Last year, the bad news often seemed to crowd out the good. Although the South Korean industry made some key strides overseas in 2004, a sense of uneasiness seemed to prevail at home. Talk has focused on turmoil at the box office, in the courts, in the festival community and on the distribution circuit. Nevertheless, ordinary Koreans’ love affair with cinema continues unabated, and the amount of attention that the film industry receives from the press, business community and government circles has remained at extraordinary levels.
After 2003’s phenomenal selection of films - which included Old Boy, Memories of Murder, Save the Green Planet, A Tale of Two Sisters, A Good Lawyer’s Wife, and Spring Summer Fall Winter... and Spring - it’s perhaps not surprising to hear that most critics considered 2004 to be a disappointment. Despite the highlights, such as Kim Ki-duk’s Best Director award at Venice for 3-Iron, or Kim Dong-won’s prize-winning documentary Repatriation, the films of 2004 seemed to be more commercially oriented and less director-driven.
Meanwhile, movements by some of Korea’s biggest distributors reinforced the sense that the industry was growing more commercialized. Most prominently, leading distributor CJ Entertainment solidified its power at the top by acquiring large shares in rival distributor Cinema Service and rival exhibition chain Primus Cinema. Critics charged CJ with pursuing a "dictatorial" strategy, and were little assuaged when the company announced new measures to support independent and arthouse films. At the same time, distributor Showbox - which like CJ is part of an enormous food conglomerate - emerged as a powerful new player in the industry, reinforcing the view that Korea’s chaebol (major conglomerates) are the dominant power brokers in the film industry.
Yet despite the concerns over the direction of the industry, a closer look at the films of 2004 - including some that failed at the box office - reveals many features that embrace the conventions of genre cinema while also pushing forward in new creative directions. Ryu Seung-wan’s Arahan boasts CGI work and stunts that recall Hong Kong and Hollywood blockbusters. But its core element is finely-drawn characterization, rather than special effects. Chang Yoon-hyun’s Some takes the basic of the crime thriller, but infuses it with a unique atmosphere. In Flying Boys, a coming of age drama about high school seniors, the experiences of the main characters gain depth through the director’s candid perspective.
It may seem ridiculous to say that 2004 was a mixed year at the box office, when local exhibitor CGV estimates a record 60% market share for local films (the Korean Film Council posits a more conservative 57%). It was certainly not a weak year, but it was somewhat lopsided: the numbers are skewed by the tremendous dominance enjoyed by local cinema from January to April, when Silmido and Tae Guk Gi racked up an unprecedented 11 million admissions each. But no Korean film released after May 1 managed to reach the 3 million admissions mark.
The peak summer season opened with high expectations, but an uncommonly large number of local releases (12 between June 25 and July 30 alone, not to mention the major Hollywood titles) meant fierce competition for viewers. This mostly dashed hopes. Two worthy titles among this crowd that struggled to sell tickets were Jang Jin’s Someone Special - a relationship comedy that delighted critics with its offbeat humor and memorable characters - and the sleek, sexy comedy Everybody Has Secrets, featuring one of Korea’s best known stars in Lee Byung-heon. Both would probably have done better if they were released at a different time of the year.
Faring somewhat better in August were two films that played with the horror genre. Military horror film R-Point, set during the Vietnam War and shot in Cambodia, marked the successful debut of screenwriter Kong Soo-chang. It was a chilling story that managed to be both scary and politically relevant at the same time. Horror-comedy To Catch a Virgin Ghost, meanwhile, ridiculed gangsters and ghosts with equal fervour in its full-scale assault on Korean genre filmmaking.
The fall season also failed to match expectations. The Chuseok holiday in September, Korea’s biggest holiday and a key release date for local films, underperformed when compared to the previous year. Only Kim Sang-jin’s Ghost House did well (and even that was not up to the level of his previous films). Surprisingly, it was a low-budget feature released two weeks before the holiday that garnered the biggest buzz: debut director Lee Jung-chul’s melodrama A Family. While most Korean films in 2004 opened well and quickly faded, A Family - about the troubled relationship between a single father and his daughter just released from prison - ranks as perhaps the only genuine word-of-mouth hit of the year.
In October, November and December, too, total box office failed to match the levels of 2003. This is significant, as theatrical admissions have shown strong, constant growth since 1999 due to the revival in local filmmaking and the aggressive construction of new multiplexes. Has the local box office finally reached a plateau? That was the question on everyone’s lips.
The low point, perhaps, came on December 15 with the commercial failure of Korean-Japanese co-production Rikidozan - which, at US$10m, ranks as one of the most expensive Korean films ever made. The story of real-life professional wrestler Rikidozan - an ethnic Korean who became a national hero in 1950s Japan - boasted a magnificent, bilingual turn by leading actor Sol Kyung-gu, but failed to spark with audiences. December saw the lowest local market share in four years, as Korea’s demanding viewers turned to works from other countries.
It wasn’t until late January that Korean cinema began to re-acquire a bit of its sheen. Jeong Yun-cheol’s Running Boy, about an autistic boy who dreams of running a marathon, struck the perfect balance of sentiment and social relevance for local audiences. It was rewarded with a box office run that easily powered past 4 million admissions. Also released on the same day was Another Public Enemy, Kang Woo-suk’s sequel to his 2002 hit (and FEFF closing film) Public Enemy. Although judged to be more soft-edged than the acclaimed original, it proved entertaining enough to draw 4 million admissions.
It’s important to remember in any discussion of the Korean box office that, despite the sometimes gaudy numbers put up by the theatrical sector, the average Korean film from 2004 earned a surprising US$5.34 million at the box office. By contrast, Korea’s TV, cable and video/DVD markets remain miniscule. Online piracy and high prices have stunted the DVD sector, which is dominated by rentals rather than sell-through. Surveys indicate that only 29% of the two million households that own a DVD player have ever bought a DVD. Whereas US or European releases can double their revenues on DVD sales alone, Korea more resembles the US in the 1970s, when films had to earn two and a half times their budget in theaters just in order to break even.
Korea’s weak ancillary markets mean that international sales are becoming ever more important, and here was one area that showed grounds for optimism. The big news was in Japan, where a sudden surge of popularity for Korean pop culture set off big reverberations back home. Much of the attention was focused on actor Bae Yong-joon, star of the TV drama Winter Sonata which garnered a cult following in Japan, particularly among middle-aged female viewers. Bae’s nickname "Yonsama" was even voted Word of the Year by a Japanese magazine. But the enthusiasm spread to other actors and films as well. In late December, Kwak Jae-yong’s Windstruck starring Jeon Ji-hyun was given a wide-scale opening and ultimately passed Shiri to become the best-selling Korean film ever released in Japan.
These days, many Korean films - particularly those with a star cast - raise much or most of their budgets through a sale to Japan. In 2004, total revenues from international sales totaled US$58m (an 88% rise from the previous year), and the Japanese market accounted for US$40m of that total. In 2005, the totals are expected to rise even higher. As a result, no big-budget Korean film is made in the present day without seriously considering how it will be received in Japan.
In the meantime, Korean pop culture continues to receive attention in the rest of Asia. A recent report claimed that Korean content accounts for over a quarter of the imported films and TV dramas screened on Chinese television, more than any other country besides the US. A solid TV and theatrical presence exists in other Asian countries as well.
Yet it is worth asking amidst all the attention over the so-called Korean Wave or hallyu phenomenon, whether it marks a genuine exchange between Korea and other countries, or if hallyu is just a one-way street. Asian pop culture still draws very little interest in Korea itself, particularly in regard to music and television. Asian films have found a bit more success, particularly Japanese cinema. The past year saw the major success of Howl’s Moving Castle - which sold over 3 million tickets (US$18m) - and the encouraging minor success of Inudo Isshin’s Josee, the Tiger and the Fish, which opened on just a few screens but enjoyed an unprecedented three month run. On the whole however, Asian films outside of big-budget fare like Kung Fu Hustle face an uphill climb in Korea.
Apart from box-office and industry trends, the past year has seen more than its fair share of "incidents." One of the most damaging was the abrupt turmoil that befell the country’s second most famous film festival, the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan). In December, citing reasons that in retrospect seem questionable, the mayor of the city abruptly dismissed popular festival director Kim Hong-joon, and in the face of strong protest from members of the film industry, fired the programming team, announcing that the upcoming edition would be held without a festival director. As talk of a boycott spreads throughout the film industry, the end result has been that the significant progress made by PiFan over the past eight editions has disintegrated, and Korea now in effect has one less major festival. Kim and his programmers, meanwhile, are in negotiations to set up a rival event in a different city.
In January, an even bigger news story arrived with the first screening of a film titled The President’s Last Bang. Directed by Im Sang-soo, whose A Good Lawyer’s Wife competed at Venice in 2003, the film is centered around the death of Korea’s most famous military ruler Park Chung-hee in 1979, when his chief of intelligence unexpectedly shot him. Im’s film, a black comedy which mixes fact and fiction, outraged conservative critics, including Park’s daughter who now serves as the head of Korea’s center-right opposition party. A lawsuit filed by Park’s son to block the film’s release was thrown out by a Seoul Central Court judge, however the judge set off a storm when he ordered that the director remove four minutes of documentary footage from the film, as it could potentially "confuse" viewers about fact and fiction. The ruling has re-opened the debate about the need to protect freedom of expression in Korean society, and lost amidst all the noise and protest is the fact that Im has made a masterful film that looks back on history in a completely new way.
Finally, the saddest incident of all took place on February 22, when popular actress Lee Eun-ju, who had starred in nine films including Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2000), A Bungee Jumping of Their Own (2001), and Korea’s box-office record holder Tae Guk Gi (2004), was found dead in her apartment after committing suicide. The 24-year old Lee had been suffering from depression for close to a year, and her death came as a shock for the entire country. Lee will be remembered for the intelligence, talent, and passion she brought to all of her roles.
If the past twelve months have not been the brightest, the upcoming year seems to offer much more in the way of hope. A look through the list of upcoming releases by established and upcoming directors reveals a broad range of ambitious and exciting projects. New technologies may offer opportunities to lesser-known filmmakers, in particular a joint effort by broadcaster KBS and the Korean Film Council to support low-budget features shot on HD. And finally, the best reason to retain hope for the future creativity of Korean cinema is the current attitude of Korean viewers. As audiences grow more demanding - supporting the likes of Old Boy and turning their backs on formulaic comedies - then directors and producers will be pushed to keep on experimenting.