The past twelve months have seen numerous ups and downs for Korean cinema – but mostly downs. The industry has struggled through downturns in the past, notably in 2002, when investors became spooked by the failure of several big-budget films including Resurrection Of The Little Match Girl. But most commentators would agree that 2007 ranks as the most serious challenge for Korean cinema since the start of its boom in the late 1990s. At the same time, the industry is much larger than it was in 2002, so the reverberations are spreading further.
There are two sides to the crisis. The first is that Korean audiences seem to be cooling a bit on local films. After a record-setting 2006, with smash hits like The Host (13 million admissions), King And The Clown (12.3 million admissions), Tazza: The High Rollers (6.8 million admissions) and 200 Pound Beauty (6.6 million admissions), some retreat to more normal levels might have been expected. But a string of box office disappointments and a strong performance by Hollywood films caused the market share of Korean cinema to fall to 50% - its lowest level since 2002.
This was partly due to the films themselves. 2007 was a year in which few of Korea’s best known commercial filmmakers - Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-wook, Kim Jaewoon, etc – had new films to release. There were a few word-of-mouth hits, such as Seven Days or Going By The Book, but in general there were not enough high-profile releases to catch audiences’ attention. A few big-budget disappointments, such as the US$10 million costume drama Hwang Jin Yi, also contributed to the impression that some of the air had gone out of Korean cinema.
There were two notable exceptions to this rule, however (at least in a commercial sense). Blockbusters May 18 and D-War were released a week apart in mid summer, and rode a wave of publicity to become the best-selling Korean films of the year (with 7.3 and 8.4 million admissions respectively). May 18 is based on the real life Gwangju Uprising of 1980, when military paratroopers sent in by the government clashed with pro-democracy activists and ordinary citizens, leaving hundreds (or, more likely thousands) dead. The horrific incident had been portrayed by Korean filmmakers before, such as in Jang Sun woo’s A Petal (1996) or Lee Chang-dong’s Peppermint Candy (2000), but May 18 was the most mainstream treatment of the subject yet. A bit too mainstream, argued some of its detractors - the film seemed at times to be deliberately pushing the same emotional buttons that made Tae Guk Gi (2004) and Silmido (2003) so popular. Nonetheless its strong box office performance must be credited to more then just the market power of its distributor CJ Entertainment, as it continued to attract large numbers of viewers even late in its release.
D-War, meanwhile, was another kind of animal entirely. Shim Hyung-rae, the creator of Yonggary (1999), shot this massively expensive, English language monster movie in LA with an American cast and crew. The film is based on a mythical Korean creature that resembles a giant snake. Although to most Western viewers it will appear indistinguishable from any other really bad Hollywood B-movie, to many Koreans it became a source of national pride, since the at-times impressive CGI effects were done entirely in Korea, and since it was slated to receive a large 2,000-screen release in the US, Korean distributor Showbox, as well as Shim himself, successfully turned the film’s release into a major media event. When local critics attacked the film for its inept direction or preposterous screenplay, it only made viewers more curious to see it. A strange kind of culture war also emerged, with ardent supporters of the film arguing on its behalf online, and attacking anyone who criticised it. In the event, the monstrously budgeted film (US$30 million or US$70 million, depending on how you do the accounting) was a huge commercial success in Korea, though its US theatrical release a month later proved to be a dud.
Ultimately these two films would be the only ones to sell more than 3.5 million tickets in 2007, compared to five titles in 2006 and eight in 2005. Two other films – kidnapping drama Voice Of A Murderer and comic adaptation Le Grand Chef, would sneak past the 3 million admissions mark, though it seems both films failed to reach the full potential of their eye-catching source material.
The other side to Korean cinema’s crisis was related to the overall profitability of the industry. The boom years of 2005-2006 had encouraged, among other things, a large number of new investors to enter the industry and an increasing number of film companies to list on the local stock market (mostly through back door means). Overseas sales of Korean films, thanks to a surge of interest in Japan, peaked at $76 million in 2005. With all this money sloshing around in the industry, the results were predictable: budgets rose, salaries of major stars (and star directors) shot up, and Korea began making many more films than it had in the past.
The good times couldn’t last forever, though. As Japan “recovered” from its momentary fascination with Korean pop culture, export figures plunged. More seriously, the large numbers of films being made meant steeply increased competition at the box office, so that even in 2006 - a record year at the box office - almost everyone in the industry was losing money. In 2007, when the number of tickets sold to Korean films dropped sharply, the situation was even more serious.
The crisis was a source of almost constant discussion in 2007, and few investors or producers expect the situation to improve in the next year or two. There are signs now that fewer films are being made. It seems likely that the rate of production will fall to 60-80 commercial films per year, which most people view as a sustainable level (excluding the sort of low-budget independent films that are often supported by the Korean Film Council). Some worry that it could drop further than that. On the other hand, though, new companies continue to enter the film industry, such as telecoms conglomerates SK Telecom and KT, so at this point it remains extremely difficult to product the crisis’s long term effects. In the meantime, producers have been trying to lower budgets, though most find it is not an easy process.
But all was not bad news in 2007. The most exciting development came in May, when Jeon Do-yeon won the Best Actress award at Cannes for her fearless performance in Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine. Jeon has been well known to fans of Korean cinema as a supremely talented performer with the chameleon-like ability to fully inhabit any role. Since her debut in The Contact in 1997, she has won breathless praise and cartfuls of local awards. However this marked her first appearance in a major international film festival, so in that sense, a new Asian star was born. As months passed the awards would continue to roll in, with Jeon winning at the first Asia Pacific Screen Awards in New Zealand as well as the second Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong this March.
Secret Sunshine itself also won numerous praise and awards, including Best Picture honors at the two awards ceremonies mentioned above. A harrowing story about a young widow who moves to her husband’s hometown and experiences further tragedy, the film was a consensus pick by many critics as the best film of the year. In its local release, audiences initially found it hard to relate to, but news of Jeon’s award gave a considerable boost to its box office performance.
A few other trends emerged among the films on release in 2007. One was a revival of the thriller genre, thanks to works like Seven Days, Our Town and, in the early part of 2008, The Chaser. Rather than a wholesale deconstruction of the genre, as in Bong Joon-ho’s Memories Of Murder (2003), recent thrillers have combined stylish direction, great acting and creative variations on genre conventions. Seven Days in particular was highly rated by viewers for its brisk pacing, well-structured plot and outstanding lead performance by Lost star Kim Yun-jin (it was to Kim’s misfortune that the film opened in the same year as Secret Sunshine, otherwise she’d have been sure to win numerous acting awards). The film is based on a clever premise: the young daughter of a star defense attorney is kidnapped, and rather than demanding ransom, the kidnappers tell the lawyer she must prove the innocence of a man on death row. Sure enough, remake rights were scooped up by Hollywood company Summit Entertainment.
The ironically titled Our Town, by debut director Jung Kil-young, is another addition to a long line of Korean serial murder thrillers. However the film focuses on not just one, but two killers on the loose in an ordinary urban neighborhood (even if one of the two is clearly the more ruthless and efficient killing machine). As the body count grows, a complicated web of flashbacks fills in the viewer on the formative experiences of the two men.
The autumn season turned up a few other genre surprises. Director Lee Joon-ik has emerged in the past few years as one of Korea’s most distinctive and talented commercial directors, even if he is not yet attracting much attention abroad. After his breakout smash hit King And The Clown and the word of mouth driven success Radio Star in 2006, he returned in 2007 with The Happy Life, the story of three middle aged men who decide to start a rock band. It doesn’t sound like a particularly commercial concept, but once again the storytelling skills of Lee and his regular screenwriter Choi Seok-hwan have turned this into a hugely entertaining and enjoyable film.
Shadows In The Palace is the debut work of Kim Mijeong, who worked on the crew of King And The Clown and Lee’s earlier Once Upon A Time In A Battlefield (2003). Set during Korea’s Joseon Dynasty, the film is unusual in focusing on the women’s quarters of the royal palace, where an unexplained murder sets dangerous events into motion. Mixing elements of the historical costume drama, the crime thriller and Asian horror, the film ranks as a distinctive, well-crafted (and cruel) film debut.
Another mid-sized hit was the comedy Going By The Book, based on a script by the well known director Jang Jin and directed by newcomer Ra Hee-chan. The setup is simple: a soft-spoken but extremely conscientious policeman is asked to play the part of a bank robber in a highly realistic simulation of a robbery. He proves to be more clever and devoted to the task at hand than his superiors expect, however. Ultimately the film proved more popular than Jang Jin’s own 2007 release My Son, which seems to be one of the weaker items in his filmography.
Another trend, related perhaps to the current challenge facing the industry, was the increasing number of low-budget commercial films shot in HD format. Often with partial funding from TV broadcasters, the films are interesting because, despite being commercial in orientation, their low budget allows lesser-known directors a bit more creative freedom. One of the most interesting of 2007’s HD films was The Wonder Years, a nuanced look at the worries and fantasies of a reclusive 13-year old girl. The film is especially notable for the great performance coaxed out of teenage actress Lee Se-young by the film’s debut director Kim Hee-jung.
The year 2008 opened on a slightly more positive note, with the runaway success of two films that, before their release, were considered to be fairly low-profile. Forever The Moment focuses on the real-life experiences of Korea’s women’s handball team that competed at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Directed by Yim Soon-rye, who was previously pegged as an art house director with virtually no commercial potential, the film proved to be broadly popular among all age groups, especially women in their 30s (an increasingly influential segment of the viewing public). The film ultimately sold just over 4 million tickets.
Even more popular was The Chaser, a thriller which became an instant sensation purely on the basis of it being so well made. The film by debut director Na Hongjin drew numerous comparisons to Memories Of Murder (2003), despite being smaller in scale and featuring a much lower-profile cast. It’s particularly effective in creating suspense, not related to whether the killer will be identified or caught (that is dealt with fairly early), but in the fate of a woman left at the edge of death at the killer’s home. Like Memories Of Murder, the film takes a hard look at the ineptitude of the police force, and uses this to further heighten the suspense. Sure enough, remake rights to this film were sold as well, to Warner Bros. and the production team behind Academy Awardwinner The Departed.
The rest of the spring looks to be fairly quiet for Korean cinema, however, with most high profile releases being pushed back to the fall. The biggest genre film on the near horizon is The Guard Post, a military horror film set on the border between North and South Korea. From Kong Suchang, director of commercial and critical hit R-Point, the film is being given a major release by distributor Showbox.
But in general, 2008 will be crucial in terms of assessing the depth of the film industry’s downturn, and the extent to which audiences turn out for high profile upcoming projects like Kim Jee-woon’s western The Good, The Bad, The Weird (slated for a July release) and Park Chan-wook’s vampire film Thirst (next winter). The film industry continues to receive a lot of attention in Korea, and new business friendly president Lee Myungbak claims he will make cultural industries a priority in the coming years. But with many well known film companies threatened with downsizing or bankruptcy, the industry is still in need of a little good news.
Darcy Paquet