Korean cinema continued to boom in 2003. Despite worries
at the start of the year about out-of-control budgets
and nervous investors, local movies dominated screens
and raked in a record amount of money at the box office.
An estimated 53% of all tickets sold were for Korean films
- compared to less than 43% for Hollywood titles - and
eight of the top ten selling films of the year were made
locally. Worldwide, only the U.S. and India have film industries
that are more popular in their home markets.
But compared to the similarly successful years of 2002
and 2001, there was something different in the air. Signs
began to emerge that audience tastes were changing. The
inexpensive comedies that used to dominate the box-office
started to lose strength relative to more serious or stylish
works by Korea’s commercial auteurs.
In 2003, “well-made” (spoken in English) became the new
buzzword among producers and executives in the Korean
film industry. Producer Kim Seung-beom of Tube
Entertainment noted in July that “Korean audiences are
demanding more quality from local films these days”.
Viewer buzz began to be less about “that was funny” and
more about “that was well-made”. According to Kim Sohee,
editor of local film magazine Cine21, “well-made” in
this context usually means a commercial feature that
makes use of defined genres and the star system, but
which contains both a distinctive directorial style and commentary
on social issues. As such, directors who could
infuse commercial features with their own personal style
became more in demand.
It all began with late April with Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of
Murder (which has since won the Best Director prize at the
San Sebastian International Film Festival, and the Best
Screenplay and Audience awards at Torino). Based on a
real-life series of murders in rural Korea during the
Eighties, Bong’s nuanced, frightening and thought-provoking
work became an unexpected smash hit, selling over 5
million tickets. Many viewers commented that they hadn’t
seen a commercial film of such impact and quality since
Joint Security Area in 2000.
From then on, audiences turned a string of other challenging
“well-made” films into box office smashes. There was
Kim Jee-woon’s stylish and frighteningly complex horror
film A Tale of Two Sisters; Im Sang-soo’s risqué and at
times shocking Venice competition film A Good Lawyer’s
Wife; E J-yong’s elegant Untold Scandal (an adaptation of
Dangerous Liaisons transposed to 18th-century Korea);
and the brilliantly inventive Old Boy from director Park
Chan-wook (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), which is expected
to get its international premiere at the 2004 Cannes film
festival.
The strength of such films has caused filmmakers and
investors to rethink some commonly-accepted beliefs
about filmmaking in Korea. With high-concept comedies no
longer dominating other genres at the box office, producers
and directors are searching out new topics and styles
that may appeal to audiences. “In Korea there used to be
a jinx that costume dramas, sports movies, and movies
about animals would never succeed”, notes E J-yong, who
proved that jinx wrong with costume drama Untold Scandal.
Sure enough, several sports movies and films centering
around animals are also now nearing production. Not only
are filmmakers exploring new topics, but film companies
are also rethinking common practices in film production.
In recent years, industry watchers have distinguished
three different approaches to making films in Korea. One is
the producer-oriented project, which is usually built around
a catchy central concept. Generally quite inexpensive to
make (about US$2m on average, with 3-4 months of
shooting time), these films dominated the box-office in
2001 and 2002. One advantage of these types of projects
is that they usually manage to draw viewers even with only
mid-level stars, so productions don’t have to search out
top-name talent. Films such as Hi, Dharma (2001) and Sex
Is Zero (2002) are good examples of such works.
In contrast, director-oriented projects focus on a welldeveloped
screenplay and a director’s individual style.
They are more expensive to make (US$3 million on average),
and employ highly experienced crew members and
big-name stars, who often prefer working on projects that
test their acting abilities. “If you have a good director and
good screenplay, then you can find a strong cast, and with
enough financing you can do well commercially”, says Tcha
Seung-jai of Sidus Corporation, one of Korea’s top production
companies. Director-oriented projects like Happy End
(1999) and Friend (2001) have been successful in the
past, but they had fallen out of favor by 2002. Last year
gave investors new confidence in this sort of film, however.
Most of the “well-made” films of 2003 fall into this category.
The final type of project is the Korean blockbuster, which
reached the nadir of respectability in 2003. Costing about
US$6m on average, the blockbuster focuses its attention
on mise-en-scene and special effects. Big-name stars have not been actively sought out in the past, but instead filmmakers
tried to attract audiences with high production values
and a new kind of imagery. Nonetheless, this has been
the least successful sort of project in recent years, with
films like Yesterday and R U Ready? losing tremendous
amounts of money for their investors. The trend continued
into late 2003 with action movie Tube, animated blockbuster
Wonderful Days and the science fiction title Natural
City.
At the beginning of 2003, all of the “smart money” in the
industry was pouring into producer-centered works, yet for
the most part these films ending up making less money
than director-centered projects. In an industry where the
director retains a fair amount of influence compared to
other countries, 2003 tilted the balance of power even
more in the director’s favour.
Then came early 2004, when two giants crashed into the
industry, changing everything in their path. Silmido by
director Kang Woo-suk (the founder of one of Korea’s
most powerful film companies, Cinema Service) tells the
story of 31 death row convicts who were taken by the
South Korean government to a remote island and trained
to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Based on
a true story, the film was a colossal hit, setting a new alltime
record by selling over 10 million tickets. The attention
drawn by the movie also forced the government’s intelligence
agency to answer new questions about the past
cover-up of the incident.
Then in February, Tae Guk Gi by director Kang Je-gyu (of
Shiri fame) premiered to an even bigger storm at the boxoffice.
A fictional story of two brothers set during the
Korean War, the film featured elaborately-staged battle
scenes and detailed reconstructions of Fifties-era cities.
The most expensive Korean film ever with a budget of
US$12m, Tae Guk Gi easily vaulted over the box office
records set by Silmido a month before, and some estimates
predicted it would earn US$95m in Korea alone by the end
of its box-office run. Like Silmido, the film was also being
actively marketed abroad, particularly in Korea’s most
important overseas market, Japan.
In some ways, these two films can be considered a new
approach to filmmaking that combines the director-centered
project with the blockbuster. Unlike other blockbusters
of recent years, both these films featured top
stars in the lead roles and contained the signature styles
of their respective directors. Both also touched on serious
issues from Korea’s history which still resonate with contemporary
viewers.
The local media has quickly proclaimed a new “era of 10
million admissions” for the local film industry. Most significant
about the box office performance of the two films was
the number of older viewers drawn to the theater, in a
country where most people stop going to the movies after
getting married. Reporters walking through the crowds in
front of local multiplexes found significant numbers of
older people who were going to the movies for the first
time in twenty or thirty years. Many executives in the film
industry hoped it would not be their last. If older viewers
rediscovered the habit of moviegoing, it could provide a
significant boost to the film industry.
There were, of course, negative aspects to these two films’
success. Smaller films are finding it increasingly difficult to
secure a release in Korea, and even those that do fairly
well are often dropped by theatres after just a couple
weeks. For bigger productions, the need for wider and
wider releases is also weakening overall profitability. A
report by the Korean Film Commission suggested that
despite the strength of local cinema, the average Korean
film still ends up losing about US$300,000.
Looking back over the past year, we see a fair number of
distinctive, interesting productions that have been overlooked
by audiences or critics. The Road Taken is a lowbudget
film about long-term prisoners of conscience in
South Korean jails, who spent up to 45 years in prison
while refusing to renounce their Communist beliefs. Moving
and illuminating, the film nonetheless bombed at the box
office and has been overlooked by international festivals.
The Legend of the Evil Lake is the remake of a 1969
swordplay fantasy by Shin Sang-ok, shot in China with a
mixed Chinese-Korean crew. Although it failed commercially,
the film is visually arresting and is shot on a scale rarely
seen in Korean cinema. The curiously-titled ...ing, meanwhile,
features one of the most memorable mother-daughter
relationships in recent years in a very moving story of
a teenage girl with medical troubles.
In terms of genre, 2003 was seen as somewhat of a down
year for Korean comedies, with several notable exceptions.
The latter include the relationships comedy Singles, which
was adapted from a Japanese TV drama and which became
a mid-summer hit, and the period-set Once Upon a Time in
a Battlefield, which spoofed historical battles between rival
kingdoms in 7th century Korea. Horror films saw a strong
rebound. Summer is considered a traditional time of year
to watch horror films in Korea, and the industry responded
with four mid-summer scare fests that included A Tale
of Two Sisters, Wishing Stairs, The Uninvited, and Into the
Mirror. Although the latter two may not be horror films in
the traditional sense, they were strongly marketed as such
in order to appeal to the summer crowds.
Some interesting new talent also emerged in 2003. Actress
Im Su-jeong of A Tale of Two Sisters and ...ing is now widely
recognised as an emerging star and the most talented of
the actresses to debut in 2003. As for directors, Jang Junhwan
has won multiple awards locally and a Best Director
prize at Moscow for his brilliant Save the Green Planet,
about a man who kidnaps a company president believing
him to be an alien plotting to destroy the earth. Other
notable directorial debuts in 2003 include Lee Su-yeon
with The Uninvited, Kim Sung-ho with Into the Mirror, legendary
porn director Bong Man-dae with his first mainstream
commercial feature Sweet Sex & Love, theatre
director Lee Youn-taek with his first film Ogu, and Lee Eonhee
with the drama ...ing.
Local cinema these days attracts an almost unprecedented
amount of attention in Korea, and this is reflected in the
large number of new film students, crew members, and
outside companies who have decided to enter the film
industry. High levels of competition and a quickly changing
industrial landscape mean that 2004 will likely contain a
similar level of turbulence and unpredictability for Korean
filmmakers. For audiences, however, this will surely lead to
an interesting selection of new films.
Darcy Paquet