price increase), and with Korean films being bought by more foreign distributors, local production companies have started to gamble.
Three films best illustrate the industry’s attempts at large scale genre pictures. Musa was a historical epic shot in China, distinguished by its dark tone and realistic violence. The film was a tremendous logistical challenge for which no one in the industry had any experience. A gruelling shoot which led cast and crew across 10,000 km of desert, mountains, and forests, resulted in the largest scale film Korea has ever produced. 2009 Lost Memories is a futuristic action blockbuster which uses politics and history to give the genre a twist. It’s a story set in an alternate future, in which Korea remains a colony of Japan.

Volcano High, meanwhile, adopts the imagery and attitude of Asian comic books to create a story about high school students with supernatural powers. Finally, veteran actor Bae Chang-ho (who last directed My Heart, winner of the Far East Film Festival’s Audience Award in 2000), returned to the screen with The Last Witness, an action-drama about a modern-day murder with roots that trace back to events during the Korean War.
It’s worth noting that although all of these films earned money at the box-office and sold well overseas — something which largely justified their big budgets — they have not been nearly as profitable as the more modestly-packaged comedies which made up the year’s top five.

Another development last year was the first sign of a rebirth of Korean animation. In the 1970s, Korean animation enjoyed strong support from local viewers, but audiences lost interest in the 1980s as creativity sagged and animation faced stronger competition from live-action films.This continued through the 1990s, but a new crop of high-profile animated features looks set to rejuvenate the industry. The first major work from this group, My Beautiful Girl, Mari by Lee Sung-gang, features breathtaking visuals, a strong musical score, and dubbing by some of the top names. Although the film performed poorly at the box-office on its January 2002 release, it marked a new direction for local animation.

An additional trend which surfaced last year was the presence of strong, violent, female characters in popular movies. Although there are many examples of assertive women in previous Korean films, it has been rare to see women dish out the kind of physical punishment that’s seen in Kick the Moon or My Wife is a Gangster. Jeon Ji-hyun’s character in My Sassy Girl is good example: a woman who taunts, threatens, and often mauls her boyfriend, all the while maintaining a prim, girlish image. It might be naive to interpret this as a sign of increased power for women in Korean society. But it is true that younger generations have embraced such characterisations, and we will likely see more of them in the future.

Not long ago Korean cinema was a world unto itself. But Korean films and pop culture have recently become trendy throughout other parts of Asia. As a result, more Chinese and Japanese actors are signing on to shoot Korean films, and vice-versa. For instance, the lead actresses of Musa and Failan aren’t Korean. The international fortunes of Musa received a huge boost when the producers cast rising star Zhang Ziyi just before the premiere of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In Failan, Hong Kong star Cecilia Cheung plays a Chinese woman who comes to Korea in search of work after the death of her parents.
The importance of the international scene goes beyond a mere sharing of talent. As Korean cinema has matured commercially, it is coming to depend on sales to other Asian countries. A remarkable 17 Korean films were released in Hong Kong in the year 2001, with an additional 8 scheduled for release by April 2002. Korean distributor CJ Entertainment has gone so far as to set up its own office in Hong Kong to release its own films. Even more important for local film companies is Japan, where distributors have paid up to $2 million for Korean movies. In some cases, film companies can recoup over half of a film’s budget with a sale to Japan. For this reason, co-productions and general cooperation between Korea and other Asian countries is reaching a new high.

Another unexpected new source of income for Korean film companies are remake rights, sold to Hollywood studios. Hollywood has begun to notice the success of Korean cinema, and mindful of US audiences’ aversion to subtitles, have started buying up rights for English-language remakes. The first major instance of this was My Wife is a Gangster, sold for over a million dollars to Miramax last autumn. Sales of My Sassy Girl to DreamWorks and Hi, Dharma! to MGM followed. At the time of writing, a major Hollywood studio was said to be pursuing Failan, and several other films were rumored targets as well. This has been met with a certain degree of surprise in Korea. But production companies are eager to exploit this option, as some of the deals carry running guarantees which could ultimately fund a new movie or two.

There are a wide range of moods, styles and genres, in the Korean features produced in 2001. But if one thing ties together the films being made today, it’s their audience. In contrast to Japan, where older viewers make up a significant part of the viewing audience, moviegoers in Korea are generally in their teens and twenties. As couples marry and grow older, they watch their movies at home. So today’s films are aimed at younger viewers. Many critics have attacked today’s popular cinema, claiming that it lacks seriousness and weight; as gangster comedies and action films grow more popular, the cries are becoming louder. 

The coming years will force artistic films, or films targeted at older viewers, to find a niche in Korea’s new industry. This challenge is compounded by trends in distribution. Hot-ticket films are released on ever-larger numbers of screens, squeezing out smaller films after only a week or two on release. This came to a head one week last summer, when only seven films were on release in Seoul. Four films occupied 196 of the city’s 205 screens. Mindful of the challenges smaller films face, ordinary fans have begun mobilising to promote films like Failan. In successful cases, fans have been able to convince theaters to reintroduce films that have already ended their run.
What does the future hold for Korean cinema? 2002 looks to be another strong year at the box-office, with scores of hotly-anticipated projects nearing release. Top stars are even more in demand as the number of films in production shoots upwards. With Korean cinema winning more fans by the day, both at home and abroad, things are generally looking up. Just don’t tell that to local film critics.