The South Korean Film Renaissance: Local Hitmakers, Global Provocateurs (Wesleyan Film)

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The South Korean Film Renaissance

Wesleyan Film

A series from Wesleyan University Press Edited by Jeanine Basinger The Wesleyan Film series takes a back-tobasics approach to the art of cinema. Books in the series deal with the formal, the historical, and the cultural—putting a premium on visual analysis, close readings, and an understanding of the history of Hollywood and international cinema, both artistically and industrially. The volumes are rigorous, critical, and accessible both to academics and to lay readers with a serious interest in ﬁlm. Series editor Jeanine Basinger, CorwinFuller Professor of Film Studies at Wesleyan University and Founder/Curator of the Wesleyan Cinema Archives, is the author of such landmark books as The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre, A Woman’s

Anthony Mann New and Expanded Edition by Jeanine Basinger It’s the Pictures That Got Small Hollywood Film Stars on 1950s Television Christine Becker The South Korean Film Renaissance Local Hitmakers, Global Provocateurs by Jinhee Choi The Films of Samuel Fuller If You Die, I’ll Kill You! by Lisa Dombrowski Physical Evidence Selected Film Criticism by Kent Jones

View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930– 1960, Silent Stars, and The Star Machine.

Action Speaks Louder Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie Revised and Expanded Edition by Eric Lichtenfeld Hollywood Ambitions Celebrity in the Movie Age by Marsha Orgeron A Splurch in the Kisser The Movies of Blake Edwards by Sam Wasson

The South Korean Film Renaissance N N N N Local Hitmakers N N Global Provocateurs N

J IN H EE CH O I

Wesleyan University Press Middletown, Connecticut

Published by Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress ∫ 2010 by Jinhee Choi All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1

The Korea Foundation has provided ﬁnancial assistance for the undertaking of this publication project. Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Choi, Jinhee. The South Korean ﬁlm renaissance: local hitmakers, global provocateurs / Jinhee Choi. p. cm. — (Wesleyan ﬁlm) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8195-6939-4 (cloth: alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8195-6940-0 (p: alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures—Korea (South) 2. Motion picture industry—Korea (South) I. Title. pn1993.5.k6c4845 791.43095195—dc22

2010 2009035924

■ To my father,

who loved Westerns and secretly admired Susan Hayward

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■

Contents

List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgments Introduction

xi

1

1 Faces of Globalization

15

2 Blockbusters, Korean Style

31

3 No Blood? No Tears! Gangster Cinema

60

4 I’m Not a Girl, Yet Not a Woman: Romance Films 5 Once Upon a Time in High School: Teen Pics

116

6 Not Just Metteurs-en-Scène? ‘‘High-Quality’’ Films 7

Riding the New Wave Afterword

85 144

164

193

Appendix 1. Box Ofﬁce Top Ten (1986–2006) Appendix 2. Korean Film Market Share

199

206

Appendix 3. Number of Films Produced/Released (1986–2006) Appendix 4. Number of Theaters/Screens (1986–2006)

208

Appendix 5. International Film Festivals: Award-Winning Films (1986–2006) Notes

217

Bibliography Index

209

241

233

207

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■ ■

Figures

Shiri, Kang Je-gyu, 1999

2.1 2.2 2.3

Yu aims his gun in Park’s direction 52 Park ﬁres back at Yu with consistent eye-line match 53 A cutaway to the squad before the camera crosses the axis of action 53 JSA, Park Chan-wook, 2000

2.4 2.5 2.6

Lee framed in a tight close-up 56 The camera pans right to show Choi in a similar shot scale 57 A delayed establishing shot that punctuates the scene with great tension 57 The General’s Son, Im Kwon-taek, 1991

3.1

Kim Du-han challenges a Japanese judo master

62

Beat, Kim Sung-su, 1997

3.2 3.3 3.4

Tae-su thrown out of the room after stabbing a mobster An impressionistic ﬁght scene 74 Min punctuates the impressionistic ﬁght 75

74

My Tutor Friend, Kim Kyeong-hyeong, 2003

4.1

Su-wan enjoys the attention from the enthusiastic crowd Asako in Ruby Shoes, E J-Yong, 2000

4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6

U-in glancing at the wall of a subway train 111 An advertisement features actress Kim Min-hee 111 An imaginary encounter between U-in and Aya 112 U-in turning around in pain 112 Aya glancing back at U-in 113

100

Memento Mori, Kim Tae-yong, Min Kyu-dong, 1999

5.1 5.2

The white piano evokes a usual horror mood A memorabilia-ﬁlled piano 132

132

Whispering Corridors, Park Ki-hyeong, 1998

5.3 5.4

Ms. Park hanging from the overpass 134 Jeong-suk’s suicide visually parallels Ms. Park’s death

135

Wishing Stairs, Yun Jae-yeon, 2003

5.5 5.6

Jin-seong’s truncated feet 136 Jin-seong sheds tears out of frustration

137

Memories of Murder, Bong Joon-ho, 2003

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5

The cramped mise-en-scène of a local restaurant 152 Gang-ho tumbles out of small attic 153 A small room in which an entire family lives 154 Jo ﬁnds a paper card the children play with 155 A container in which porn magazines are stored 155 A Tale of Two Sisters, Kim Ji-woon, 2003

6.6 6.7

The stepmother paces back and forth 162 An empty moment which awaits the entrance of a character Oldboy, Park Chang-wook, 2003

7.1

Dae-su digs a hole

177

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring, Kim Ki-duk, 2003

7.2

Doors open up to present the next act, ‘‘Summer’’

x Figures

181

162

Acknowledgments

A PhD dissertation usually undergoes various stages before it reaches book form, and this one is no exception. Without David Bordwell’s conviction that South Korean cinema was in, I might have chosen to write on a topic that seemed (at least to me) more ‘‘marketable.’’ I will always be grateful to David for showing me the way. A postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University provided me with both the time and the ﬁnancial support for this book to be reshaped to as it is now. I appreciate the warm reception of Dudley Andrew and Charles Musser in Film Studies and Anne Letterman from the Council on East Asian Studies. An sshrc Institutional research grant at Carleton University allowed me subsequent research trips to South Korea necessary to complete the manuscript and the Korea Foundation provided a subsidy for the publication of this book. I also wish to thank my former colleagues at Carleton University who generously granted me leave, as well as my current colleagues at the University of Kent, who saw me through the last phase of this project. This book has also beneﬁted from the comments and suggestions of its two anonymous reviewers. I appreciate Chris Berry’s enthusiasm and encouragement for this project. Parker Smathers at Wesleyan University Press patiently waited as the manuscript went through a series of revisions and Amanda Dupuis at University Press of New England provided assistance in polishing this manuscript. There was a fortuneteller who once predicted that I would receive two PhDs—not an MD/PhD, but two actual PhDs—in ‘‘rare ﬁelds.’’ Regardless of whether this story was true (or fabricated by my mother with speciﬁc intentions), I did end up earning two PhDs, one in philosophy and the other in ﬁlm studies, both at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There I met two of the most proliﬁc scholars around, Noël Carroll and David Bordwell, from whom I learned what it is to be an academic writer. Lea Jacobs, Vance Kepley, and Michael Curtin each helped me grow intellectually. Without friends and family, I would not have been able to see this book through. I thank Vince Bohlinger, who, despite our personality differences, xi

has been my best friend for over a decade, as well as Todd Borgerding, Patrick Keating, Katherine Spring, Rebecca Swender, who would congratulate me on the publication of this book if she were with us today, and Federico Windhausen, who searched, though in vain, for the right colored pencil. Julian Stringer and Lisa Dombrowski helped me ﬁnd the right publisher for this book. My mother has always been my biggest fan, and my big brother, his family, and my second brother have always stood by my side. Lastly, I dedicate this book to my father, from whom I got my supposed brains. He passed away several years ago, and I never had the chance to say good-bye and tell him how much he meant to me. A different version of Chapter 3 was originally published in Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities 27.3 (Summer 2008). Portions of Chapters 5 and 6 originally appeared in Horror to the Extreme: Changing Boundaries in Asian Cinema published by Hong Kong University Press (2009). JC The University of Kent Canterbury, U.K. March 2009

xii Acknowledgments

Introduction

In the precredit sequence of Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, 2003), Dae-su, the protagonist, stops a man from committing suicide, and he then tells the man the story of his ﬁfteen-year imprisonment. Later in the ﬁlm, Mi-do, the female lead, reads the diary that Dae-su wrote while he was locked in a cell, and she sheds tears at Dae-su’s hardship and loneliness. Toward the end of the ﬁlm Dae-su tells his story again, this time to a female hypno-therapist, as he begs her to erase the memory of his incestuous relationship with his daughter Mi-do. This urge to tell one’s story is emblematic of the current status of the South Korean ﬁlm industry. South Korean cinema is telling its own story, both personal and national, and it has been heard loud and clear both inside and outside the country. The South Korean Film Renaissance will examine the transformation of the South Korean ﬁlm industry and the corresponding formal changes between 1986 and 2006, years that mark signiﬁcant turning points within the history of the Korean Motion Picture Law (mpl). In 1986 the mpl was amended to grant direct distribution by major Hollywood studios; and two decades later, the mpl was further modiﬁed to reduce the screen quota from 146 to 73 days allotted for domestically produced ﬁlms. During the past two decades, however, South Korea saw its domestic ﬁlm industry blossom, and its ﬁlm culture matured signiﬁcantly. In the late 1990s the ‘‘Korean blockbuster’’ established itself as a feasible production/marketing strategy within the South Korean domestic market, with the commercial success of such ﬁlms as Shiri (Kang Je-gyu, 1999) and Joint Security Area (also known as JSA, Park Chan-wook, 2000). Since then, box ofﬁce records have been constantly exceeded by subsequent blockbusters, including Silmido (Kang Woo-suk, 2004), Taegukgi (Kang Je-gyu, 2004), and The Host (2006, Bong Joon-ho)— which attracted more than 13 million viewers out of a population of 48 million.∞ South Korean cinema has become one of the strongest commercial ﬁlm industries in the region, outperforming Hollywood cinema at the local box ofﬁce. In the past ten years, annual paid cinema admissions in the re1

gion have more than tripled from 42 million in 1996 to 148 million in 2005, during which time Hollywood’s market share was cut in half, dropping from 77 percent to 36–38 percent.≤ By 2005 South Korea had become the ﬁfth largest theatrical market in the world, with $890 million in box-ofﬁce receipts. The box-ofﬁce success of domestically produced ﬁlms has coincided with international recognition of South Korean ﬁlmmakers on the ﬁlm-festival circuit. In 2002 Im Kwon-taek was named Best Director at Cannes for his ﬁlm Chihwason, and Lee Chang-dong received the Special Director award at the Venice Film Festival for his ﬁlm Oasis. In 2004 Kim Ki-duk won major awards: the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for Samaritan Girl and the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival for 3-Iron. In the same year, Park Chan-wook—director of JSA and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002)—took home Cannes Film Festival’s Grand Prix for Oldboy. The widely circulated term Hallyu (literally, ‘‘Korean wave’’) underscores the emerging popularity of South Korean culture in the regional market.≥ Hallyu is typically associated with exported South Korean television series but also encompasses the dissemination of South Korean cultural products in general, including music and cinema. The rising stardom of South Korean actors such as Bae Yong-joon, Choi Ji-woo, Lee Byung-hun, and Jang Dong-gun has further helped the Korean industry sell distribution rights to neighboring countries, as their fan base demands the simultaneous release of their ﬁlms across the region.∂ The South Korean Film Renaissance situates the inﬂuence of South Korean cinema in the world ﬁlm scene within the context of globalization by focusing on how the South Korean ﬁlm industry adapted to regional and global demands by modernizing industry practices and elevating ﬁlm production value. The South Korean ﬁlm renaissance underscores the complex nexus of globalization; and like every other industry in Korea, the ﬁlm industry has been and continues to be tightly controlled by the South Korean government. At the end of the Korean War (1950–1953), the Korean ﬁlm industry was negligible, producing fewer than thirty ﬁlms a year. By the late 1950s, however, the industry had begun to grow. By 1959 there were seventy-one production companies, which produced over a hundred ﬁlms.∑ The mpl was ﬁrst legislated in 1962 with the aim of accelerating the industrialization of the Korean motion picture business. The government wished to model the Korean ﬁlm industry after the Hollywood studio system by eliminating small, unstable production companies. Such an attempt only 2

THE SOUTH KOREAN FILM RENAISSANCE

resulted in further instability of the industry with many small- to mid-sized companies going bankrupt. Despite these drawbacks, Korean cinema enjoyed its ﬁrst renaissance in the 1960s with the emergence of new production companies and commercial success at the box ofﬁce. In the 1970s, under Park Chung-hee’s dictatorship, a new set of regulations was imposed on the ﬁlm industry. In 1973 the mpl changed from a registration system to a license system.∏ A production license was given only to ﬁlm companies with studio facilities and capital. The number of studios that received licenses under the revised mpl amounted in total to fewer than twenty.π This number remained the same until the ﬁfth amendment of the mpl was introduced in 1984. A quota system for production and distribution was also implemented, in order to encourage reinvestment in ﬁlm production using distribution revenue. Only studios that met the production quota could earn distribution rights. However, the productiondistribution quota system did not serve its original purpose in securing the domestic market. Instead, it was exploited, with studios making low-budget quickies that would ﬁll the production quota in order to focus on the importation and distribution of more proﬁtable foreign ﬁlms. With the country’s rapid economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s, the Korean government was under pressure to liberalize its import policies and ﬁnancial markets for all industries, including ﬁlm. As part of a bargaining session at the Uruguay Round meeting, the United States pressed for the abolition of protective measures that had been guarding the South Korean ﬁlm industry. The industry had relied on the quota system to gain screen time for its product and to ensure a certain amount of revenue. Against the U.S. government’s continuing press to abolish quotas, in 1999 ﬁlmmakers, along with actors and actresses, protested and expressed concerns over the consequences of eliminating the quota system. In 2006, when the South Korean government ﬁnally agreed to reduce the screen quota to seventythree days for the Free Trade Agreement, there was a ‘‘protest relay,’’ which would always ﬁnd a few actors or ﬁlmmakers demonstrating in downtown Seoul. The protest relay lasted for months.∫ South Korea also faced competition from Japan, occupier of the Korean peninsula beginning in 1910, whose media had been banned after Korea gained its independence in 1945. In 1998 the Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced its plan to lift the ban on Japanese pop culture.Ω The older generation, who experienced colonial rule directly, continued to express anxiety and resentment toward Japan. Three and a half decades of Japanese Introduction 3

colonial rule are still vivid in the collective memory of the nation. Korean workers were transported to work in coal mines in Siberia and elsewhere; Korean women were conscripted as jeongsindae (comfort women) for the Japanese Army during World War II. Koreans were also forced to adopt Japanese names and were taught in Japanese at school. The younger generation, on the other hand, openly accepts and enjoys Japanese media saturation in the form of manga, anime, television series, ﬁlm, and music. By 1999 Japanese ﬁlms that had been circulated at ﬁlm festivals could earn distribution rights in South Korea, and Japanese artists’ performances in small venues (fewer than two thousand seats) were allowed. In 2004 Japanese ﬁlms of all ratings were allowed, and Japanese tv drama series were shown on cable television. The last to be imported were Japanese tv variety shows, including comedy shows and anime feature ﬁlms, both of which gained permission in 2004 and 2006, respectively.∞≠ The anxiety over ‘‘direct’’ competition with Hollywood and Japan within the domestic market, however, was slowly overcome with the generational shift within the industry. The relaxation of restrictions on production, in conjunction with the inauguration of a civilian government, provided an opportunity for independent production companies and a new generation of directors—often identiﬁed as the ‘‘386 Generation’’—to propel an industrial boom unprecedented in the history of South Korean cinema. The term ‘‘386,’’ referring to the speed of an Intel computer chip, has been appropriated by the South Korean media to designate a generation—in their thirties when the term began to circulate—whose members were born in the 1960s and attended college in the 1980s. There is an overlap between the 386 Generation and South Korean baby boomers, who were born between 1955 and 1963. But the use of the term ‘‘386 Generation’’ underscores a shared cultural and political proclivity, whereas ‘‘baby boomers’’ is a less culturally speciﬁc demographic term in the Korean context. For those in college during the 1980s, it was a time when the South Korean people experienced painful political turmoil and trauma. In ﬁlm history, we often ﬁnd cases in which a national ﬁlm industry has been transformed with the arrival of a new generation of ﬁlmmakers. French New Wave directors, for example, most of whom were cinephiles, reshaped French ﬁlm culture and industry in the 1960s. Hong Kong New Wave directors, with their kindred sensibilities, launched the golden era of Hong Kong cinema in the 1980s. Likewise, 386 Generation directors of a similar political predilection contribute to the current industry boom by quickly adapting 4

THE SOUTH KOREAN FILM RENAISSANCE

themselves to industry demands. The concept of ‘‘generation’’ implies that a demographic group tends to manifest similar attitudes or stances toward its national and cultural history because of its shared experience. However, the collective experience of 386 Generation directors is in and of itself insufﬁcient to characterize the speciﬁc characteristics of the South Korean ﬁlm renaissance. According to Pierre Bourdieu, sociopolitical and cultural proclivities of artists are manifested in their work only through demands from and positions available within ‘‘the ﬁeld.’’∞∞ The opening up of the Korean ﬁlm market, brought about by the world ﬁlm industry’s globalization process, creates demand for commercially viable ﬁlms; and with conglomerates’ and venture capitalists’ money pouring into the South Korean ﬁlm industry, a majority of 386 Generation directors pursued cinema with entertainment value, comparable—even superior—to that produced by Hollywood. Along with the expansion of the commercial ﬁlm industry, local governments launched international ﬁlm festivals. In 1996 the Pusan International Film Festival (piff), held in Busan (also known as Pusan), a southern port city, was initiated with the aim of transferring the cultural foci from other Asian cosmopolitan cities such as Hong Kong and Tokyo to the local cities of Korea.∞≤ piff is now touted as Asia’s premier ﬁlm festival. The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, launched in 1997, and the Jeonju International Film Festival, launched in 2000, have provided further venues to showcase Korean cinema for a wider international audience. Small-scale independent and/or documentary ﬁlm festivals such as the Human Rights Film Festival, the Queer Film and Video Festival, and the Women’s Film Festival have proliferated, challenging the hegemonic discourse on the national identity and providing alternate public spheres in which people address the socioeconomic and cultural issues of class, gender, and sexual identity.∞≥ South Korean cinema provides a model for what Chris Berry calls ‘‘full service cinema,’’ which ranges from both commercial and art cinema to independent ﬁlmmaking, documentary, and animation.∞∂ The bifurcated pursuit of both commercial and festival-oriented ﬁlms can be partly attributed to the South Korean government’s control—although weakened of late—and support of the ongoing renaissance. The tax incentives for those who invest in the ﬁlm industry have attracted and introduced a new generation of ﬁnanciers to the ﬁlm industry during the Asian economic crises.∞∑ The South Korean government has also been preparing for a new era of Korean cinema by educating the new talent that the industry has been so desperately looking for. Such directors as Lee Jeong-hyang, Introduction 5

Bong Joon-ho, Hur Jin-ho, and E J-Yong (a.k.a. Lee Je-yong), all of whom have been both commercially and critically acclaimed, graduated from the Korean Academy of Film Art (kafa), which was established in 1984. The Korean government’s indirect involvement with the new ongoing renaissance challenges the divide often drawn between the global and the national or local. Although Korean cinema earned recognition as commercial cinema outside the country after the success of the blockbusters, the transformation of the industry had begun in the mid-1980s, with the 1986 revision of the mpl in response to the U.S. government’s demand to abolish some of the protective measures for domestically produced ﬁlms. Yet current attempts to deﬁne the starting point of the New Korean cinema are unsatisfactory. Authors such as Kim Kyung-hyun and Yi Hyo-in, who identify the beginning of the New Korean cinema more or less with the Korean New Wave, mark 1988 as the starting point of the New Korean cinema.∞∏ The precise referent of the Korean New Wave shifts from author to author, but it is mostly associated with the directors born in the 1950s—slightly older than the 386 Generation—and who debuted in the latter half of the 1980s: directors such as Jang Sun-woo (b. 1952), Park Kwang-su (b. 1955), and Lee Myung-se (b. 1957). For example, in 1988 two of the New Wavers, Park Kwang-su and Lee Myung-se, debuted with Chil-su and Man-su and Gagman respectively. In contrast, though, for industry personnel such as Shim Jae-myung (mk Pictures), Cha Seung-jae (Sidus), and Shin Cheol (Shin Cine), 1992’s The Marriage Story (dir. Kim Ui-seok), which was born out of a marriage between Chungmuro (the Korean ﬁlm district) and corporate conglomerates, signaled an important turning point.∞π Shin Chi-Yun and Julian Stringer note a transformation at the industry level around the time Im Kwon-taek’s Sopyonje (Seopyeonje, 1993) was released. Post-Sopyonje cinema departs radically from the cultural cinema of the 1980s. I shy away from identifying the ‘‘newness’’ of Korean cinema in either the New Wave ﬁlms of the late 1980s or the more commercially oriented ﬁlms of the 1990s and onward. I refer to the ongoing phenomenon as a second South Korean ﬁlm renaissance, a label that can encompass both the resurgence of socially conscious, and/or aesthetically experimental ﬁlms and the industrial boom. A precedent can be found in the ﬁlm renaissance of the 1960s,∞∫ when the number of commercially successful ﬁlms soared in conjunction with the emergence of a new generation of Korean directors, such

6

THE SOUTH KOREAN FILM RENAISSANCE

as Yu Hyun-mok, Shin Sang-ok, Hong Seong-gi, Lee Man-hui, Kim Ki-duk, and Jeong Chang-hwa. A further similarity between these two renaissances can be found in the broadening of production trends. Although melodrama had been a predominant genre in the Korean ﬁlm industry in the 1960s, comprising up to 70 percent of the ﬁlms produced,∞Ω Korean audiences saw ﬁlms that embodied various trends, including costume drama—Seong Chun Hyang (Shin Sang-ok, 1961); comedy—Romance Papa (Shin Sang-ok, 1961) and Petty Middle Manager (Lee Bong-rae, 1961); youth ﬁlms—Private Tutor (Kim Ki-duk, 1963) and The Barefooted Young (Kim Ki-duk, 1964); action—A Bonanza (Jeong Chang-hwa, 1961); horror/thriller—The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young, 1960), The Devil’s Stairway (Lee Man-hui, 1964), and The Public Cemetery Under the Moon (Kwon Cheol-hwi, 1967); and war ﬁlms—Five Marines (Kim Ki-duk, 1961) and The Marines who Never Returned (Lee Man-hui, 1963). Contemporary Korean audiences are witnessing the rebirth and transformation of similar genres. These two renaissances, however, mark signiﬁcantly different historical junctures in the history of South Korean cinema. If the ﬁrst renaissance came into being in the midst of the Park Chung-hee regime’s failed attempt to modernize the ﬁlm sector—a by-product rather than an intentional outcome—the current one is a result of the increasing globalization of the world ﬁlm industry and of Korea’s striving for cultural visibility; it is also an attempt to reach a wider regional and global audience. The use of the dates 1986 and 2006 does not suggest that there is a clear-cut beginning and end to the current renaissance. Rather, these dates provide a timeframe that allows for a fruitful discussion of how the Korean ﬁlm industry responded to the increasingly globalized world ﬁlm industry. As Darcy Paquet notes, unlike the ﬁfth amendment of the mpl in 1984, which was designed to reform an outdated mode of production, the sixth amendment was a direct result of the pressures coming from outside Korea.≤≠ In 1986 the Korean government ﬁnally amended the mpl to respond to demands from the Motion Picture Export Association of America (mpeaa) and alleviated the regulations on foreign investment in the Korean ﬁlm industry. The import quota and the tax imposed on foreign ﬁlms were also abolished in the same year.≤∞ In 2006, two decades after the sixth amendment, the screen quota, which was the government’s last-resort attempt to protect domestically produced ﬁlms, was reduced in half, as Korea prepared to enter negotiations on

Introduction 7

the bilateral Free Trade Agreement with the United States. The recordbreaking box-ofﬁce success of The Host in the same year made it look as if the Korean ﬁlm industry was unaffected by the decision. But in 2007 Korean ﬁlms saw a drop in audience attendance; it was the ﬁrst box-ofﬁce drop in a decade.≤≤ Throughout the book, the discussion of ‘‘Korean cinema’’ primarily focuses on feature ﬁlms made in South Korea, but the approach taken here is hardly protectionist or reﬂectionist. The concern is how the concept of ‘‘national cinema’’ is articulated both within and outside the South Korean ﬁlm industry, often as a marketing strategy. Globalization is not, as previously construed by some cultural theorists, a totalizing, homogenizing process that erases the local speciﬁcity. Rather, as Darrell Davis notes, ‘‘Nationality sparks and thickens instead of fading away.’’≤≥ Such a dynamic between the global and the local foregrounds the fact that even if the notion of national cinema is challenged as a vehicle to carry national identity, it still serves as a formative category, providing ingredients to be explored and exploited by global corporations and local ﬁlmmakers, by festival programmers and critics, and by academics and individual viewers.≤∂ The domestic enthusiasm for Korean cinema should partly be attributed to the evocation of ‘‘consumer nationalism.’’ In 1999 the industry protested when the South Korean government proposed further changes to mpl. Earlier changes had already granted the United States direct distribution rights. The protests directed viewers’ attention to the unfair nature of Hollywood’s demands for ‘‘free’’ trade and to the endangerment of the domestic ﬁlm industry’s very existence. Laura Nelson in Measured Excess characterizes the South Korean consumer pattern from the 1970s to the 1990s as an instance of consumer nationalism: consumers basing their decisions on the best interests of the nation and not on the interests of individuals.≤∑ South Korea’s export-driven economic polices since the 1970s put heavy emphasis on producing exportable goods, often overpricing the consumer goods on the domestic market in order to compensate for the export loss.≤∏ The South Korean government demanded sacriﬁce from consumers for the better good—i.e., national prosperity and unity. A similar rhetoric is heard when critics and ﬁlmmakers alike encourage South Korean audiences to consume ‘‘Korean’’ cinema. The gnp, which was the buzzword for South Koreans in the 1970s and 1980s, had been replaced by the South Korean cinema’s market share in the 1990s and early 2000s; both share the limitation of emphasizing the national over the individual. 8

THE SOUTH KOREAN FILM RENAISSANCE

My approach should also be distinguished from a symptomatic approach, which is a tendency still dominant in both critical and academic discourse on national cinema—a tendency to ﬁxate upon a nation’s history and culture as the sole source of the speciﬁcity of national cinema. To reduce national cinema to that element exclusively is to discount the nuances that a national cinema embodies. Paul Willemen, for instance, attributes the narrative impasses found in such ﬁlms as The Aimless Bullet (Yu Hyun-mok, 1960) to the fact that Korea as a nation had always been ambivalent about embracing modernity.≤π Modernity was introduced to Korea in conﬂicting forms— ﬁrst through Christianity, then through Japanese colonialism, and ﬁnally through the military dictatorship, which was given implicit support by the United States. Modernization came with undesirable baggage—feudalism, colonialism, dictatorship, and neocolonialism—depriving both the national and individual sense of agency. Korea is stranded between the past and future, unable to either return or move forward.≤∫ Willemen diagnoses the narrative blockage in Korean cinema as the outcome or a symptom of a national impasse. He observes that the narrative often remains unresolved and that any recourse to tradition or to some form of irrationalism—shamanism, madness, or hysteria—as a resolution or closure, is abstract in nature and offers no tangible alternative to the current state patriarchy. A similar approach can be found in the brief sketch by Ahn Byung Sup of the history of Korean cinema from the 1910s to the 1980s. He claims that the prevalent emotional overtone in Korean cinema is sentimentalism, which is an expression of a national sentiment, han. Ahn characterizes han as a frame of mind or, better, an attitude—a sorrowful lament for persecution and a resignation to it.≤Ω According to Ahn, sentimentality originated in Korea’s colonial past and was disseminated in Korea through the Japanese shinpa (shimpa in Japanese, literally meaning ‘‘new wave’’ but often referring to melodramatic tearjerkers), which was imported at the turn of the twentieth century. The satiric tradition in eighteenth-century Korean literature and performance art is replaced by sentimentalism, and the little humor that is found in Korean cinema of the 1950s and 1960s is a variation of sentimentality in the sense that it hinges upon the viliﬁcation and the subsequent punishment of the antagonist.≥≠ Nancy Abelmann shares the same kind of methodology, although hers is more nuanced than Ahn’s. She attributes the prevalent melodramatic sensibility in Korean culture to the nation’s rapid historical transformation. Melodrama, broadly construed, provides one with both a mental framework with which to apprehend unpredictable Introduction 9

social change and mobility and a vehicle with which ‘‘to dramatize issues central to rapidly changing societies.’’≥∞ Underneath such parallel explanations, han functions like the Hegelian spirit, sustaining and propelling dominant cultural forms in Korea regardless of whether they are imported or indigenous. These variants of the reﬂectionist approach, although insightful, are rather deterministic. One must further consider the levels of mediation between dominant cultural forms and national history and/or sentiment. It is certainly true that the socioeconomic and political circumstances of a nation-state seep into popular forms, but their manifestation is always ﬁltered through industry structure and demand, not to mention the ﬁlmmakers’ own perceptions and predilections. Instead of postulating national cinema as symptomatic manifestation of national history and culture, I will argue that national cinema is a strategic construct, serving as a guide for both product differentiation and artistic appreciation. The relationship between national cinema and history is ﬂuid, refraction rather than reﬂection, and what is intriguing about contemporary Korean cinema is how the shared political history of the 1980s has become a commercial lure for the audience.≥≤ The concern with cultural speciﬁcity within the global contour of industry practices often limits the discussion to ‘‘local content,’’ the primary ingredients of which comprise local history and heritage. This book extends the discussion to include not only local speciﬁcity but also the crossfertilizations of aesthetic norms and conventions across the region and the Paciﬁc—i.e., Hollywood. ‘‘Globalization’’ is often equated with the late capitalist logic and/or corporate practices, but one must consider how such practices result in converging aesthetic canons across nation-states. Current discussion on national and transnational cinema treats these two categories as if they corresponded to two different ‘‘modes’’ of ﬁlm practice. A ‘‘national cinema’’ is produced by a domestic ﬁlm industry, circulates within a nation-state, and appeals to a national audience; whereas ‘‘transnational cinema’’ is ﬁnanced internationally, is distributed more widely than the country of production, and is able to appeal to audiences across national boundaries.≥≥ However, national cinema constantly weaves in and out of these two sets of industry modes. If, as Aihwa Ong notes, the transnational aspect of national cinema should be located not in the transcendence of national borders but in the transformation of diverging cultures across the national boundaries,≥∂ South Korean cinema showcases how it localizes and promotes such ﬁlm practices 10

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as blockbusters and ‘‘high quality’’ ﬁlms and transforms generic and aesthetic conventions found in other national cinemas. Instead of identifying the speciﬁcity of South Korean cinema in its national history and culture, the approach to Korean cinema adopted in this book is primarily relational and comparative, focusing on how contemporary Korean cinema creates, adopts, borrows, and transforms ﬁlm practices and aesthetic norms as it addresses issues that are of immediate concern to Korean audiences, such as national identity, class mobility, gender, and sexuality. As Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson note, norms and conventions are not ironclad formulas to be followed, but rather paradigms that provide sets of artistic as well as technical choices.≥∑ With the development of alternate means of distribution of cinema via vcd and dvd, aesthetic conventions may, as David Desser observes, turn into an ‘‘instant canon’’ that can be franchised and alluded to.≥∏ A relational approach will be helpful in situating Korean cinema within a larger context—both regional and global—and delineating the characteristics of South Korean cinema. An immediate difﬁculty arises when examining the second South Korean ﬁlm renaissance: it is still very much an ongoing process, and there are endless mergers and reshufﬂings in the industry among ﬁlm companies and conglomerates. The lack of industry journals in South Korea also poses a problem for scholars. I have consulted the U.S. industry journals Variety and The Hollywood Reporter to grasp the industry discourse, and I have studied popular Korean ﬁlm magazines such as Cine 21 and Film 2.0 to learn surrounding Korean local popular discourse. Most data cited are based on ﬁgures provided in Variety or by the Korean Film Council (kofic). The kofic, which is now in charge of national ﬁlm promotion and regulation of ﬁlm distribution, was established in 1999 as a replacement for the Korean Motion Picture Promotion Corp., a national ﬁlm board.≥π But most statistics provided by the kofic have, until lately, been estimates based on data gathered only in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, and those data provided by distributors. As more and more screens are computerized (now up to 75 percent nationwide), box ofﬁce data and reported revenue will be more accurate, but they are still far from exhaustive. And with ﬁlmmakers and producers alike chasing after new trends and tastes, it is hard to assess whether directors can or will continue to produce ﬁlms akin to their previous work. This is one of the reasons why the examination of contemporary South Korean cinema in this book should be considered diagnostic rather than terminal. Introduction 11

The ﬁrst chapter delineates the ways in which the South Korean ﬁlm industry has dealt with the industry crisis that resulted from pressure from the United States and other countries. How did Chungmuro seek alternative sources of ﬁnance from chaebeol (South Korean conglomerates) and then from a new generation of venture capitalists? What are some of the governmental policies implemented to facilitate and encourage these new ﬁnanciers to invest in the ﬁlm industry? How did these changes in the industry enable the 386 Generation directors to fulﬁll their ambitions? Under the rapid transformation that the South Korean ﬁlm industry underwent, major production trends and cycles will be examined with an eye toward their economic, cultural, and aesthetic ramiﬁcations: blockbusters, gangster cinema, romance ﬁlms, teen pics, and high-quality ﬁlms— ﬁlms that attempt to be both commercially viable and artistically competent.≥∫ These trends are categorized in light of the industry discourse found in trade papers and reviews, and each chapter is ordered with respect to the relative chronological signiﬁcance, as well as the popularity and production hierarchy, of each trend. The second chapter examines the key phenomenon that allowed Chungmuro to successfully compete with Hollywood: the blockbuster. What are some of the economic consequences of producing large-budget ﬁlms in an industry as small as South Korea’s? What is most characteristic of ‘‘Korean blockbusters’’? Why do many successful ﬁlms— Shiri (1999), JSA (2000), Silmido (2004), Taegukgi (2004), and The Host (2006), for example—appeal to the history of South Korea? Conversely, why have South Korean science-ﬁction blockbusters, including Yesterday (2002), Tube (2002), and Natural City (2003), all failed at the box ofﬁce? During this boom, South Korean gangster cinema has not only become one of the most proﬁtable trends (as evidenced by the box ofﬁce success of 2001’s Friend) but has also provided subject matter for other ﬁlm cycles to adopt and/or satirize. Chapter Three traces the resurgence of gangster cinema in East Asia and highlights some of the similarities and differences between Hong Kong and Korean gangster ﬁlms. Next, so-called jopok comedy (jopok means ‘‘organized crime’’ in Korean) is examined, including No. 3 (Song Neung-han, 1997), the My Wife Is a Gangster series (2001–2006), and the Marrying the Maﬁa series (2002–2006), as is the way these comedies both piggyback on and parody the popularity of gangster cinema. Although critics and academics in South Korea have never regarded romantic comedy as a serious genre, the actors and actresses associated with romantic comedy and drama—Shim Eun-ha, Cha Tae-hyun, Kim Ha-neul, 12

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and Jeon Ji-hyun—have earned their fame in part thanks to the increasing regional popularity of the Korean television series—they have become hot commodities. Korean ﬁlmmakers in turn are learning that romantic comedy is easily exported to the regional market. In Chapter Four, I examine how romantic comedy has undergone a transformation, with a focus on gender. Korean popular romantic comedies often feature an eccentric, hysterical heroine, such as Jeon in My Sassy Girl (Kwak Jae-young, 2001) or Su-wan in My Tutor Friend (Kim Kyeong-hyeong, 2003). The second half of this chapter turns to romantic drama, which often utilizes spatial and temporal distance as an obstacle to the union of a heterosexual couple. High school has become a transgeneric setting for ﬁlms of various cycles, including gangster ﬁlms such as Beat (Kim Sung-su, 1997), horror ﬁlms such as Whispering Corridors (Park Ki-hyeong, 1998) and its sequels, the sciﬁ/martial arts hybrid Volcano High (Kim Tae-gyun, 2001), dramas including Once Upon a Time in High School (Yu Ha, 2004), social-problem ﬁlms such as Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie (Jang Sun-woo, 1997), and comedies such as My Boss My Hero (Yun Je-gyun, 2001). High school becomes a central site of oppression, anxiety, and romance, although each ﬁlm cycle spins the high school setting for its own generic purposes. Chapter Five will examine how youth ﬁlms achieve both intergenerational and intragenerational appeal by evoking nostalgia as well as by critiquing Korea’s current education system. Chapter Six focuses on the so-called high-quality ﬁlm (also referred to as the ‘‘well-made’’ ﬁlm within the South Korean ﬁlm industry), a trend that began with the commercial success of Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder.≥Ω The term was coined in Korea to refer to ﬁlms that, while commercially successful, also showcase the director’s artistic mastery and/or vision. Advocates of ‘‘high-quality’’ ﬁlms attempt to differentiate their ﬁlmmaking from both ends of the production hierarchy: low-budget comedy and spectacledriven blockbusters. Such discourse aims to correct the public’s misconception that commercial ﬁlms cater to an audience’s quickly changing tastes and thus lack aesthetic merit. Bong’s suspense thriller Memories of Murder (2003), E’s costume picture Untold Scandal (2003), and Kim Ji-woon’s horror ﬁlm A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) will be discussed in this chapter. Although each director works in a different genre, a common thread can be found in their attempts to elevate each genre by a reﬁned use of mise-en-scène. An examination of various emergent production trends in the South Korean ﬁlm industry will challenge an often-drawn distinction of commercial vs. art-cinema mode. The last chapter details the active negotiation Introduction 13

between Korean New Wave directors and the South Korean ‘‘commercial’’ ﬁlm industry. Art cinema, like commercially driven ﬁlms, is an institutionalized practice, governed by international ﬁlm movements and trends.∂≠ Kim Ki-duk and Park Chan-wook pursue what is called ‘‘Asia Extreme,’’ the aesthetics of gore and violence, while Hong Sang-soo’s ﬁlms are aligned with Asian Minimalism. I will examine how each director is linked to (and attempts to transcend) such an aesthetic label and further discuss how international circulation of the directors’ ﬁlms at ﬁlm festivals transforms their depiction of violence and gender. Korean Romanization in this book follows the Revised Romanization issued by the Ministry of Culture in 2000, with the exception of proper names—especially directors, politicians, corporations, and production companies—that have already earned currency outside South Korea (e.g. Park Chan-wook instead of Bak Chan-wuk and Myung Film rather than Myeong Film). In the main body, Asian names maintain their usual order of family name followed by given name.

14

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1

Faces of Globalization

For the past decade, the notion of globalization has become one of the dominant frameworks for scholarly discussions of national cinema. Although the consequences of globalization—especially cultural consequences—are still part of an ongoing debate, there seems to be at least some agreement on the ‘‘impetus’’ of globalization. Arif Dirlik explains global capitalism in terms of a new international division of labor, the decentering of global economy, and the emergence of multinational corporations.∞ That is, new technologies expedited a divorce between capital, production, and consumption, which makes it increasingly difﬁcult to deﬁne a corporation in terms of nationality and to pinpoint commodities’ origins. Whether these conditions are materialized around the globe, however, remains to be examined within the speciﬁc political and historical context of a nation-state, given the varying degrees of the local government’s involvement and policies that block and redirect such global ﬂows. Whether the aims and practices of global capitalism render the transnational imaginary or homogenized culture has been a question that remains to be further challenged, given the cultural speciﬁcity of nation-states and the varying sensibilities of the people within a nation-state. This chapter examines the conditions of globalization that transformed the ﬁlm industry in South Korea and its strategies to adapt to global interdependence and connectivity. Like many other nation-states in East Asia, South Korea confronted the global demands to liberalize the media market as the surplus from exports grew.≤ The Korean government’s decision to lift the protective measures for the Korean ﬁlm industry was part of the government’s ongoing negotiations to protect leading export industries such as the manufacturing industry and telecommunication technology. However, after the South Korean media’s initial opposition to the government’s decision, they eventually began actively seeking methods to cope with unfavorable conditions. The govern-

15

ment’s decision, unfavorable toward the South Korean industry, further sparked an ambition among industry personnel to become an active agent in the regional, if not global, media industry rather than to be a passive transmitter of global ﬂows. Subsequent cultural currents witnessed in South Korea were rich and complex, yielding an opportunity for the Korean audiences to reﬂect on both the national past and present. ‘‘Think globally, act locally’’—a catchphrase that often sums up the dynamic between the global and the local in late capitalism—does not fully explain the cultural formation and transformation that took place in South Korea in response to globalization for the past two decades. They demand a careful delineation of the relationship between the local media industry, the government, and the audiences: these relationships are in harmony but also sometimes in conﬂict.

The Rise of Korean Media Conglomerates

In 1988, two years after the Motion Picture Law (mpl) allowed major U.S. studios to release their ﬁlms directly into the Korean market, Twentieth Century Fox opened its own distribution ofﬁce in Korea, followed by Warner Brothers (1989), Columbia (1990), and Disney (1993).≥ Furthermore, the United States continued to pressure the Korean government to eliminate the screen quota system. The crisis in the ﬁlm industry was seen as not only economic but also cultural. Most of those who advocated the quota system thought of it as a means of protecting cultural independence. Direct distribution by the Hollywood majors, in conjunction with the liberalization of the ﬁlm industry in general, stirred up Chungmuro, Korea’s ﬁlm district. Until 1985 the South Korean government enforced a ‘‘linked productiondistribution quota,’’ and limited the number of imports to one-third of domestically produced ﬁlms. The rationale behind this was the securing and sustaining of a production-distribution loop; revenues earned from distribution of imports would be reinvested in domestic ﬁlm production. Production companies often lack sufﬁcient funds for producing ﬁlms and must seek investments from local distributors and exhibitors. With exclusive rights to import ﬁlms, production companies normally distributed ﬁlms in large cities such as Seoul and Busan, but then sold rights to local distributors for a ﬁxed fee in exchange for their investments.∂ Local distributors and exhibitors, in return, could inﬂuence the production process by demanding that the studios incorporate generic plotlines or hire stars with a strong box16

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ofﬁce draw. Hollywood’s direct distribution robbed local distributors of their incentive to invest in domestically produced ﬁlms. They had invested in Korean ﬁlms in order to earn rights to distribute imports. After productiondistribution quotas were lifted, production companies no longer owned exclusive rights to imports as they used to, and they were unable to bargain with local distributors and exhibitors. The apparent crisis, however, propelled a modernization of production practices in the Korean ﬁlm industry, as a new generation of ﬁlmmakers and producers quickly adapted to the changing mediascape. Chungmuro began to ﬁnd alternative methods of ﬁnancing domestically produced ﬁlms. New capital began ﬂowing into Chungmuro in the late 1980s, mainly from conglomerates and venture-capital funding. After the U.S. majors started to distribute their ﬁlms directly, conglomerates such as Daewoo, Samsung, Hyundai, skc, and Cheil Jedang began to invest in Korean ﬁlms in order to secure home-video markets. Daewoo launched its entertainment division in 1988—earlier than its rivals Samsung and Hyundai. Its investments were channeled into a range of activities, including building cinemas, producing Korean ﬁlms, acquiring and releasing U.S. ﬁlms, and creating a cable channel. Daewoo made partial investments in ﬁlm projects in order to earn the distribution rights in return. The ﬁlms that resulted include Mr. Momma (1992), Two Cops (1994), and To Top My Wife (1995)—all of which were directed by Kang Woo-suk—and Kim Sung-su’s directorial debut, Run Away (1995).∑ A Single Spark (Park Kwang-su, 1996) was one of only a few ﬁlms fully ﬁnanced by Daewoo. Daewoo also had an output deal with New Line Cinema that ran through the year 2000.∏ Daewoo’s cable channel, Daewoo Cinema Network (dcn), and theater chains in Seoul provided exhibition venues for the company. Samsung followed suit. The Samsung Corporation had been involved in production since the early 1990s, ﬁnancing box-ofﬁce hits The Marriage Story (Kim Ui-seok, 1992) and Taebaek Mountain (Im Kwon-taek, 1994).π In 1995 Samsung created Samsung Entertainment Group (seg) to manage its media and entertainment division. After the establishment of seg, Samsung shifted from partial investment to complete ﬁnancing of ﬁlms. seg acquired U.S. ﬁlms to distribute via its equity investment in New Regency. Many viewed Samsung’s branching out into the motion picture business as a natural step, since it needed to acquire content for the company’s pay-tv channel, Catch-One, and its theater chain, Cinex.∫ Cheil Chedang Corporation, Korea’s largest food manufacturer and disFaces of Globalization 17

tributor, established cj Entertainment in 1996, launching itself into the motion-picture business rather late compared to other conglomerates.Ω With its 11 percent stake in DreamWorks and its 20 percent interest in the U.S.–based digital magazine publisher 2 Way Media, cj emerged as a global player in the late 1990s.∞≠ cj’s investment in DreamWorks provided it with exclusive distribution rights to DreamWorks’ ﬁlms in Asia, excluding Japan. Like other conglomerates, cj branched out to invest in exhibition. cj formed an equal partnership with Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest and Australia’s Village Roadshow in the formation of a multiplex chain called cgv, initiating the multiplex boom in the Korean exhibition market. cj also owns two cable-tv networks: a food channel called Channel F; and a music channel, M-Net, which is allied with mtv.∞∞ The conglomerates’ interests in the motion-picture business dried up after the Asian economic crisis hit in 1997–1998. After the production of Shiri (1999), Samsung scaled down its investment in the media/entertainment business, except for an entertainment wing of Samsung Venture Investment. Faced with near bankruptcy in 1999, Daewoo folded its music division and sold both its cable channel (dcn) and its theatre chains (CineHouse and Megabox) to the Tong-Yang Group.∞≤ cj Entertainment has gradually secured more content by forming alliances with domestic production companies. cj and Showbox are now two of the largest of the investment/distribution companies that command the Korean ﬁlm industry.∞≥ After the conglomerates downsized their entertainment divisions, a new generation of ﬁnanciers emerged in the Korean ﬁlm industry. Between 1998 and 2005 the number of venture capitalist funds with investments in the ﬁlm industry neared ﬁfty, and the amount of total investment reached $535 million.∞∂ New investors such as Ilshin Investment Co., Kookmin Venture Capital, and Mirae Asset Investment Co., most of which were backed by rich venture capitalists, poured money into the industry.∞∑ Launched in 1996, Ilshin invested in ﬁve to six ﬁlms per year and was ranked the top ﬁnancier/ distributor in 1997–1998. Many of the ﬁlms Ilshin ﬁnanced enjoyed both commercial and critical acclaim, including Gingko Bed (Kang Je-gyu, 1996), Christmas in August (Hur Jin-ho, 1998), and The Quiet Family (Kim Jiwoon, 1998). Kookmin Venture Capital, an afﬁliate of Kookmin Bank, holds $333 million in assets.∞∏ In 1999 Kookmin Venture Capital invested $8.3 million in ﬁlm projects by Cinema Service and B.O.M, including the boxofﬁce hit The Foul King, directed by Kim Ji-woon. Mirae Venture Capital Co., an afﬁliate of Mirae Asset Investment Co.—which launched the ﬁrst 18

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mutual fund in Korea—invested in ﬁlms such as Lies (Jang Sun-woo), Chunhyang (Im Kwon-taek), and The Anarchists (Yu Young-sik) in 2000.∞π There are several reasons the ﬁlm industry became attractive to venture capitalists during the economic crisis. Because of the unstable stock market and high exchange rates, investors were looking for ways to redirect their investments. In 1995 the motion picture business, which had been classiﬁed as a ‘‘service business,’’ was reclassiﬁed as a ‘‘semi-manufacturing business.’’∞∫ This was part of the Korean government’s effort to encourage investment in the ﬁlm industry: investors could now enjoy tax beneﬁts from investing in ﬁlm similar to those received from investing in manufacturing. The government also supported the ﬁlm industry via the investments in ﬁlm projects by forming Small Business Corp. (sbc), which took a heavier share of losses when funds underperformed. From 1998 to 2005 the sbc contributed $121 million to ﬁlm funds, and kofic also invested $46 million over the same period.∞Ω The motion-picture business was also appealing to investors because of its relatively quick ﬁnancial return compared to other manufacturing businesses.≤≠ Furthermore, to lower the risk involved with high-budget ﬁlms, investors formed mutual funds and diversiﬁed their investments into several projects per year. Funds were managed by ﬁrms such as Tube Investment and Muhan Film Venture Capital, which specialized in ﬁlm investments.≤∞ Kim Seung-beom, the managing director for ﬁlm at Ilshin, left the company in 1999 to found Tube Investment.≤≤ Muhan Film Venture Capital Co. invested $15 million in more than eighteen ﬁlm projects between 2000 and 2001. Venture-capitalist investments reached their peak in 2001 but were cut in half in 2002–2003, both in their number and in the amount invested, because there were so many high-proﬁle box-ofﬁce failures in 2002.≤≥ The process of conglomeration, along with ﬁnancial support from venture capital, marked the birth of Korean blockbuster ﬁlms. One of the outcomes of this process was the dramatic escalation of production costs. The average production cost for a Korean ﬁlm doubled from about $350,000 to $420,000 in the early 1990s to $760,000 in 1995, and by 2000 it had more than tripled, to $1.6 million.≤∂ However, as production costs rose, production output drastically decreased. The number of ﬁlms produced dropped by half within a decade, from 110 ﬁlms in 1990 to around 60 by 2000.≤∑ Another important outcome of the changes in ﬁlm ﬁnancing was standardization of ﬁlm production. Producers and ﬁlmmakers in Chungmuro were expected to systematize their outdated production procedures. Heavy Faces of Globalization 19

emphasis was put on the preproduction phase and on marketing, which the Korean ﬁlm industry had previously neglected. Moreover, conglomerates and venture capital ﬁrms demanded ﬁnancial transparency.≤∏ Production companies were required to provide account statements on a daily basis—in fact, Ilshin sent its own staff to keep track of budgets. The emergence of new production companies was partly a result of this change in ﬁlm production. Unlike old production companies, new commercially viable ones such as Shin-Cine Communication, Kang Woo-suk Communication (later renamed Cinema Service), Uno (later acquired by Sidus), and Myung Film and Kang Je-gyu Film (which merged to form mk Pictures) were able to meet these ﬁnancial demands and thereby attract investors. The Korean ﬁlm industry saw the ﬁrst offspring of the marriage between Chungmuro and the conglomerates with The Marriage Story (1992), a yuppie comedy produced by Shin-Cine Communication and ﬁnanced by Samsung. Since that ﬁlm appeared, most box-ofﬁce hits have been produced by new independent production companies either backed by conglomerates or by venture capital funds. Kang Woo-suk’s breakthrough ﬁlm, Two Cops (1994), was produced by his own company, Kang Woo-suk Communication, and was ﬁnanced by Daewoo. Shin-Cine’s science-ﬁction fantasy Gingko Bed (1996) was directed by Kang Je-gyu and backed by Ilshin. Three domestic mega-blockbuster hits opening around the turn of the millennium—Shiri in 1999 ($26.5 million gross), JSA in 2000 ($29 million), and Friend in 2001 ($39 million)≤π —were all produced by new players in the industry: Kang Jegyu Film, Myung Film, and Korea Pictures, respectively. Changes to the production end transformed the other two sectors: exhibition and distribution. The years between 1985 and 1990 had seen an increase in the number of theaters, especially small ones, to a total of 789 by 1990.≤∫ The number then began to decline, however, hitting a low point in 1997 with a 47 percent decrease from 1990 (see Appendix 4). A possible cause for this was the arrival of direct distribution by the major Hollywood studios. Direct distribution made it difﬁcult for owners of small theaters to secure ﬁlms, and many quickly found themselves out of business. However, exhibition venues soon enjoyed another boom. Opening in 1998, cgv, a coventure among cj, Golden Harvest, and Village Roadshow, attracted large audiences with new marketing strategies, including the revival of midnight screenings. After the success of cgv, the number of multiplex theaters skyrocketed. This multiplex trend encouraged old theaters—including one of the oldest Korean theaters, Danseongsa Cinema (established in 1907)—to 20

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renovate and equip themselves with multiple screens.≤Ω Although the number of theaters decreased in 2001, the number of screens reached a total of 818, an increase of 195 percent since 1997.≥≠ The impact of the increase in exhibition venues was twofold. It provided favorable conditions for ‘‘saturation booking’’ in the distribution of U.S. blockbusters. Saturation booking is deﬁned as the simultaneous release of a new ﬁlm in every domestic market, accompanied by mass advertising. It was a distribution strategy designed to enable production companies to quickly recoup high production costs.≥∞ But because the screen quota mandated that each theater devote at least 146 days per year to domestically produced ﬁlms, the growth in the number of theaters also allowed Korean ﬁlms greater potential for success. Contrary to the prediction that direct distribution by the U.S. majors would shake up the distribution system in Korea, distributors still followed their old customs. It has been shown that distribution methods for both imported and domestic ﬁlms still rely on a combination of direct and ﬂat-fee distribution.≥≤ Only uip —formed by Universal, Paramount, and mgm / ua —directly distributes its ﬁlms nationwide in Korea. Twentieth Century Fox signed a contract with a local agent, Noma International, for distribution in Korea. Noma International distributes ﬁlms for Fox both in Seoul and nationwide, earning a 10 percent share of the nationwide box-ofﬁce revenue in return. Warner Brothers and Columbia Tri-Star directly distribute their ﬁlms in large cities but still sell distribution rights to local exhibitors for a set fee. The difference in the industry before and after direct distribution is found not in kind but in degree. There still exist areas where ﬂat-fee distribution is the norm, but regions adopting the direct distribution method are on the rise. One of the most important changes in domestic distribution has been the emergence of major Korean distributors. In the early 1990s conglomerates formed nationwide distribution networks in an attempt to become vertically integrated. With the establishment of Cinema Service in 1995 and Ilshin in 1996, four major distributors—Ilshin, Cinema Service, Samsung, and Daewoo—dominated the distribution sector, commanding more than 70 percent of the Korean box ofﬁce.≥≥ However, since Samsung and Daewoo pulled out of the ﬁlm industry in 1999, cj Entertainment and Cinema Service have emerged as the two major distributors in Korea, together with a newcomer, Showbox. All three major distributors are more or less vertically and horizontally integrated: that is, a production company not only controls distribution and Faces of Globalization 21

owns a theater chain but also has alliances with the cable television, music, game, and merchandising sectors of industry. Although cj Entertainment does not have its own production company, it has signed contracts with independents such as Myung Film, B.O.M, and Nabi via its equity investments. cj also has secured the right to imports with its stake in DreamWorks. cj’s exhibition wing, cgv, is one of the most proﬁtable theater chains in Korea. Kang Woo-suk, a maverick in the business, has been one of the quintessential ﬁgures in the changing Korean ﬁlm industry. In 1993 Kang established his own production company, Kang Woo-suk Communication, and changed its name to Cinema Service two years later. Cinema Service has ﬁnanced many box-ofﬁce hits, including the local blockbusters Bichunmoo (also spelled Bicheonmu; Kim Young-jun, 2000) and Libera Me (Yang Yun-ho, 2000), and has served as a domestic distributor for Miramax and New Line Cinema.≥∂ Cinema Service has distribution output deals with ten local production companies and has commanded a 23 percent market share and the majority of the Korean box-ofﬁce revenue in 2001. It also formed a partnership with Seoul Cinema Town for nationwide distribution.≥∑ Showbox, founded in 2002, has emerged as a strong ﬁlm investment and distribution company. Showbox is a branch of Mediaplex, a distribution company and an afﬁliate of Orion, a Korean food company. Orion owns a theater chain, Megabox, and On Media, which is the biggest cable-tv provider in South Korea with its ﬁve movie channels.≥∏ Having distributed ﬁlms such as Romance of Their Own (Kim Tae-gyun) and Taegukgi (Kang Je-gyu) in 2004 and produced domestic hits such as Marathon (Jeong Yun-cheol) and Welcome to Dongmakgol (Park Kwang-hyun) in 2005, Showbox has secured its status in the industry. By 2004 an increasing number of directors, having proven their commercial viability, began to establish their own production companies.≥π In 2004 Park Chan-wook acquired Moho Film by purchasing a 55 percent share of its stock and produced Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005), the last installment of his Vengeance series. Kim Ji-woon founded Grim Pictures through an investment deal with Bareunson, a manufacturer of school supplies. Filmmaker R&K Production, a company formed by action-cinema director Ryu Seung-wan, produced his A City of Violence (2006). Poetturned-director Yu Ha established Film Poeta to produce his third feature, A Dirty Carnival (2006). Contrary to common practice in Hollywood, many Korean directors write their own scripts. By having their own production companies, directors hope to achieve more creative control over their work, 22

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while attempting to distribute their ﬁlms with major distributors such as cj Entertainment and Showbox. The Korean ﬁlm industry has been in a constant state of restructuring and merger in the 2000s. In 2001 Cinema Service was acquired by Locus Holdings, which is an afﬁliate of the technology conglomerate Locus Group. Locus Holdings had also purchased Uno Film and formed an entertainment/ management group called Sidus in the previous year. Locus Holdings then established Plenus Entertainment as its entertainment division. In early 2004, however, Cinema Service again separated from Plenus.≥∫ cj then acquired a 40 percent stake in Cinema Service.≥Ω The year 2005 saw a second wave of mergers among the leading production companies in the Korean ﬁlm industry. After the success of Taegukgi in 2004, Kang Je-gyu Film announced its merger with Myung Film to form mk Pictures. One of the reasons for such a merger is to be listed on the Korean Stock Exchange (kosdac) so as to attract more investors.∂≠ Fun and Happiness, a production company that has produced comedy hits such as Attack the Gas Station (1999) and Jail Breakers (2002), both of which were directed by Kim Sang-jin, merged with Sidus and launched a new production company, Sidus F&H.∂∞ In 2005 two rival telecom companies, Korean Telecom and SK Telecom, announced their interest in ﬁnancing movie production companies so they could acquire content for their mobile tv operations; to this end, they made a move to purchase shares of Sidus and of ihq.∂≤ With the industry boom and commercial success of domestically produced ﬁlms, South Korean ﬁlms began to appeal to regional audiences, with Japan being the biggest buyer of Korean cinema. Korean blockbuster Shiri (1999) became the ﬁrst Korean ﬁlm to earn a wide release in Japan, and paid off its Japanese distributors—Amuse Pictures and Cinequanon—with $20 million in box-ofﬁce receipts.∂≥ The South Korean ﬁlm industry saw sharp export growth between 2000 and 2005, thanks to the regional stardom of such actors as Bae Yong-joon, Kwon Sang-woo, Jang Dong-gun, and Choi Ji-woo.∂∂ Import rights to ﬁlms starring these actors and actress are often sold at the pre-production stage—April Snow ($7.5 million), Almost Love ($4.5 million), Sympathy for Lady Vengeance ($3 million), Yeonriji Here and Forever ($3.5 million), Running Wild ($4 million), and Typhoon ($4 million). A less successful endeavor was coproduction between South Korean and Japanese companies. Asako in Ruby Shoes (2001), a coproduction between Koo & Film (South Korea) and Shochiku Co. (Japan), ﬂopped at the box ofﬁce. KT, a ﬁlm based on the real-life kidnapping of Kim Dae-jung in 1973, Faces of Globalization 23

disappointed its Japanese producer and distributor Cinequanon and was ignored by the Korean audience.∂∑ Hollywood also emerged as a strong buyer for Korean products, purchasing remake rights to Korean titles. Miramax bought both the North American distribution and remake rights to My Wife Is a Gangster (2001); the remake rights for My Sassy Girl (2001) were sold to DreamWorks, and released under the same title in 2008 through Gold Circle Films and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and the gangster comedy Hi! Dharma! (2001) was acquired by mgm.∂∏ In 2007 the decline of the South Korean ﬁlm industry was signaled in many sectors. Production companies suffered from overproduction, which increased to 124 ﬁlms, while admissions to local movies fell by 18 percent to 80.7 million tickets (see Appendixes 2 and 3).∂π The local audience saw sporadic box-ofﬁce successes of blockbusters or historical epics such as D-War (Shim Hyung-rae, 2007) or May 18 (Kim Ji-hun, 2007) with 8.2 million and 7 million admissions respectively. Yet the average Korean ﬁlm lost $1.9 million in 2007.∂∫ Market share of domestically produced ﬁlms dropped to 47.3 percent in the ﬁrst half of 2007, the lowest level since 2001 (see Appendix 2).∂Ω Although the number of exported South Korean ﬁlms remained the same, it is reported that the minimum guarantees, which were paid prior to the release of a title, dropped by 50 percent in 2007 compared to the previous year. The discourse of crisis occasionally surfaced within the South Korean ﬁlm industry even during the boom, but the consequences of the oftenmentioned industry ills became more palpable around 2006. The box-ofﬁce failures of high-budget ﬁlms created anxiety among investors and forced venture capitalists to turn away from the ﬁlm industry. Resurrection of the Little Match Girl by the Korean New Wave director Jang Sun-woo, which cost $9 million but grossed only $1 million in its theatrical release, pushed many investors away from the ﬁlm industry.∑≠ kofic estimated a loss of $40 million overall in 2002 and found that more than 50 percent of venturecapital investment previously available to the ﬁlm industry was retracted in 2002 because of the number of high-proﬁle box-ofﬁce failures.∑∞ The continuing structural problems were accentuated by the major dominated distribution system. The South Korean conglomerates certainly played a crucial role in rehabilitating the Korean ﬁlm industry from the late 1990s onward, yet they emulated the ‘‘predatory’’ behaviors of Hollywood with mid-budget ﬁlms given only a small window of opportunity at the box ofﬁce. Lack of an ample ancillary market is further considered another major prob24

THE SOUTH KOREAN FILM RENAISSANCE

lem for the industry. The dvd market shrank by one third between 2001 and 2006. According to a kofic survey, 47 percent of Koreans watch ﬁlms through ﬁle-sharing services, downloading an average of 54 ﬁlms a year.∑≤ South Korea is a country where more than 80 percent of South Korean households have access to the Internet, and such prevalent illegal downloading deprived the industry of a crucial source of revenues. Most Hollywood majors folded their dvd branches in Seoul either by merging with one another or by teaming up with local companies. In 2006 Universal decided to release its titles through Sony, while Paramount and Fox signed with local distributors cj and Bitwin, respectively.∑≥ Liberalization, in conjunction with direct distribution by the U.S. majors, restructured the Korean ﬁlm industry. As the mpl was relaxed, new production companies emerged with projects supported by either conglomerates or venture capitalists. The introduction of new kinds of capital from conglomerates and venture capitalists not only increased production costs but also led to a heavy reliance on commercially oriented ﬁlmmaking. The establishment of major distributors—Cinema Service, cj Entertainment, and Showbox—helped to modernize outdated domestic distribution processes. An increase in the number of multiplex theaters not only attracted a greater audience but also, because of the current screen quota, was beneﬁcial to Korean ﬁlm. However, the Korean ﬁlm industry boom coincided with the political changes in Korean society that allowed and supported this transformation. The repressive past of Korea’s military regimes, which was once considered a taboo subject in mainstream culture, surfaced on the public horizon, providing popular subject matter to be explored by Korean production companies.

Those 1980s

In 1980, a year after Chun Doo-hwan’s military coup, civilians and students in Gwangju, a city in a southern province of Korea, protested Chun’s military regime and demanded the release of their political leader, Kim Dae-jung. Chun suppressed the uprising with military force, and hundreds of innocent civilians and students were murdered. After witnessing the Gwangju massacre, college students spoke out against the military government and became actively involved in political demonstrations and prolabor movements. Because the United States recognized Chun’s dictatorship, the 386 Generation was also marked by growing anti-American sentiFaces of Globalization 25

ment, which was quite palpable to the public and expressed in the burning of an American ﬂag in front of the U.S. Embassy in Busan. In 1987, as Chun’s presidency came to an end, Chun not only attempted to appoint as his successor Roh Tae-woo—who, along with Chun, had been responsible for the violent suppression of the Gwangju uprising—but he also tried to annul the next presidential election. On June 29, students, workers, and even disenchanted middle-class citizens participated in a series of massive political demonstrations; as a result, Roh declared the implementation of a set of measures toward democratization, including a presidential election. After hosting the 1988 Summer Olympics, however, the Korean government, led by President Roh, turned to conservatism. The state retracted its progressive policies and suppressed political dissent, banning, for example, the progressive Teacher’s Movement. In the 1980s the public discontent with the military regime was not only manifested through strikes and demonstrations but also through a cultural movement called the minjung movement. Minjung literally means ‘‘the people,’’ but historians of minjung deﬁne it as a class confederation of peasants, workers, minor landowners, national capitalists, and the urban middle class, rather than as a single class.∑∂ Although minjung historians trace its origin back to at least the late nineteenth century, the 1980s saw the predominance of a more critical and theoretical discourse on the role and nature of minjung as students’ involvement in labor movements became prominent. One characteristic strand of the minjung movement was its preoccupation with the national division between North Korea and South Korea. Minjung activists also rejected Western ideology and culture, locating the source of national unity within the indigenous culture of Korea, including traditional music and dance.∑∑ On college campuses in the 1980s one could often ﬁnd groups of college students practicing traditional Korean mask dances to the beats of a drum. In addition, student activists had recourse to mass culture as a means of raising critical social consciousness.∑∏ Noraereul Chatneun Saramdeul—translated as ‘‘people who search for songs’’—was an amateur sing-along band of college students that tried to bridge the gap between the minjung movement and mass culture. In 1984 they released their ﬁrst album, which comprised songs that were circulated among college students and sung during the labor strikes and demonstrations.∑π Their second album, released in 1989, includes songs such as ‘‘Gwangyaeseo’’ (Into the Wilderness), ‘‘Geunali Omyeon’’ (If the Day Comes), and ‘‘Sagye’’ (Four Seasons). The songs’ lyrics depicted Koreans’ yearning for democracy and the 26

THE SOUTH KOREAN FILM RENAISSANCE

uniﬁcation of the country, while critiquing the deplorable work conditions in many sweatshops of South Korea. This album ranked seventh on the top album chart of that year. Filmmaking also constituted a part of the minjung movement, less visibly so compared to other cultural forms such as literature, poetry, and music. In the early 1990s Park Kwang-su formed the Seoul Film Group, which was linked to and supportive of student activism and labor organization.∑∫ Some of the producers and ﬁlmmakers who propelled the industry boom in the 1990s had also been involved in student activism. Chang Yoon-hyun, the director of The Contact (1997) and Tell Me Something (1999); Oh Ki-min, the producer of such youth-oriented ﬁlms as Whispering Corridors (Park Ki-hyeong, 1998), Take Care of My Cat (Jeong Jae-eun, 2001), and A Tale of Two Sisters (Kim Ji-woon, 2003); and Lee Eun, a cofounder of Myung ﬁlm (which became mk Pictures), formed Jangsankotmae, a cine-club, which produced and circulated 16mm documentary ﬁlms about labor strikes, including Paeopjeonya (1990). At ﬁrst glance, there exists a signiﬁcant gap between the minjung movement of the 1980s and the cultural production of the 1990s. Advocates of the minjung movement deﬁed commercialism, aiming to revive indigenous art within mass culture, while producers and ﬁlmmakers since the mid-1990s have turned to proﬁtable trends, appropriating formulas and styles of other national cinemas, including Hollywood. However, the Korean ﬁlm renaissance may be viewed as a reorientation and/or an expansion of the cultural movement of the 1980s, with its focus changing from minjung to daejung (the mass). There is a continuity between these two cultural eras in that the reimagining of the national divide persists in contemporary South Korean cinema, although in a weakened and commercialized form. The 1980s was a distinctive period, both politically and economically. While political dissent and cultural movements surfaced in reaction to the military government’s continuing oppression, the Korean military regime legitimized its oppression in the name of national security and economic growth. Despite unbalanced economic growth and labor exploitation, an aggressive state export policy and a favorable international economy (including low interest rates on foreign loans) resulted in massive Korean export expansion through the 1980s. From textiles to automobiles, Korean exports boomed, doubling from $30 billion in 1985 to $61 billion in 1988.∑Ω Disposable income doubled between 1986 and 1988, and actual consumption increased 8.7 percent during that period.∏≠ Further evidence of ecoFaces of Globalization 27

nomic growth was increasing ownership of modern consumer goods such as refrigerators, washing machines, and cars. Car ownership in Seoul alone increased almost 20 percent each year between 1985 and 1990.∏∞ In 1988 the Korean government deregulated international travel, which prompted many Korean tourists to travel overseas. With such economic growth, however, there was an increasing demand for the Korean government to liberalize its import policies and ﬁnancial markets in many industries, including ﬁlm. Since the mid-1980s the Korean government has been pressured to remove the screen quota and other protective measures in the Korean ﬁlm industry. Unlike Korean New Wave directors such as Jang Sun-woo and Park Kwang-su, who were involved with political activism and student movements, most 386 Generation directors were not directly engaged in such student activism in the 1980s—with the possible exception of a few, including Jang Yoon-hyun. The 386 Generation directors are known more for their ﬁlm expertise than their activism, having been trained in ﬁlm school at home or abroad, or in the government-subsidized Film Academy. Nonetheless, the 386 Generation directors did witness the political turmoil in the 1980s, and their experiences, even as bystanders, seeped into their work. Moreover, there is a continuity (although not always discernible) between a cultural milieu such as the minjung movement of the 1980s and the rise of commercial cinema in the 1990s and onward. Despite the divergent subject matter and styles, the pursuit of and respect for ‘‘the popular’’—through either the cultivation of indigenous art forms forgotten by the public (as in the minjung movement) or the borrowing of conventions from abroad as in commercially oriented cinema—might be seen as a common thread that links the cultural divide of these two periods. Major players among the 386 Generation directors include Kang Je-gyu (b. 1962), Kim Sung-su (b. 1961), Park Chan-wook (b. 1963), and Kwak Kyung-taek (b. 1966), all of whom helped launch the newly developed blockbuster trend. Kang Je-gyu attended ﬁlm school at Chung-ang University, one of the so-called Big Three universities that initiated ﬁlm programs (the other two are Dongguk University and Hanyang University). After graduating from Chung-ang University, Kang brieﬂy worked in the tv industry before he debuted with Gingko Bed (1996), a Hong Kong–inﬂuenced ghost/ fantasy ﬁlm. In his interview accompanying the dvd release of Shiri, Kang openly acknowledges his ambition to compete with Hollywood cinema and to discredit the prejudice that Korean cinema lacks entertainment value. His ﬁlm Shiri started the box-ofﬁce race among Korean blockbusters, including 28

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JSA and Friend, and he broke the box-ofﬁce record again with his ﬁlm Taegukgi in 2004. Kim Sung-su earned a master’s degree in ﬁlm at Dongguk University after he graduated from Sejong University, majoring in English language and literature. Kim’s breakthrough ﬁlm, Beat (1997), caught the attention of audiences and critics alike not only for its fatalistic portrayal of adolescent life but also for its overall ﬁlm style. Kim’s China-Korea coproduction Musa, The Warrior attempts to challenge the perception that the swordplay genre belongs to Hong Kong. During an interview with Kim, he informed me that while growing up he adored Zhang Che’s swordplay ﬁlms.∏≤ Yet, after forming a production company called Nabi, in which he had a 30 percent share, Kim branched out to direct a teen comedy, Teach Me English (2003). Although Park Chan-wook studied philosophy at Sogang University, he is a cinephile and a cofounder of Sogang Communication, a ﬁlm club at the university. Park debuted with The Moon Is . . . the Sun’s Dream (1992), but until his breakthrough ﬁlm JSA (2000) he was involved in small productions and wrote scripts for other directors. Having proved himself a commercially viable director with JSA, in his next ﬁlm, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Park turned toward a more ‘‘personal’’ style. Park’s ultraviolent, surreal Oldboy (2004), the second installment of his Vengeance series, won the Grand Prix at Cannes. Kwak, an nyu graduate, struggled commercially until he directed the box-ofﬁce hit Friend, a semiautobiographical story set in Busan. The ﬁlm follows four friends, two of whom go to college after graduating from high school, while the others end up working for rival gangs. Kwak’s next two ﬁlms, Champion (2002) and Mutt Boy (2003), did not enjoy the level of commercial success of Friend, but one can ﬁnd thematic continuity in the three ﬁlms’ exploration of nostalgia and local culture. Champion spoke to the memories of an older generation familiar with the story of boxer Kim Deuk-gu, who died in the 1980s during a match in the United States. In Mutt Boy, set in Milyang, a small city in a southern province of Korea, Kwak explores local dialect and a father-son relationship, as he did in Friend. After the lukewarm reception of blockbuster Typhoon (see Appendix 1), Kwak directed A Love (2007), which is again set in his hometown of Busan. By 2001 the ﬁlm industry appeared to be polarized between high-budget blockbusters and relatively low-budget comedies, a situation that concerned many critics and industry personnel. The ﬁlms of Kim Tae-gyun (b. 1960, Volcano High, Romance of Their Own), Lee Hyun-seung (b. 1961, Ilmare), Faces of Globalization 29

Im Sang-soo (b. 1962, A Good Lawyer’s Wife, The President’s Last Bang), Hur Jin-ho (b. 1963, Christmas in August, One Fine Spring Day), Lee Jeong-hyang (b. 1964, Art Museum By the Zoo), E J-Yong (a.k.a. Lee Je-yong, b. 1965, An Affair, Untold Scandal), Kim Tae-yong (b. 1969, Memento Mori, Family Ties), and Bong Joon-ho (b. 1969, Memories of Murder, The Host), all of whom graduated from the Korean Academy of Film Arts (kafa), ﬁlled the middle ground. Established in 1984 with government subsidies, kafa played a substantial role in providing talent that the Korean ﬁlm industry sorely needed. kafa was established with the goal of educating and training ﬁlmmakers who would revive the ﬁlm industry with their talent and ﬁlm expertise— especially important with the industry under constant pressure to open the market. Started as a one-year program when ﬁrst founded in 1984, and expanded to a two-year program in 1996, kafa attracted many talented students who had not had the opportunity to receive ﬁlm training in college. Films such as The Way Home (Lee Jeong-hyang), the second-top grosser of 2002, and Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-ho), the top grosser of 2003, attracted audiences with their subtle characterization, sensibility, and aesthetics.∏≥ Festival-oriented cinema directors such as Kim Ki-duk (b. 1960), Hong Sang-soo (b. 1961), and festival-commercial crossover Kim Ji-woon (b. 1964), belong to similar demographics as the 386 Generation, yet their creative impulses are not necessarily rooted in the Korean national story. Hong, who earned an mfa from the Art Institute of Chicago, is seemingly indifferent to past national traumas, while Kim Ki-duk’s primal sexual politics and Kim Jiwoon’s moody or witty characters can easily bypass national trends. The political speciﬁcities of a nation-state contribute to the formation of a ﬁlmmaker’s artistic identity, but the relationship between the two is hardly deterministic. Those 1980s, the experience of which varies even among the 386 Generation, have become the seedbed for various styles of ﬁlmmaking that the following chapters will investigate.

30

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2

Blockbusters, Korean Style

The ﬁrst Korean blockbuster Shiri (Kang Je-gyu, 1999) allegedly cost less than $3 million (including $1.1 million for marketing) and grossed $26.5 million.∞ Since the release of Shiri, the term ‘‘Korean blockbuster’’ (han-guk-hyeong blockbuster) has been used rather casually within the South Korean ﬁlm industry. ‘‘Blockbuster’’ often refers to a production/distribution strategy Hollywood cinema has used to market such ﬁlms as Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975), Superman (Richard Donner, 1978), Star Trek—The Motion Picture (Robert Wise, 1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981), and E.T. (Steven Spielberg, 1982) in the 1970s and 1980s.≤ Blockbusters emerged as a partial remedy to the crisis within Hollywood’s ﬁlm industry after the demise of the studio system. The Paramount decrees of 1948 ruled that the major studios had to dismantle their vertically integrated system and divest their theater chains. Furthermore, Hollywood was losing their audience to tv and other forms of leisure. With the court ruling on divestiture, the major studios were freed from the responsibility of providing an annual lineup of movies that would ﬁll their own screens with decreasing proﬁts. Instead studios started to invest larger sums of money on fewer ﬁlms in the hopes that through the aid of global distribution, saturated booking, and carefully calculated marketing strategies, they would increase proﬁts.≥ The term ‘‘Korean blockbuster’’ should be distinguished from the Hollywood conception of blockbuster movies. Production costs in the Korean ﬁlm industry have been rapidly escalating since Shiri, including those of Kang’s next ﬁlm, Taegukgi (2004). The biggest budgets reach over $12 million, but they still represent a fraction of the budgets of Hollywood blockbusters, which often cost well over $100 million. Although Shiri was also theatrically released outside of South Korea, earning $17.6 million in Japan, the ﬁlm was not as widely circulated as Hollywood ﬁlms, which reach more countries than Korean cinema.∂ Certainly, Korean blockbuster ﬁlms fall short of satisfying the criteria applicable to Hollywood blockbusters. How31

ever, if the same criteria are used to compare Korean blockbusters with Hollywood blockbusters, one will lose the signiﬁcance of the rise of Korean blockbusters within the East Asian market. Korean blockbusters demand a different set of measures in order to be properly situated and evaluated. What constitutes a Korean blockbuster ﬁlm? Is Shiri indeed the ﬁrst Korean blockbuster ﬁlm? What are the consequences of producing highbudget ﬁlms given the Korea’s relatively small market? What are the characteristics of Korean blockbusters in terms of theme, narrative, and style? This chapter examines the idea of Korean blockbusters in light of two criteria proposed by Steve Neale: ‘‘specialness’’ and ‘‘spectacle.’’∑ Certainly, these two criteria are neither necessary nor sufﬁcient conditions for deﬁning a blockbuster. However, these two concepts can provide us with guidelines for comparison and contrast among Korean blockbusters, as well as between Korean and Hollywood blockbusters.

Korean Blockbusters

The establishment of the blockbuster in South Korea was partly credited to the success of Kang’s second feature Shiri. In the Seoul area alone, which accounts for almost a quarter of the nation’s 48 million population, Shiri sold 2.4 million tickets with a total of 6 million tickets sold nationwide.∏ The Mummy (Stephen Sommers, 1999) ranked as 1999’s top foreign ﬁlm with 1.1 million tickets sold in the same area. The success of Shiri was a cultural, economic, and industrial phenomenon, and it paved the way for the emergence of subsequent blockbusters, creating the so-called Shiri syndrome.π The Korean blockbuster trend continued, reaching its pinnacle in 2001, with Friend (Kwak Kyung-taek, 2001) attracting 8 million admissions nationwide.∫ A few box-ofﬁce disasters in 2002, notably Resurrection of the Little Match Girl (Jang Sun-woo, 2002), Tube (Baek Woon-hak, 2003), and Yesterday (Jeon Yun-su, 2002), brought the blockbuster trend to a temporary halt; but 2004 was again marked as a year for blockbusters. Kang Je-gyu’s war epic, Taegukgi, (with a $12.8 million budget) broke box-ofﬁce records and sold an estimated 11.9 million tickets, slightly ahead of the 11.7 million tickets sold for Silmido, directed by Kang Woo-suk.Ω In 2006 Bong Joon-ho’s The Host also broke the record by selling 13 million tickets.∞≠ With the increasing popularity of Korean cinema abroad, production companies increasingly began to rely on the export market to recoup production costs. Silmido was 32

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sold to Japan for a $3 million minimum guarantee, while Taegukgi was presold for $1.7 million.∞∞ The distribution of The Host in Japan was handed to Kadokawa and Happinet for $4.8 million, while the remake rights were acquired by Universal Studios in Hollywood.∞≤ Although the South Korean industry discourse foregrounds blockbusters’ mega-hit success at the local box ofﬁce, the blockbuster mentality is a production/marketing strategy characterized by the size of the production and the scale of distribution. According to Neale, the ‘‘special’’ status concerns its industrial and production circumstances, achieved through production scale, cost, method of distribution, as well as the amount of publicity a ﬁlm receives. A Hollywood blockbuster is heavily advertised long before its release and enjoys saturation booking, opening nationwide on between two thousand and seven thousand screens.∞≥ Simply put, a Hollywood blockbuster is an event that audiences eagerly anticipate. Neale also stresses the importance of technical specialty, including special effects and sound technology. Dolby and other sound systems played an important role in assigning special status to blockbuster ﬁlms of the 1970s, thereby distinguishing these ﬁlms from ﬁlms of the previous decade. As Neale acknowledges, spectacle—another important criterion for blockbuster status—is harder to deﬁne. Spectacle can be thought of as an extratextual quality, which Neale calls ‘‘presentational prowess.’’ This can be taken to mean that certain textual features—whether visual or aural— are designed to evoke awe or admiration of some sort via their size, elaborate technique, excess, power, or energy. These features include spectacular landscapes, explosions, chases, battles, ﬁghts, costumes, and more. For regional blockbusters, such as Korean blockbusters, certainly both ‘‘specialness’’ and ‘‘spectacle’’ should be taken in a relative sense and discussed within a speciﬁc historical context. As Chris Berry accurately observes, adoption of blockbuster strategy for non-Hollywood industries such as those of South Korea and The People’s Republic of China inevitably involves a scaling down, or ‘‘de-Westernizing’’ process.∞∂ Difﬁculties arise in applying Neale’s criteria to a discussion of Korean blockbuster ﬁlms. First, production costs have been escalating rapidly for the last decade. What used to qualify as a big-budget now represents just slightly above-average production costs. Take, for example, Kang Je-gyu’s Gingko Bed (1996), a precursor to Korean blockbusters.∞∑ Its estimated cost was approximately $1.7 million, more than twice the average production cost in 1995 ($760,000).∞∏ However, Gingko Bed cost only slightly more than Blockbusters, Korean Style 33

the average production cost of later ﬁlms ($1.5–2 million). Melodrama I Wish I had a Wife (Park Heung-sik, 2001) and comedy Jail Breakers (Kim Sang-jin, 2002) cost more than Gingko Bed: estimated production costs were $1.8 million and $2.2 million, respectively.∞π It would be mistake to judge whether or not a ﬁlm is considered a blockbuster on production costs alone; but production costs should be considered important when assessing big-, mid-, and low-budget ﬁlms. Furthermore, with the expansion of the multiplex and increasingly aggressive marketing strategies, it is hard to determine what constitutes saturated booking in the Korean domestic market. For instance, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Chris Columbus, 2001) set a record in 2002, when it opened on nearly 200 screens (out of 977 screens) in Korea; but in 2004 Korean blockbusters such as Silmido and Taegukgi opened on 450 and 512 screens, respectively (out of 1100 screens total).∞∫ What is, then, the signiﬁcance of the Korean ﬁlm industry producing its own blockbusters? What are the features unique to Korean blockbusters? What are some possible explanations for the tendency of Korean sci-ﬁ blockbusters to ﬂop? First, the adoption of Hollywood conventions initially led to tighter narratives, eliminating the episodic narratives previously characterizing Korean cinema. Crime thrillers/investigation ﬁlms were long neglected in Korean cinema because they tended to have loose and sometimes inconsistent narratives. However, Korean thrillers have now augmented their structure to compete with Hollywood cinema. On the contrary, New Hollywood has given rise to a debate over whether the narrative structure of contemporary Hollywood cinema is as causally tight as classical Hollywood cinema: whether the insertion of ‘‘spectacles’’ disrupts the narrative advancement of the latter, which is necessitated by characters’ motivations. Whether such a change is a matter of degree or of kind is still an ongoing debate, but such a debate itself shows that blockbuster ﬁlms brought about changes in the narrative structure of Hollywood ﬁlms, probably by loosening causality.∞Ω Second, both Hollywood and Korean blockbuster ﬁlms heavily rely on similar genres: action-adventure, disaster, war ﬁlms, and science ﬁction. However, the signiﬁcance of these ﬁlms in their respective industries differs considerably. Hollywood blockbuster ﬁlms employ genres that once belonged to the province of B-ﬁlms during the studio era, while Korean blockbuster ﬁlms borrow genre and stylistic conventions from abroad and fashion them to appeal to a Korean audience. With no stable studio system in place, the Korean ﬁlm industry lacked the production hierarchy that Hollywood

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studios had long sustained. If there was an inversion of the rank with the advent of New Hollywood, Korean blockbusters lack an institutional—and thus ideological—implication associated with such a change. In this regard, the 386 Generation directors’ turn to blockbuster ﬁlmmaking—regardless of whether it is because of industry-related circumstances or personal predilections—diverges greatly from the minjung cultural movement of the 1980s, which attempted to revive indigenous cultural art forms such as madangeuk and mask dancing, in order to appeal to and mobilize the masses. The 386 Generation directors employ Hollywood’s production strategies and stylistic norms in order to appeal to the Korean people. One may even ﬁnd the 386 Generation directors’ commercial turn ironic, given the fact that these directors are known for their political activism. It may appear that the 386 Generation directors lost their political edge and artistic vision by succumbing to the commercial pressures and demands of the globalized ﬁlm scene. However, such an assessment simpliﬁes the phenomenon in question and downplays the active negotiation that has taken place within a small ﬁlm industry like South Korea’s. In academia, both in North America and Korea, third-world cinema emphasizes its alternative aspect, underscored by such labels as cinema of ‘‘opposition,’’ of ‘‘resistance,’’ of ‘‘anti-imperialism,’’ and of ‘‘postcolonialism,’’ among others.≤≠ However, these labels neglect the heterogeneity of third-world cinema. With Korean blockbusters, as well as Hong Kong cinema and Indian cinema—which emerge as alternative ‘‘entertainment’’ cinemas—their signiﬁcance cannot be measured with the same yardstick applied to festival-oriented cinema. What is at stake is not the originality or political transgression of Korean blockbusters but the interplay between the global and the local: how locality—regardless of whether it is indigenous to a particular culture or hybrid—is transformed and utilized for global and national needs. One of the peculiarities of Korean blockbusters can be found in their appeal to a shared sense of Korean history as one possible means of product differentiation from Hollywood and other national cinemas. Many Korean sci-ﬁ blockbusters such as Yesterday (Jeon Yun-su, 2002), Resurrection of the Little Match Girl (Jang Sun-woo, 2002), Tube, (Baek Woon-hak, 2003) and Natural City (Min Byeong-cheon, 2003) did not even recoup the cost, while blockbusters dealing with North-South relations and speciﬁc historical references thrived commercially. At the end of Shiri, while being interrogated by national intelligence ofﬁcials, agent Yu claims that North Korean female

Blockbusters, Korean Style 35

spy Lee Bang-hui (Lee Myeong-hyeon) was a hydra produced by the division of the Korean peninsula. This evoked sense of victimology—Korea being a victim of cold-war ideology—is a recurrent theme in Korean blockbusters. Shiri (1999), JSA (2000), Double Agent (Kim Hyeon-jeong, 2003), Silmido (2003), and Taegukgi (2004) all deal with North-South relations from differing angles and tones, and all generated above-average box-ofﬁce returns, with the exception of Double Agent. The Host, although it departs from these ﬁlms in terms of genre, references the presence of U.S. military in South Korea. In The Host, the emission of toxic chemicals from the U.S. military base creates an acrobatic lizardlike monster in the Han River. Bong based his ﬁlm on the true story of Albert McFarland, an American civilian who ran the morgue at the U.S. military base in Seoul and ordered Korean employees to dump embalming waste down a drain. McFarland was given a two-year suspension.≤∞ Throughout the ﬁlm, there are many allusions to the U.S. presence in Korea or interference with Korean social issues, which was viewed (in the eyes of many younger generations, including the 386 Generation) as the result of the country’s division after the Korean War. Why have North-South issues become such a popular topic for successful Korean blockbuster ﬁlms? One may ﬁnd an answer by linking the subject matter of these ﬁlms directly to the speciﬁcity of South Korea as a nationstate. During the cold-war era, South Koreans were led to believe that North Koreans were untrustworthy enemies. But if anything, during the post–cold war era the popular conception of North Korea has become that of an invisible counterpart rather than a threat. Although North-South issues resurface from time to time, these usually occur only before or after a presidential election. David Scott Diffrient claims that Shiri represents North Koreans as invisible ‘‘others’’ and argues, ‘‘The image track is . . . anchored to an ideological uncertainty of nationhood and history that verges on national amnesia. . . . The capital of South Korea, cinematically painted as a city of anonymous tenement buildings, department stores, and governmental agencies, has been built atop the debris of a past forgotten by all but the North Koreans.’’≤≤ Local critics also emphasize the fact that tension between North and South has become so malleable that such representations of the North as an invisible ‘‘other’’ have become permissible. The border between North and South is cinematically crossed to render North Koreans as victims of the same cold-war politics as South Koreans.≤≥ North Koreans become people with whom South Koreans can possibly fall in love or build friendships. The 36

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theatrical release of JSA, in fact, was preceded by a summit conference between North Korean leader Kim Jung-Il and then–South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, held in the summer of 2000. The political atmosphere, together with more permissive attitudes and less censorship, are conditions that make the existence of these ﬁlms possible. However, such an explanation falls short of providing us with a complete picture as to why blockbuster ﬁlms such as Shiri, JSA, and Taegukgi have turned to such subject matter. A more immediate cause can be found in marketing strategy. In order to reduce the risk involved in producing blockbusters, the Hollywood industry often bases its ﬁlms on presold properties: best-sellers, comics, plays, tv shows, or well-known historical events. One of the beneﬁts for production companies in adapting preexisting works is that a lucrative target market has already been established. Furthermore, it is possible to create audience awareness and anticipation prior to a ﬁlm’s release. Hollywood blockbusters feature protagonists ranging from dinosaurs to Batman and aliens to hobbits. In contrast, one current trend in Korean blockbusters relies heavily on ‘‘historical’’ events. Although JSA and Silmido are based on presold properties—the novels DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) and Silmido, respectively—it does not appear that these two ﬁlms gained substantial proﬁts from the popularity of these books. A novel’s adaptation may shorten the preproduction phase, or possibly facilitate an investor’s decision to fund a ﬁlm project. But more importantly, the apparent historicity of Korean blockbuster ﬁlms can yield the following additional beneﬁts. For an action-packed blockbuster, one must devise a narrative in such a way that ﬁght scenes or physical confrontations are narratively integrated as well as plausibly motivated. Historic wars and espionage, more than anything, can easily lend verisimilitude to gunﬁghts, especially since guns are banned in Korea. It is worthwhile to note that the North-South issue and the Korean War are not historic events only recently made available for the new generation of ﬁlmmakers to explore. Such political issues provided a historical background for action and espionage ﬁlms in the 1950s and 1960s as well.≤∂ For instance, in The Hand of Destiny (Han Hyeong-mo, 1954) female protagonist Margaret works as a spy for the North. She falls in love with Yeong-cheol whom she saves from accusations of being a thief. Yeong-cheol works for a national security agency and is assigned to track down the North Korean spies who have inﬁltrated the South. The two face the dilemma of either fulﬁlling their job or following their heart. The North and South (Kim Ki-duk, 1965) also features a loving relationship caught in the North and Blockbusters, Korean Style 37

South divide. A North Korean Lieutenant Jang surrenders himself in order to look for his love, Eun-a, a woman he was separated from before the war. A love triangle between Jang, Eun-a, and her current husband Lee ends tragically, as Jang commits suicide out of guilt. Red Mufﬂer (Shin Sang-ok, 1964) showcases the spectacle of the South Korean Air Force against the backdrop of the Korean War. The representations of North Korea have changed throughout history; with the arrival of a civilian government in the early 1990s, North Koreans have been portrayed in a more humane manner, devoid of anti-Communist sentiment. But the 386 Generation directors’ exploration and appropriation of the North-South issue should be considered as product differentiation from Hollywood blockbusters and other national cinemas. In their ﬁlms, the 386 Generation directors utilize the unique aspects of Korean culture and history for commercial gain. The adaptation of a historic event into a blockbuster can further function as a marketing strategy to target a ﬁlm to a larger audience. As previously mentioned, the Korean industry relies heavily on box-ofﬁce revenue to recoup production costs. The sense of plausibility and verisimilitude derived from the historical circumstances of Korea, and the audience’s familiarity with historical events, enable production companies to broaden the scope of their target audience to include audience members over forty years old. In a country where theater admissions comprise three quarters of total revenue (in Hollywood, box-ofﬁce income accounts for only one forth) it is imperative for Korean producers to cater their products to a multigenerational audience.≤∑ The population of Korean baby-boomers (those born from 1955–1963) is 8.1 million, or 16.8 percent of the country’s population.≤∏ If other production trends such as horror ﬁlms target a smaller niche market, Korean blockbusters attempt to appeal to as broad an audience as possible by referencing familiar historical events. One possible cause for some Korean blockbusters’ box-ofﬁce failure, then, can be found in their appeal to mostly young audiences. The avocation of and enthusiasm for Korean blockbusters within the Korean ﬁlm industry is, thus, twofold. The industry personnel were anxious to attract the Korean audiences to theaters by evoking a sense of shared crisis—the encroachment of the domestic market by the ‘‘foreign’’ companies. Consumer nationalism—the idea that consumers’ choice should be based on national interests—is achieved through the producing of nationspeciﬁc (not necessarily nationalistic) contents. The 386 Generation directors’ commercial take on the national division does not inherently rule out 38

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the possibility of making a forceful political statement regarding the contradictory nature of Korean political circumstances. However, these political gestures in recent Korean blockbusters are ‘‘abstract’’ in the sense that they neither align with any particular regime or political ideology nor provide any alternative solution or suggestion. These Korean blockbusters question and doubt the legitimacy of the militaristic nationalism and ideology advanced and advocated by the Korean government for the last couple of decades, yet they do not provide any alternative national ideals. Nonetheless, such blockbusters provide an occasion or a site for audience and ﬁlmmaker alike to revisit and reconsider issues speciﬁc to Korea through cinematic means. In this regard, one can ﬁnd a close parallel between Korean blockbuster ﬁlms and ﬁlms directed by the Hong Kong New Wave’s Tsui Hark. In his Once Upon a Time in China series, Tsui features Wong Fei-hong, a folk hero whose story is endlessly remade in Chinese cinema. Through the series, however, Tsui laments the fate of China at the turn of the century: ‘‘China as a country of lost opportunities.’’≤π Nationalism as a marketing strategy, however, backﬁred, igniting a ﬁerce public debate with the D-War’s successful box-ofﬁce draws in South Korea. Set in Los Angeles with dialogue mostly in English, the ﬁlm incorporates the Korean legend of the mythic dragon. Ill-fated lovers Ha-ram and Na-rin, the latter of whom is destined to sacriﬁce her life for the transformation of imoogi (creatures from Korean myth that are cursed and unable to become dragons) into a dragon, are reincarnated as Ethan and Sarah in Los Angeles, ﬁve hundred years after their deaths in Korea. Cultural critic Jin Jung-kwon’s denouncement of the ﬁlm on national television forum triggered the audience’s rage. Jin attributed the ﬁlm’s popularity to the evocation of national sentiment and criticized the ﬁlm for its lack of narrative logic and plausibility.≤∫ Independent ﬁlmmaker Lee Song Hui-il and producer Kim Jo Kwangsu also expressed unease toward director Shim’s self-promotion. Fans of D-War were outraged, voicing their views on the Internet. To the eyes of many of these fans the lack of narrative cogency can be justiﬁed by reference to comparable narrative strategies found in Hollywood blockbusters. This debate certainly deals with issues broader than the proper evaluation of the ﬁlm, but it also emphasizes how the notion of nationalism is articulated in different ways within both the industry and popular discourse. Nationalism has long functioned as a marketing strategy not only for D-War but also for previous blockbusters such as Shiri, JSA, and Silmido; midbudget ﬁlms such as Forever the Moment (Im Soon-rye, 2008); and even Blockbusters, Korean Style 39

festival-oriented ﬁlms such as Im Kwon-taek’s Sopyonje (1993) and Chunhyang (2000). However, what is intriguing in this debate is that Hollywood’s example has become the yardstick employed in both the South Korean ﬁlm industry and among audience members to judge the quality—both technical and stylistic—of a ﬁlm; but the signiﬁcance of adopting Hollywood style needs to be further examined within the trajectory of the transformation of the Korean blockbusters.

New Wine in New Wineskins

When Shiri was released, audiences and the media alike raved that it is like a Hollywood movie. As Shin Chi-Yun and Julian Stringer note, many of the narrative devices and premises reference the action ﬁlms of other national origins (Hollywood and notably France): the training of a female assassin (La Femme Nikita, France) and the dismantling of a bomb (Speed and Die Hard, USA).≤Ω However, Hollywood-like impressions not only come from Shiri’s spectacle-driven narrative but also from its employment of Hollywood storytelling devices. By borrowing Hollywood narrative conventions, Shiri presents a fast-paced story with a more contemporary style. But this does not mean that director Kang merely mimicked Hollywood techniques. Popular trends in Korea for the last three decades—comedy, melodrama, and the ‘‘road’’ movie—have relied on episodic narrative structure, and Kang’s adoption of Hollywood conventions marks a departure from the norms of Korean cinema. This deviation helped his ﬁlm to achieve a certain novelty and receive ‘‘event’’ status—something that breaks sharply from cinematic routine—which was what Shiri as an early blockbuster was striving for. Among Korean blockbusters, Shiri is most faithful to Hollywood narrative conventions. Shiri concerns North Korean special agent Lee Bang-hui (also referred as ‘‘Hui’’ throughout the ﬁlm), who assassinates South Korean political leaders and researchers. After completing her assassinations, she disappears from the public eye and goes to Japan to receive plastic surgery. She then changes her identity to Lee Myeong-hyeon, and falls in love with a South Korean, Yu Jong-won, who is a national intelligence service agent. While Yu is trying to track down Hui, North Korean terrorists led by Park Mu-yeong inﬁltrate the South to steal a liquid bomb called ctx in order to blow up a soccer stadium during a North versus South match. Yu foils their attempts to overthrow both the North and South governments, and Hui is killed by her lover at the end of the ﬁlm. 40

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Shiri follows Hollywood dual-plot structure; the protagonist Yu has to track down the North Korean assassin, Hui; but, at the same time, Yu is to be married in the next month. Hui (Myeong-hyeon), in the role of both enemy and lover, brings the two plots together at the end of the ﬁlm. Kang’s use of Hollywood narrative structure, however, serves various functions. Kang expands and emphasizes the romantic plot in Shiri—a tactic largely lacking in Hong Kong gangster/action ﬁlms.≥≠ Hong Kong gangster cinema gained huge popularity among young audiences in South Korea between the mid1980s and early 1990s.≥∞ In an interview accompanying the dvd, Kang expresses his concern that his ﬁlm would be afﬁliated with another Hong Kong cinematic genre. Hong Kong gangster ﬁlms, such as the A Better Tomorrow series, center on loyalty among male protagonists, while typically minimizing the romantic subplot—John Woo’s The Killer (1989) being an exception. In A Better Tomorrow I (John Woo, 1986), Kit’s girlfriend Jackie is the only female character. Although she tries to unite two brothers, Ho and Kit, who have drifted apart, her role within the narrative is minor. Moreover, the romance between Kit and Jackie never develops. Kang’s expansion of the romantic subplot is a strategy to differentiate his ﬁlm from Hong Kong cinema, while tailoring it to a Korean audience already accustomed to Hollywood cinema. With a slight narrative twist, Kang manages to keep both the action-based plot and the romantic subplot intact and prevents the latter from dangling. Shiri borrows three major narrative strategies from Hollywood cinema: deadline, causality, and redundancy.≥≤ Kang advances the narrative and steadies its pace by constantly resetting mini-deadlines throughout the ﬁlm. For example, in order to track down Hui, Yu and his partner, Lee, need to identify the next victim, while North Korean commander Park threatens the national intelligence service by telling them when the next target will explode. In addition, the narrative is structured via a series of events based on cause and effect. All the spectacles introduced in the beginning of the ﬁlm are causally linked, and each scene leaves a question open. For example: Why did Hui kill Lim, a secret-weapons dealer, and Kim, a researcher at National Defense lab? This is answered in the next scene: Hui needs ctx. In turn, this leads to another question: Why is Hui in desperate need of ctx? Such narration swiftly advances the plot and keeps the narrative thread causally tight. Once the North Korean agents have hijacked ctx, the viewer is constantly informed of the capacity of ctx. Yu learns this from a doctor in the Blockbusters, Korean Style 41

national defense lab, and he shares the information with the national intelligence service board. Dr. Kang, who is with the intelligence service, demonstrates to Yu and a rookie how a combination of light and heat can activate ctx. The rookie, after noticing the light is on in the stadium’s royal box, calls Dr. Kang to conﬁrm how ctx works and then heads to the control booth. Such redundant cues function to achieve narrative clarity and enable the viewer to predict how the story will unfold. Halfway through the ﬁlm, the viewer’s knowledge slightly exceeds that of each character, an effect that builds suspense toward the climax. Hui and Park chat on the Internet, during which time Hui is ordered to eliminate ‘‘kissing gurami’’—a reference to Yu. This cues the viewer to infer that Hui and Yu’s ﬁancée, Myeong-hyeon, are the same person, recalling the fact that Myeong-hyeon gave Yu a pair of kissing gurami in the beginning of the ﬁlm. Yu calls his friend Ho for help, without telling his partner Lee to identify the inside informant. In the meantime, Lee installs devices in Yu’s car and in Myeong-hyeon’s shop in order to record their conversations. Now the question shifts from ‘‘Who will do what?’’ to ‘‘When and how will things turn out?’’ All these dangling causes are neatly tied up before the ﬁnale of the ﬁlm. After a shootout in the kitchen, Park manages to escape with the help of Hui. Yu follows Hui and discovers that Hui is his ﬁancée. Instead of confronting Hui right away, Yu returns to his ofﬁce to do a background check on Myeong-hyeon and leaves his ofﬁce to meet the real Myeong-hyeon on Jeju Island. While the confrontation between Yu and Hui/Myeong-hyeon is delayed, Lee realizes that Hui has had access to his conversation with Yu through devices planted in an aquarium. Still, the narration of this ﬁlm is not completely omniscient and restricts the viewer’s knowledge to an extent. Myeong-hyeon’s pregnancy, which is withheld from both characters and the viewer, comes as a surprise at the end of the ﬁlm. Although lively in plot development, Shiri manifests some leaps and gaps in terms of narrative logic and continuity. It is unclear how Hui managed to escape after she fell for the trap set by Yu. We witness Park trying to escape the site by holding a bystander hostage, while Hui is pointing her gun at Yu. Next, the camera cuts to a subway without showing how this confrontation ended. Another weak spot occurs when Yu follows Hui to the ﬁsh shop. Yu sees Hui putting her wig in a drawer. Shortly after, when Park pays a visit to Hui, the wig is on the table! Despite these narrative lapses, Shiri is coherent overall and causally tighter than most Korean ﬁlms. By incorporating Holly-

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wood conventions—urgency conveyed through deadline, causally driven narrative, and redundancy—Shiri was an example of Korean cinema equaling Hollywood cinema not only in spectacle and entertainment value but also in storytelling. By adopting a nonlinear narrative, the structure of JSA becomes more complex than that of Shiri. The opening credits of JSA unfold with a crime scene: we see light streaming through a bullet hole in the wall. The only observer is an owl. Next, Swiss Major Sophie Jean arrives to investigate the crime. Throughout the ﬁlm, this crime scene is repeated three times in ﬂashbacks: the ﬁrst two are false ﬂashbacks based on Sergeant Oh’s and Lee’s report, respectively; and the third, toward the end of the ﬁlm, is a ﬂashback of Lee. The narration of the ﬁlm is predominantly restricted, with the narrative information being withheld from the audience: this is typical in investigation ﬁlms. Although JSA is framed as a crime-investigation story, the ﬁlm eventually becomes a more psychologically driven drama when a ﬂashback shows how four soldiers have developed a brotherly relationship. The ﬂashback runs uninterrupted for forty minutes and covers an eight-month period, from the moment Lee dismantles a mine with help from Oh and Jeong, until a shootout on Jeong’s birthday. (The ﬂashback does not seem to be presented as either Nam’s or Lee’s, although the ﬂashback is inserted while Nam is being carried to the hospital.) This ﬂashback is lengthy, but early in the ﬁlm director Park carefully signals the major events through interviews that Sophie conducts with Lee and other soldiers. Thus the viewer is cued to recognize these key events as they unfold within the ﬂashback. For instance, during Sophie’s interview with three South Korean soldiers (including Nam), a second interviewer tells her that Lee was once missing during combat practice. This interview initially functions to build up Lee’s masculinity, but later it helps the viewer to realize that the ﬂashback has just begun. The ﬂashback begins with the camera focusing on Panmunjeom from the south. Unlike other scenes, where subtitles inform the viewer of the speciﬁc time of events, the subtitle here reads only ‘‘Security,’’ which is meant to slightly disorient the viewer. Tourists exit one building, and as they move to the next building, the wind blows a red hat off one of them; the hat lands in front of Sergeant Oh on the north side. Oh picks it up and returns it to an American soldier. In an overhead shot, a tourist is seen approaching the

Blockbusters, Korean Style 43

border to take a photograph as a South Korean soldier signals to stop the tourist from doing so. When the South Korean soldier escorts the tourist back to his tourist group, another Korean soldier takes his place. A segment of this scene is repeated at the end of the ﬁlm. As Oh returns the red hat, the click of the camera is heard. The image turns to black and white, and the camera pans right to reveal Jeong marching in the background. As the camera continues to pan left, Nam is seen on the left side and Lee in the foreground as he uses a hand signal to try and stop the tourist from taking the photo. The viewer is invited to link this last shot to the earlier scene and to infer the signiﬁcance of the moment: this scene depicts the four soldiers at a time when they were strangers to one another. Alternatively, when the ﬂashback ends, Park snaps the viewer out of it: we see Nam open the door to ﬁnd a North Korean lieutenant outside as camera cuts to Nam being carried to the hospital. We, as viewers, construe the scene of Nam being carried out as representing a present action. However, the scene is, again, titled rather abstractly: ‘‘Joint.’’ The ﬂashback is carried by two subtitles: ‘‘Security’’ and ‘‘Joint.’’ These subtitles are taken from the ﬁlm title: ‘‘Joint’’ ‘‘Security’’ ‘‘Area.’’ Therefore, one might naturally wonder about the appearance of the subtitle ‘‘Area.’’ We see it in a shot of Sophie’s ﬂight landing, followed by the scene when the vehicle carrying her arrives at Panmunjom. Each word of the title is employed, in reverse order, to mark the beginning of the investigation and the beginning and end of the ﬂashback. This authorial mark can be interpreted in various ways, but the reverse order of the title words mirrors the ﬁlm’s structure. It begins with a crime scene and the arrival of the investigator, Sophie. As in many ﬁlm noir/investigation ﬁlms that utilize a ﬂashback structure, the plot begins in the present and intermittently ﬂashes back to the past. The ﬂashback bracketed between ‘‘Security’’ and ‘‘Joint’’ alludes to the fact that the memory of the friendship among these four soldiers in the Joint Security Area will be bracketed and buried in this rather politically ambiguous and ambivalent space, since Sophie decides not to reveal the truth. This type of plot structure is not unique to JSA. And as Desser notes, despite its nonlinear narrative it is ‘‘reasonably straightforward.’’≥≥ What seems interesting within the context of Korean blockbusters, however, is that narrative puzzles are well cued earlier on in the ﬁlm. Meanwhile, the long ﬂashback builds up a languid rhythm through South Korean soldiers’ recurring visits to the North post,

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which would invite the viewer not only to observe but also to be immersed in the friendship developing among the four soldiers. Later blockbusters such as Taegukgi, Silmido, The Host and D-War, lose the narrative clarity and complexity found in Shiri and JSA, respectively, and subordinate the narrative logic to the unfolding emotional trajectory of characters or spectacles at the expense of narrative consistency. In Taegukgi, Kang adopts a more episodic narrative structure than that of Shiri. The story of two brothers is framed as a ﬂashback, as Jin-seok arrives at a site to identify his deceased elder brother Jin-tae—ﬁfty years after the Korean War is over. Within the ﬂashback, the plot more or less follows a linear trajectory. However, Kang prioritizes the evolving conﬂict of the two brothers over the depiction of the war. The ﬁlm provides the viewer with minimum information regarding the war’s progression. Although the viewer is informed about the time and location of some (but not all) of the battles, viewers, as well as characters themselves, are kept in the dark with regard to the speciﬁc development of the war or the signiﬁcance of each battle. Even with knowledge of the geography of the Korean peninsula, one has only a vague sense of direction, starting from Seoul to South (Daegu), then to North (Pyeongyang, Haeju), and retreating back to Seoul. The development of the war is beyond the comprehension of both protagonists and the viewer, and each battle is marked by increasing casualties and their impact on the changing relationship between the two brothers. In the ﬁrst battle, which takes place near the Nakdong River, the injury of Seung-cheol, a teenage boy who kills other soldiers and then himself because of the unbearable pain of his wounds, signals the beginning of a series of deaths awaiting the South Korean soldiers, including Jin-tae. In Pyeongyang, Yeong-man dies while protecting Jin-tae, who physically struggles with a North Korean commander. During the retreat, Yeong-seok, whom both Jin-tae and Jin-seok had befriended before the war, is killed. In Seoul, Yeong-shin, Jin-tae’s ﬁancée, is accused of being a Communist and is murdered by South Korean soldiers. The brotherhood between Jin-tae and Jinseok suffers from witnessing all these deaths, especially when the deaths of the victims have an increasingly personal signiﬁcance for them. The romantic subplot is underplayed in Taegukgi compared to Kang’s earlier blockbusters such as Ginkgo Bed and Shiri. Although we have a glimpse of the interaction between Yeong-sin and Jin-tae in the beginning of the ﬂashback, their relationship serves a more important role within an

Blockbusters, Korean Style 45

extended family: Yeong-sin as a dutiful future daughter-in-law and Jin-tae as a father ﬁgure to all, including Yeong-sin’s three young siblings. Yeongsin bears signiﬁcance to the narrative in that her death marks a turning point within the narrative, leading to the climax. Yeong-sin’s death indicates the slow disintegration of the family. But there is minimal romantic development between Yeong-sin and Jin-tae. From the beginning of the ﬁlm, Yeong-sin is presented as part of the family that Jin-tae is eager to protect. What drives the narrative of Taegukgi appears to be a conﬂict between the two brothers, but actually the conﬂict resides within Jin-tae, whose values are torn between his Confucian ideal of family and the realities of war: his actions oscillate between his obligation to protect his younger brother and his growing obsession with power and control. The weakness of the narrative is its lack of a subtle shift between these two aspects of his dilemma: Jintae’s behavior and actions sometimes seem absurd and extreme. In Silmido, Kang Woo-suk also puts character psychology above narrative coherence. In the fast-paced opening sequence, two parallel lines of action take place—Kang’s attack on a local gang boss and a North Korean guerilla’s attempt to inﬁltrate the Blue House. Both attempts fail, and the perpetrators are captured. Kang is sentenced to death. But Kang and other ex-convicts are sent to an island for training, as members of a special unit with the mission to assassinate North Korean President Kim Il-sung. As the training on the island brings the narrative to a halt, the focus shifts to character development along with Kang’s growing obsession with the mission. The exposition on the island is unconventional, as we rarely learn characters’ names, except Han Sang-pil and Sergeant Jo (referred to as ‘‘Sgt. Dick’’ throughout the ﬁlm); this is despite the fact that there are ﬁve or six important characters, including Geun-jae. Geun-jae, whose name is not revealed even when he dies, mediates the growing rivalry between Han and Kang in the beginning of the ﬁlm. Furthermore, his relationship with a twenty-one-year-old trainer is foregrounded as an example of the growing attachments among the pairs of trainees and trainers on the island. We learn Geun-jae’s name only after the remaining members arrive at a small town in Gyeonggi province and speculate about what Geun-jae would do if he were with them. The audience can begin identifying characters by name only after the goal of the soldiers in the 684 Unit shifts from their redemption to regaining their own identities. When Sgt. Park, whose name is never mentioned but shown in a close-up of his nametag, is surrounded by the members of the unit, he reveals that the government’s promise of rewarding the 684 Unit was a hoax 46

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from the beginning: since being shipped to the island, their personal records have been erased for good. Before members of the 684 Unit commit suicide inside a local bus they’ve hijacked, each writes his name with his own blood as an attempt to assert his identity, however momentary. The narration of Silmido departs from Hollywood-style narration in another signiﬁcant way. Following the subtitle in the precredit sequence reading ‘‘1968, January,’’ there is no clear timeframe until General Choi is ordered to eliminate the 684 Unit within a week. A Hollywood ﬁlm would likely set a clear deadline for the training to be completed. What’s unusual is that the viewer is uninformed with regard to passage of time even after the mission has been aborted. The 684 Unit has to return to the shore after the project has been stopped. It appears that more time has passed since then, when Han asks for more food while standing in line for lunch. This scene signals the shortage of food on the island probably due to the lack of government support. It is not until Won-hui mentions in passing that two years have gone by that the viewer ﬁnally learns exactly how long the 684 Unit has been on the island. Temporal cues in Silmido are not only delayed but are sometimes inconsistent. Shortly after we hear Won-hui’s complaint, he and another mate escape the training camp and rape a woman in a village. The two are surrounded by Sgt. Jo and others and told that their lives will be spared if they surrender. The two discuss whether they should surrender: Won-hui claims that he would not trust Jo’s promise, given his experience with Jo over the years. The two attempt a double suicide. Won-hui stabs his mate ﬁrst but is captured before he can do the same to himself. In the next scene, Won-hui is tied up in front of the whole unit. Won-hui starts to insult his mates, when they are being punished for his violation. Kang, outraged, runs toward Wonhui and smashes his head—killing him instantly. A few scenes later, Kang is beaten up by his trainer for this, on the charge that he has wasted three years on Kang for nothing. Yet it is inconceivable to assume that a year has passed between Won-hui’s death and Kang’s punishment. Such temporal ambiguity and inconsistency may be attributed to the spatial isolation of Silmido. On this island, both the trainers and trainee lose track of time, dedicating themselves to the sole purpose of the unit: assassinating North Korean President Kim Il-sung. However, given the urgency of the task, it is odd not to have a speciﬁc deadline. The delay and incoherence of temporal cues are unmotivated, unlike the peculiar exposition that withholds characters’ names, which underscores their lost identities. Blockbusters, Korean Style 47

The Host adopts an episodic structure, prolonging the narrative through multiple lines of action. Adolescent girl Hyeon-seo is devoured by a monster, but she manages to survive when it spits out some of its victims in the sewer. Gang-du is forced to stay in a compound with military ofﬁcials, fearing he might be infected with a virus after having physical contact with the monster. Gang-du’s family escapes from the military compound, and each family member—Grandpa, Gang-du, Nam-il, and Nam-ju—attempts to independently locate and rescue Hyeon-seo. Family members are connected via mobile phones, and the ill-functioning communication devices isolate each from the rest—one of the major motifs throughout the ﬁlm. The multiple lines of action merge at the end of the ﬁlm, as each character is given a shot at destroying the monster. The loose narrative of D-War, as previously mentioned, became the most publicized issue in South Korea in 2007. Critic Jin criticizes the ﬁlm’s plot for its reliance on a deus ex machina, a device that unexpectedly solves or resolves the story’s main conﬂict.≥∂ Since 1999, narratives in Korean blockbusters have become increasingly versatile. D-War’s peculiarity within Korean blockbusters is not its sparse or implausible narrative per se, but has more to do with its narrative strategy—its lack of modulation between restricted and unrestricted knowledge. Young Ethan’s encounter with Jack reveals the backstory to both the protagonist and the viewer too early on in the ﬁlm, taking away from Ethan and Sarah a necessary investigation that would answer the cause of the imoogi’s attack. Instead, D-War quickly becomes a chase ﬁlm—the ﬂashback to their previous life ﬁve hundred years before would normally come toward the end as Ethan and Sarah discover their past together. Despite the fact that Korean blockbusters employ various narrative structures and devices, they share a narrative trajectory: nihilistic, tragic endings. Unlike most Hollywood blockbusters, protagonists in Korean blockbusters only partially achieve their goals. Hollywood cinema often features a narrative in which the protagonist is presented with two compatible goals— one in a public sphere, the other in heterosexual romance—and the success in one triggers or contributes to the achievement of the other.≥∑ In Godzilla (Roland Emmerich, 1998) for instance, Dr. Niko Tatopoulos (Matthew Broderick) successfully saves New York from a monster with the help of his college sweetheart Audrey (Maria Pitillo), and this victory provides the opportunity for them to rekindle their romance. On the contrary, protagonists in Korean blockbusters face more serious dilemmas. In Shiri, agent 48

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Yu must kill Hui or neglect his duty. In JSA, Sophie reveals the truth about the shooting incident, which leads to Lee’s suicide. The goal of Jin-tae in Taegukgi is self-defeating; Jin-tae’s desire to protect his family from the Korean War costs him his life. When General Choi is ordered to get rid of the 684 Unit in Silmido, he must execute the order, otherwise his subordinates will also be killed. Gang-du, in The Host, defeats the monster, but he is unable save his daughter Hyeon-seo. Diffrient ﬁnds that the commercial success of Shiri can be linked to this type of hybrid structure. He claims, ‘‘Perhaps the ﬁlm’s singularity and huge success can be attributed to the way it fuses the special-effect-driven spectacles of Hollywood blockbusters and the melodramatic sentiments of traditional Korean storytelling’’ (emphasis mine).≥∏ Such a tragic ending, however, is not unique to Korean storytelling. One can ﬁnd similar endings in many Hong Kong gangster sagas. Characters are often torn between different obligations, and conﬂicting loyalties derive the narrative of both Hong Kong and Korean gangster cinema. Incorporation of melodramatic elements within blockbusters is also common to both Hollywood and Korean blockbusters. Blockbusters combine conventions of various genres with an aim to target a range of demographic groups. Armageddon (Michael Bay, 1998), for instance, incorporates characteristics of family melodrama: Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) initially opposes his daughter, Grace (Liv Tyler), dating aj (Ben Afﬂeck). Both personal and professional conﬂicts between Stamper and aj are resolved at the end of ﬁlm, as Stamper acknowledges and approves of aj and sacriﬁces himself for the mission. Similarly, in The Day After Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich, 2004), Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), a paleoclimatologist, tries to save the world from the effects of global warming, while also trying to rescue his son Sam (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is in New York City for a scholastic competition. Sentimental attachment to characters may be more permissible in Korean blockbusters than in Hollywood blockbusters, but it is hasty to claim that such storytelling is rooted in Korean tradition. A better way to characterize the difference would be that Korean blockbusters are more characterdriven and attempt to expand ‘‘narrative depth,’’ which is often lacking in contemporary Hollywood blockbusters.≥π Characters function as more than the nodes that advance the narrative, and the narrative is often suspended as in JSA and Silmido to portray and develop character psychology. If Korean blockbusters partially adopt Hollywood narrative conventions, they acquire conventional characteristics of contemporary Hollywood ﬁlm Blockbusters, Korean Style 49

style—what Bordwell characterizes as ‘‘intensiﬁed continuity’’ style. Bordwell claims that post-classical Hollywood cinema displays a more obtrusive and self-conscious style—ﬂashy opening credit sequence, rapid editing, close framing, and a free-ranging camera—but it still adheres to the basic premises of classic Hollywood continuity editing: temporal consistency and spatial coherence. Narrative can be nonlinear and more elliptical than in classical Hollywood cinema, but it is coherent in retrospect. The editing is fast-paced, with tight framing and a mobile camera, but it preserves spatial unity.≥∫ Korean blockbusters, like many Hollywood blockbusters, begin with a captivating spectacle: Shiri with Hui’s violent training sequence; JSA with a crime scene; and Silmido with Kang’s attempted murder crosscut with the inﬁltration of North Korean terrorists. The precredit sequence of Silmido consists of three parts, which last over ten minutes: crimes, a trial, and an execution, with an average shot length of 3.42, 5.5, and 8.3 seconds, respectively. In the crime sequence, editing underscores both visual parallels and contrasts between the two lines of action. While both Kang and Kim are chased, there are close-ups of their weapons, knife and gun, respectively. If graphic similarities between their actions underscore a situational parallel, visual contrasts between the two emphasize the different scales of their crimes—assassination of the national leader vs. murder of a local gang. As the alternation between these actions becomes more rapid—almost shot by shot—the two actions appear to merge, forming one continuous action sequence. For instance, we see Kang drop his knife, followed by a shot of Kim being captured, with Kim’s comparable action omitted. In this opening sequence, Kang teases the viewer by setting up a formal pattern and then violating it to counter the viewer’s expectation. The remaining precredit sequence is structured in a similar way. During Kang’s trial sequence, he enters a building, escorted by two policemen. But in the next shot, when the door opens, Kim enters the pressroom instead, hosted by two policemen. In the execution sequence that follows, General Choi visits Kang, who is now in a prison uniform. Choi asks whether Kang is willing to serve his country, if he’s given a second chance. Before Kang answers, Choi orders: ‘‘Execute him!’’ We see a man walk down the alley from behind, but when the camera cuts to show his face, it is not Kang but someone else! After showing the execution of the wrong man, there is a shot of a boat in the ocean and the title credit ‘‘Silmido.’’ A closer view of the boat

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shows the man who was just executed. The viewer now infers that not only was this man’s execution a fake but that Kang’s was probably phony as well. Both men, along with many other ex-convicts on the boat, are on their way to Silmido for the training. Although the precredit sequence lacks aesthetic precision and reﬁnement—similar actions or objects are not shown in perfect graphic match from shot to shot, it certainly succeeds in holding the viewer’s curiosity. The rest of the ﬁlm is interspersed with spectacles, comparable or inferior to this precredit sequence, which manage to emotionally engage the viewer. Action sequences reﬂect a predilection of each director, but they more or less conform to contemporary Hollywood stylistic conventions. The action scenes in Shiri are often shot with a handheld camera to create a shaky image. Consider the kitchen scene immediately after three North Korean terrorists fall for a trap set up to trick Hui. The scene begins with Park, chased by Yu and his squad team, entering a kitchen and ends with him escaping with a hostage. The scene is edited with an average shot length of 2.04 seconds, cut faster than the opening sequence of Silmido. Park does not start shooting until the South Korean agents are close to him. In this scene, the space itself is conﬁned, and Kang employs a few camera set-ups with the camera crossing the axis of action a few times. But Park and Yu, who are shot in tight framing, occupy opposite sides of frames as they shoot at each other (ﬁgure 2.1, 2.2); and with cutaways to the members of the squad (ﬁgure 2.3) and consistent eye-line match, Kang prevents the spatial disorientation of the viewer. In the kitchen scene, Kang avoids extensive use of slow motion and ﬂamboyant, balletic movements, which are often associated with Hong Kong gangster cinema. Even when Park runs out of bullets and realizes that he is doomed, we see his momentary despair in normal speed. Nor is Hui’s entrance glamorized when she rescues Park at the last minute. Instead, Kang creates a sense of chaos by the unstable camera and sudden appearances of characters in a frame. Characters are initially blocked by objects in the kitchen, such as a sink, storage cabinet, a cart or even smoke: then they suddenly appear to brieﬂy ﬁre their weapons and then hide again. The scene is punctuated with slightly lengthier shots, underscoring characters’ moments of realization, such as when Park ﬁnds out that he has run out of bullets. Kang’s restraint from slow-motion montage aesthetics is multifaceted: he not only keeps the style of his ﬁlm from undermining the purported

Blockbusters, Korean Style 51

Figure 2.1 Yu aims his gun in Park’s direction. (Shiri, Kang Je-gyu, 1999)

seriousness of the story but also tries to distinguish his movie from Hong Kong ﬁlms such as Woo’s gangster sagas. Yet, the inﬂuence of Woo is palpable in an overtly dramatic three-way standoff in which Yu, Park, and Hui all point their guns at one another while the camera circles around them. While Shiri displays mostly chase-driven spectacles, Taegukgi showcases more special-effects-driven spectacles with massive explosions. This is in part due to their contrasting subject matters—espionage vs. war—but it also has to do with their production costs. With three times the budget of Shiri, Taegukgi boasts an abundance of explosions and gory images—speciﬁcally, mutilated limbs and bodies. Taegukgi includes more elaborately staged combat sequences, but it shares the basic editing patterns of Shiri. Major actions are coherent with more or less consistent screen directions. The camera movement is motivated by the ﬁgure movement, and it pauses to pick up multiple lines of action as it glides along. In a daytime combat scene in which a teenage boy named Seung-cheol is injured, two parties are visually demarcated: South Korean soldiers inside the bunker at screen left and North Korean soldiers running down the hill at screen right. The camera 52

THE SOUTH KOREAN FILM RENAISSANCE

Figure 2.2 Park ﬁres back at Yu with consistent eye-line match.

(Shiri, Kang Je-gyu, 1999)

Figure 2.3 A cutaway to the squad before the camera crosses the axis of action.

(Shiri, Kang Je-gyu, 1999)

violates Hollywood’s 180-degree rule when a Sergeant runs toward Seungcheol to save him while the camera crosses the character’s axis of action. But since the screen directions of South vs. North Korean soldiers have already been fully established, it does not disorient the viewer. In Taegukgi, Kang attempts to create an impression of subjective immersion in the action, by propelling debris and human ﬁgures out toward the viewer, a convention established in many action-spectacle-based ﬁlms such as Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998) and Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000).≥Ω In the scene alluded to above, when a bomb explodes right next to Seung-cheol, the impact sends his body hurtling toward the camera. In a match-on-action cut, the camera cuts closer to Seung-cheol, making it appear though he falls in front of the viewer. Compared to Shiri, Kang manipulates both the image and the audio tracks to a greater extent in Taegukgi, which provides a much more intimate take on Jin-tae’s subjective state. Consider a night combat scene in which Jin-tae blows up the North Korean army post. As the battle heats up, the camera cuts to a couple of separate lines of action inside the bunker, including scenes of Jin-tae and Jin-seok struggling with enemies. The camera pans from screen left to screen right as Jin-tae runs toward the North Korean post. As Jin-tae nears the North Korean post, the camera awaits him with a frontal shot. Jin-tae heaves a couple of grenades. After the explosions, Jintae is seen outside the post, overhearing a North Korean commander ordering that the post be guarded at all costs. As Jin-tae is shot in slow motion, the sound coming from inside the post is ampliﬁed, underscoring Jin-tae’s effort to eavesdrop. Then the camera cuts to an interior shot of the post, shortly after which we see Jin-tae enter through a door in the background and attack a North Korean soldier. Both the North Korean soldiers and the viewers are taken aback by the sudden appearance of Jin-tae. We soon see another temporal ellipsis. Jin-tae pours gas inside the post. The camera then cuts to an exterior shot of the post, where other soldiers are ﬁghting, followed by a shot of Jin-tae now outside the post, throwing grenades back at it. Jin-tae’s courageous but reckless attack, suggested by his ghostlike appearance and disappearance, shows his eagerness to be recognized by his army so that he can safely send his brother home. JSA lacks the amount of spectacle and violence shown in Shiri and Taegukgi. In fact, JSA is a peculiar case among Korean blockbusters as well as for its production company Myung Film. Formed in 1995, Myung Film pro-

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Figure 2.5 The camera pans right to show Choi in a similar shot scale.

(JSA, Park Chan-wook, 2000)

Figure 2.6 A delayed establishing shot that punctuates the scene with a great tension. (JSA, Park Chang-wook, 2000)

Figure 2.4 Lee framed in a tight close-up. (JSA, Park Chan-wook, 2000)

Oh in the middle, and Lee and Nam on the left—while Jeong is at the center of the far background. A sudden loud sound from the tape recorder startles everyone. The camera again swish-pans from Lee, to Oh, and then to Choi as they all look in the direction of the recorder. The camera fades to black, and a gunshot is heard. This sequence is punctuated by two exterior shots shown in the opening sequence: a shot of light streaming through a gun hole, followed by that of an owl. Subsequent shootings are shown in slow motion, conveying Nam’s panic and temporary insanity. As Nam gradually comes to his senses, the camera resumes its normal speed. The manipulation of sound is particularly notable. Although not portraying the subjective states of characters, the use of sound here is feasible in narrative terms. Music fades in and out to underscore the ﬂuctuating tension among the characters and serves a narrative function: that is, a trigger of the shooting. Music continues from the previous scene, signaling the beginning of the ﬂashback. It fades out during the confrontation between Lee and Choi, whose guns are pointed at one another. As they are about to put their guns down, the same music resumes but shortly fades out again. After a moment of silence, loud rock music begins playing as the tape

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Figure 2.5 The camera pans right to show Choi in a similar shot scale.

(JSA, Park Chan-wook, 2000)

Figure 2.6 A delayed establishing shot that punctuates the scene with a great tension. (JSA, Park Chang-wook, 2000)

recorder automatically plays the other side. During the slow-motion shooting, various soundtracks coexist: a voice coming from a receiver, a gunshot, heavy breathing, screams, and blood dripping, as well as a piano accompaniment. As Lee and Nam exit the post, a harmonica sound from nondiegetic music is heard, which blends into the warning siren, signaling the arrival of South Korean troops. The ﬁlm style of JSA does not show the same level of self-consciousness as Park’s Vengeance trilogy: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003), and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005). The trilogy features a number of stylistic embellishments, including modernist aesthetics, elaborate use of mise-en-scène, strikingly symmetrical shot compositions, and overt camera movements that are either motivated more by character psychology than ﬁgure movement or even simply unmotivated. The fact that JSA aims at a mass audience in part explains a stylistic disparity between JSA and Park’s overtly stylized hardboiled thrillers. But it also shows the 386 Generation directors’ versatility and their efforts to change the industry from within and that their ﬁlm expertise and stylistic predilections are ﬁltered through industry demands and production trends. The major goal of the 386 Generation ﬁlmmakers is not merely to appeal to a sensibility speciﬁc to Koreans; more importantly, they have attempted to do so via stylistic, aesthetic elevation, even by borrowing from Hollywood or other national cinema ﬁlm styles. Changes in budgeting and production procedures, in conjunction with the adoption of new distribution and marketing strategies, enabled the 386 Generation directors to showcase their ﬁlm expertise through narrative and ﬁlm style. Enthusiasm for Korean cinema may have initially been ignited and encouraged by consumer nationalism, but subsequent blockbuster success could not have been sustained without the successful synthesizing of a more reﬁned ﬁlm style with subject matter and themes that appeal to Korean audiences. Korean directors exploit national identity and national history in order to reach out to a wider audience. Despite their varied portrayals of their country’s national history, common among the 386 Generation directors is that instead of making retroactive ﬁlms that trace cultural roots—a strategy taken by Im Kwontaek’s festival ﬁlms such as Chunhyang (2000) and Chihwaseon (2002)—they borrow Hollywood ﬁlm style and fashion it so as to incorporate recent Korean experience. Korean blockbusters’ success at the box ofﬁce has rewarded 386 Generation directors in different ways. Taegukgi provided Kang a ticket to Holly58

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wood and a contract with a Hollywood agency. After Park proved himself as a commercially viable director he turned to a kind of ﬁlmmaking where there is more latitude to experiment with ﬁlm style. Winning the Grand Prix at Cannes with his Oldboy, Park established himself as a hybrid auteur—one who is adept at both commercially oriented ﬁlms and cult ﬁlms. Kang Woosuk, with the success of Silmido, maintains his status as one of the most powerful producers and ﬁlmmakers in the Korean ﬁlm industry. Bong has become one of the few directors in Korea who can appeal to both a local mass audience and art-house audiences abroad.

Blockbusters, Korean Style 59

3

No Blood? No Tears! Korean Gangster Cinema

A black sedan slides into the frame. A gang boss exits the sedan in front of a nightclub. Bouncers in black suits bow to him. The boss descends the stairs and enters the club, followed by his henchmen. Such urban gangster icons are often—maybe too often—found in contemporary South Korean cinema. Gangster ﬁlms have not only become one of the most proﬁtable trends in the contemporary South Korean ﬁlm industry, but they have also provided icons for other ﬁlm cycles to incorporate and adapt. For instance, in the melodrama A Promise (Kim Yu-jin, 1998) a female doctor falls madly in love with her patient, a gang boss. Gangsters and their codes of conduct, honor, and loyalty have also become the subject matter of comedy, as in No. 3 (Song Neung-han, 1997), My Wife Is a Gangster (Jo Jin-gyu, 2001), Kick the Moon (Kim Sang-jin, 2001), Hi! Dharma! (Park Cheol-kwan, 2001), and the Marrying the Maﬁa series (Jeong Heung-sun, 2002–2006). Korean critics often remark on the emergence of contemporary Korean ‘‘gangster’’ (kkangpae) cinema as if it were a novel form, historically unprecedented.∞ Such a misconception probably arises because of the long absence of Korean gangster ﬁlms during the 1980s as a result of censorship. In the prior history of Korean cinema, however, gangster ﬁlms constituted an important cycle within action ﬁlms, along with crime/spy ﬁlms and hwalgeuk, the latter of which feature Korean revolutionaries in Manchuria during Japanese colonial rule.≤ Inﬂuenced by Japanese yakuza ﬁlms, Korean gangster ﬁlms of the 1960s often dealt with an internal conﬂict within a gang or an external conﬂict between rival gangs, foregrounding the gangsters’ codes of conduct and their loyalty. Although Japanese ﬁlms were banned in Korea at the time, producers and directors were of the generation that had received an education in Japanese during the Japanese occupation.≥ Some ﬁlmmakers were even encouraged to model their ﬁlms after Japanese yakuza ﬁlms. With the establishment of Park Chung-hee’s Yushin government, during which Park implemented new constitutions in order to grant himself formal authoritarianism, stricter censorship was imposed. Gangster ﬁlms, 60

which ﬁlled screens until the early 1970s, began to decline in number. By the mid-1970s, Korean gangster ﬁlms were slowly giving way to Hong Kong wuxia and kung-fu ﬁlms. The Korean gangster cinema was reawakened in the 1990s by the popularity of Hong Kong action ﬁlms, which began to appear in the mid-1980s. Audiences in their twenties and thirties were more familiar with Hong Kong gangster sagas than with the Korean gangster cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. Gangster ﬁlms directed by John Woo, Wong Jing, and Ringo Lam rapidly encroached on the Korean market. The success of Hong Kong action cinema led to a drastic increase in the number of Hong Kong imports: there were fewer than twenty in 1987, but within two years there were nearly ninety, and the total remained above seventy until 1993.∂ The boom in Hong Kong action/gangster ﬁlms also coincided with a change in distribution within the Korean ﬁlm industry. With the advent of direct distribution by U.S. majors, it became difﬁcult for the owners of small and second-run theaters to acquire rights to Hollywood ﬁlms;∑ Hong Kong cinema became a lucrative alternative. Ironically, the resurgence of Korean gangster ﬁlms was signaled by Im Kwon-taek’s The General’s Son (1990) series (ﬁgure 3.1). During the 1980s, when Im established himself as an auteur at international ﬁlm festivals with such ﬁlms as Mandala (1981), The Surrogate Mother (1987), and Aje Aje Bara Aje (1989), he shied away from action ﬁlms. In fact, he had not directed an action ﬁlm since 1973. But through his The General’s Son series, the ﬁrst and second installments of which became the top grossing domestically produced ﬁlms in 1990 and 1991 (0.67 and 0.35 million admissions in Seoul, respectively, Appendix 1), Im revived the gangster ﬁlm of the 1970s.∏ Kim Du-han’s life and political career have been popularized by action/gangster ﬁlms such as The True Story of Kim Du-han (Kim Hyo-cheon, 1974), Kim Du-han II: Righteous Fighter (Kim Hyo-cheon, 1975), and Kim Du-han III (Ko Young-nam, 1975). Directors of younger generations, however, most of whom debuted in the 1990s, transferred gangsters to contemporary urban settings. Lee Chang-dong directed Green Fish (1997) and Lee Myung-se created Nowhere to Hide (1999). Kim Sung-su and Kwak Kyung-taek directed the box-ofﬁce hits Beat (1997) and Friend (2001) respectively. Kim Jiwoon’s stylized A Bittersweet Life (2005) is one of the most recent Korean gangster noirs. This chapter examines how Korean gangster cinema reemerged as a popular trend. Why did Korean gangster cinema suddenly attract a domesGangster Cinema 61

Figure 3.1 Kim Du-han challenges a Japanese judo master.

(The General’s Son, Im Kown-taek, 1991)

tic audience again? How do Korean gangster ﬁlms attempt to depart from other nations’ gangster cinemas, particularly those from Hong Kong? How do other ﬁlm cycles, especially gangster comedy, appropriate gangster icons for comedic purposes?

‘‘Am I Your Sidekick?’’

In 2001, Friend, directed by Kwak Kyung-taek, sold 6.5 million tickets within six weeks, earning $24 million and surpassing the record that Shiri, a blockbuster, set in 1999.π That record lasted until another wave of Korean blockbusters reignited the box-ofﬁce race in 2004. Friend marks the turning point of Korean gangster cinema not only because of its immense popularity but also because it helped gangster cinema become a major trend and propelled other variants within the industry. Although gangster ﬁlms before Friend were released only sporadically, the ﬁlm’s success popularized gangster tropes in other ﬁlms. What, then, are the reasons for the growing interest in and attraction of gangster cinema?

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Critic Kwak Han-ju attributes this resurgence at least partly to the socioeconomic crisis of the post-1997 period. A series of major corporate bankruptcies in Korea (Kia Automobile and Hando Steel, for example) and the currency crisis in the Southeast Asian region put the Korean economy in a fragile state. Disposable foreign reserves held by the Bank of Korea amounted to less than $8 billion; the exchange rate between the won and the U.S. dollar plunged from 808 won to the dollar in 1993 to 1,415 won to the dollar by the end of 1997.∫ In 1997 the Korean government ﬁled for national economic bankruptcy and asked the imf for $55 billion. The imf bailout entailed drastic budget cuts, higher interest rates and taxation, and reduced growth.Ω In her analysis of Friend, Shin Chi-Yun claims that ‘‘the revival and popularity of the [gangster] cycle in the post-imf period can be seen as a consequence of, and a response to, the national economic crisis.’’∞≠ The unemployment rate had increased, higher education no longer guaranteed employment, and employment did not ensure a stable future. It is claimed that such socioeconomic conditions contribute to social identity crises and anxiety in men, especially those in their teens and twenties. Violence in gangster ﬁlms represents the frustration of this younger generation; it is presented as an alternative route to making money and climbing the social ladder.∞∞ Such an explanation, although insightful, does not account for the difﬁculty of pinpointing the exact moment of the emergence of the cycle, nor does it address its lack of stylistic consistency. Gangster ﬁlms such as Im’s The General’s Son series became popular before the deterioration of the Korean economy began in 1997. It is hard to ﬁnd any narrative or stylistic patterns that distinguish the post-1997 gangster cycle from previous gangster ﬁlms. Kwak lists contemporary urban settings, nightclubs, and organized crime as some of the common elements of post-1997 gangster ﬁlms. Such elements are hardly new, however, and are unique neither to older Korean gangster ﬁlms nor to the post-1997 gangster ﬁlms. Gangsters have long been associated with urban settings. Films directed by Kim Hyo-cheon and Im Kwon-taek in the 1960s and 1970s unfold against downtown Seoul. Kwak suggests that a shared style entailing dim lighting, handheld camera, fast-paced editing, and slow motion marks the post-1997 gangster cycle.∞≤ It is true that contemporary gangster cinema is one of the most style-driven genres. However, the stylistic characteristics that Kwak mentions became the norm during that period across genres, not exclusively in gangster cin-

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ema. Unless Kwak can provide us with a convincing way to distinguish them, his explanation for the emergence of ‘‘new’’ gangster ﬁlms appears to be insufﬁcient. In addition, one must note that although gangster elements are prevalent across a wide range of ﬁlms, they serve varying purposes in individual ﬁlms. As David Desser claims, gangster tropes play out differently in each ﬁlm.∞≥ In Green Fish, Lee Chang-dong uses the form for a social critique of rapid urbanization and suburbanization, as well as the consequent deterioration of the traditional family. On the other hand, in ﬁlms such as Nowhere to Hide and A Bittersweet Life directors use gangster cinema for stylistic exploration. A comedy such as No. 3 parodies the trend. Certainly socioeconomic conditions are relevant to these ﬁlms, but it seems farfetched to argue that such conditions directly led to the reemergence of gangster cinema without taking into consideration the industry context, which has a more immediate impact on the ﬁlms’ look as well as on their content. A better explanation for the current status of gangster ﬁlms can be found in the emergence of new independent production companies and the successful niche-marketing of such ﬁlms as No. 3 and Friend. The production of Korean gangster ﬁlms tends to be a short-lived strategy undertaken by midlevel to small independents. Unlike blockbuster ﬁlms backed up by conglomerates and venture capital funds, the gangster trend was initiated by independents such as Uno Film (Beat), East Film (Green Fish), and Cineline II (Friend) as part of a niche-marketing strategy. The conglomeration of the Korean ﬁlm industry has made producers and ﬁlmmakers preoccupied with ﬁnding a consistently lucrative market. Beat was a breakthrough ﬁlm for both the director, Kim Sung-su, and the short-lived production company Uno Film.∞∂ However, soon after producing the critically acclaimed boxofﬁce hit Christmas in August (Hur Jin-ho, 1998), Uno Film was absorbed into the entertainment management group Sidus. East Film produced Peppermint Candy (1999) and Oasis (2002), Lee Chang-dong’s next two ﬁlms after Green Fish, both of which were fashioned with the ﬁlm festival circuit in mind. After the success of Friend and My Wife Is a Gangster, their distributor, Korea Pictures, emerged as one of the major distributors in the Korean industry.∞∑ Once gangster cinema was established as proﬁtable, other production companies followed suit—or parodied it. Although Desser claims that the weakening of the Japanese ﬁlm industry has contributed to the current boom in South Korea, one must note the Korean ﬁlm industry’s anxiety over the opening up of the domestic market 64

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to Japanese cinema. Japanese cinema had its ﬁrst theatrical release in Korea in 1998, over thirty years after the Korean government restored diplomatic relationships with Japan in 1965.∞∏ With Hana-bi (Takeshi Kitano, 1997) being the ﬁrst ﬁlm that received a theatrical release, Japanese ﬁlms began to be shown nationwide. But the performance of Japanese cinema in the Korean market was indeed underwhelming, except for romance ﬁlms (Love Letter, 0.64 million admissions in Seoul and over 1 million nationwide), anime (Howl’s Moving Castle, 0.98 million in Seoul), and the horror genre (Ju-on, 0.34 million in Seoul).∞π The strong box-ofﬁce draw of Korean gangster ﬁlms is therefore closely linked to the success of their immediate predecessors, notably the Hong Kong gangster ﬁlms of the 1980s and 1990s. Hong Kong cinema constituted a signiﬁcant portion of Korean popular culture in those years. Woo’s A Better Tomorrow and The Killer were ranked sixth and ﬁfth, respectively, with over 0.25 million admissions in Seoul (Appendix 1). Hong Kong stars such as Chow Yun Fat and Leslie Cheung appeared on Korean television commercials. The decline of Hong Kong action cinema in the early 1990s left vacant the market it once dominated. Korean ﬁlmmakers targeted their product toward the already-established niche market. The success of the Hong Kong gangster-hero cycle in the region, thanks to directors such as John Woo and Ringo Lam, stands as a landmark in the regional ﬁlm industry and established conventions for succeeding directors to inherit or reinterpret. Since the mid-1990s the gangster ﬁlms in the region have followed several routes. Hong Kong gangster cinema produced a number of series, such as the Young and Dangerous series (Andrew Lau, 1996–1998) and the A Moment of Romance series (Benny Chan and Johnnie To, 1990–1996) that transformed the norms established by the gangster-hero cycle. Johnnie To, a leading producer and director of Hong Kong gangster cinema, altered the path. To replaced the hyperbolic action of Woo’s gunﬁghts with relatively subdued, strikingly posed battles. In 1996 To and his screenwriter partner Wai Ka-fai formed Milkyway Image Production, which has since produced such offbeat gangster ﬁlms as The Odd One Dies (Patrick Yau, 1997), The Longest Nite (Patrick Yau, 1997), Expect the Unexpected (Patrick Yau, 1998), The Mission (Johnnie To, 1999), and PTU (Johnnie To, 2003). In 2002 and 2003 the Infernal Affairs series, directed by Andrew Law and Alan Mak, attracted the Hong Kong audience to theaters. The effort to create a Korean counterpart to Hong Kong gangster ﬁlms was rewarded with the box-ofﬁce success of Friend. Within the Korean ﬁlm Gangster Cinema 65

industry, Hong Kong style is a model to follow and to surpass, as indicated by an interview with Kim Dong-ju, the founder of Korea Pictures, the company that distributed Friend. Kim expressed conﬁdence that Korean cinema can and should replace Hong Kong cinema in the region and beyond.∞∫ If, as is claimed here, there is a close tie between the decline of Hong Kong gangster cinema and the rise of Korean gangster cinema, the commonalities or differences between these two cinemas should be explored. Apart from the fact that Korean gangsters use different weapons than Hong Kong gangsters, is there any signiﬁcant difference between Korean and Hong Kong gangster ﬁlms? What distinguishes them from each other? Or, as one writer puts it, is Korean cinema the ‘‘new Hong Kong cinema?’’∞Ω The Hong Kong gangster-hero cycle does not display one coherent formula. Rather, like other forms of Hong Kong cinema, it combines, recycles, and reworks various norms. This synthetic approach to conventions is evident in the catalog of Woo’s gangster ﬁlms. Woo’s ﬁrst gangster hits, A Better Tomorrow I and II (1986 and 1987), adapt the gangster-hero formula, while his next ﬁlm, The Killer (1989), takes up the ‘‘cops-and-robbers’’ formula. Bullet in the Head (1990) is a war-epic gangster ﬁlm, combined with elements of a ‘‘buddy’’ ﬁlm. Hardboiled (1992), Woo’s ﬁnal action ﬁlm before he moved to Hollywood, can be seen as a variation of the G-men cycle. In Hardboiled, Chow Yun-fat, the epitome of the gangster hero in the A Better Tomorrow series, is recast as a cop. While Hollywood gangster ﬁlms underwent various cycles throughout the entire studio era, it took less than a decade for Hong Kong gangster cinema to effectively appropriate the gangster tropes and formulas of Hollywood gangster ﬁlms: with ﬁlmmakers such as Woo borrowing, adapting, and replacing those generic norms as they wished. This characterization of Hong Kong gangster cinema is not, however, meant to imply that it is indebted solely to the West. In fact, A Better Tomorrow is a remake of Lung Kong’s The Story of a Discharged Prisoner (1967). Ma Ka-fai claims that Hong Kong gangster ﬁlms are a variation of the hero cycle, the precedents of which can be located in the swordplay ﬁlms of the 1960s and kung-fu ﬁlms of the 1970s.≤≠ Ma claims that although the power dynamic between heroes and villains in the hero cycles shifts over time—reﬂecting the changing social, political, and economic relations between Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China—heroes can be distinguished from villains by their abidance by yi (pronounced as ui in Korean). Yi is often translated as ‘‘righteousness,’’ but it also refers to a moral sense to 66

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feel and a disposition to act out for the sake of rightness.≤∞ It should be further distinguished from other Confucian virtues such as zhong (chung in Korean, meaning ‘‘loyalty to one’s superior’’) and xiao (hyo in Korean, meaning ‘‘ﬁlial piety’’). If Hollywood’s classic gangster heroes are driven to ruthless actions in order to fulﬁll their desire for power and wealth, Hong Kong gangster heroes are reluctant and restrained in their execution of ‘‘justice.’’ In addition, unlike swaggering, obtuse Hollywood gangster heroes or subdued French lone-wolf gangsters, Hong Kong gangsters constantly suffer from intense mental agony and guilt. The manifestation of yi in Hong Kong gangster cinema distinguishes it from Hollywood gangster cinema not just thematically. It also provides a framework for the overall narrative trajectory. The employment of yi as a measurement of a character’s ‘‘virtue,’’ in conjunction with a heavy focus on familial relations and obligations, makes the Hong Kong gangster-hero cycle more closely related to Hollywood melodramas than to gangster cinema. The peculiarity of the Hong Kong gangster-hero cycle can be found in its odd combination of melodramatic narrative structure and excessive violence. Julian Stringer notes that Woo’s heroes in such ﬁlms as A Better Tomorrow and The Killer belong to both ‘‘doing’’ and ‘‘suffering’’ genres, the two different ways protagonists delineate their modes of agency.≤≤ If in a ‘‘doing’’ genre such as the western or the war ﬁlm the characters (often male) advance the narrative—in other words ‘‘they make things happen’’—in the ‘‘suffering’’ genres, such as melodrama and women’s ﬁlms, female characters suffer from impaired or blocked agency. Despite the common association of ‘‘melodrama’’ with women’s pictures, it has been argued that the term ‘‘melodrama’’ has been used across genres, to refer to both action-driven genres and women’s pictures.≤≥ I will use the term ‘‘melodrama’’ as an umbrella term that does not refer exclusively to women’s ﬁlms but encompasses various ﬁlm genres or cycles, including early action-oriented melodrama, family melodrama, male melodrama, and the ‘‘fallen woman’’ cycle. What is relevant to my aim here is the common characteristics of melodrama—old and new—with respect to narrative structure and ﬁlm style. The narrative structure of the Hong Kong gangster-hero cycle is melodramatic in the sense that it creates an impasse that prevents the protagonist from acting upon a situation. He is reluctant to retaliate against the enemy, because of familial or other obligations. For example, in A Better Tomorrow I, despite his partner Mark urging him to take revenge upon Shing, who has betrayed both Ho and Mark, Ho does not retaliate so as to Gangster Cinema 67

earn forgiveness from his younger brother, Kit, and to keep his promise to his deceased father to quit the gang. Ho refuses to negotiate with Shing until Shing threatens to harm Kit. Both classic Hollywood and Hong Kong gangster heroes are caught between the competing values of tradition and modernity. However, whereas Hollywood gangsters symbolize transgression against traditional values and their replacement of older values, Hong Kong gangsters represent the regression toward and adherence to the traditional values of loyalty and honor. Gangsters in the classic Hollywood cycle start out as underdogs, often coming from immigrant families or from small towns. Their ambition and aggression fuel their desire for power and pleasure. Taking this into account, Robert Warshow and Thomas Schatz view classic gangsters as mythic romantic heroes who brieﬂy transcend the social order, rejecting the systems of law and ideology.≤∂ However, as Fran Mason points out, the Hollywood gangster hero’s lack of discipline and constraint ultimately destroys him.≤∑ The tragic end for most Hollywood heroes can be attributed in part to traits that are irreconcilable—transgression and excess. It is quite the opposite for Hong Kong gangsters. Although their trustworthiness and loyalty are what lead to being betrayed by their subordinates, these same qualities are also what enable them to become ‘‘heroes’’ again. Unlike classic Hollywood gangster heroes who follow a rise-and-fall trajectory, Hong Kong gangster heroes follow a ‘‘return of the hero’’ trajectory: when the story begins they are at the top of the underworld; as the story develops, they lose their social status but regain their status as heroes. Korean gangster cinema shares some of the melodramatic structure manifest in Hong Kong cinema. Male protagonists often face tragic endings in both Hong Kong and Korean gangster cinema. Loyalty does not pay off for the protagonists in Korean gangster cinema. In fact, male bonding—be it friendship or a surrogate father-son relationship—rarely survives. Min and Hwan-gyu in Beat are both from dysfunctional families. Min rebels against his widowed mother for no obvious reason. A stepfather ﬁgure is introduced, but he exercises no authority. Although we do not see Hwan-gyu’s interaction with his family, he is separated from them, living by himself in Seoul. Tae-su plays the surrogate father role among this circle of friends. Min often turns to Tae-su when he needs money or a place to stay, and Hwan-gyu gets a job at a nightclub after he’s released from prison thanks to Tae-su. However, the friendship between Min and Hwan-gyu falls apart as a result of the quadruple love relationship involving Min, Ro-mi, Han-gyu, and Sun-ah. 68

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And Tae-su faces death when he is betrayed by his mob boss. In Friend, Junseok is put in a situation where he must order the killing of his childhood friend Dong-su because the two are working for rival gangs. Furthermore, the moment of Dong-su’s death coincides with the moment when he acknowledges their friendship by seeing their mutual friend Sang-taek off at the airport. Dong-su is betrayed by his own henchman, Eun-gi, and is stabbed by a novice who works for Jun-seok. In Korean gangster cinema, any type of transgression, sexual or social, is often forbidden and severely punished. Unlike the ﬁrst installment of The General’s Son series in which Kim Du-han becomes the town boss, in contemporary urban gangster ﬁlms the protagonists fall prematurely, either because of their Oedipal desire for a mother ﬁgure or because of a transgression of the gang order. The death of Mak-dong in Green Fish is attributed not only to his naiveté but also to his infatuation with Mi-ae, his boss’s lover. Similarly, in A Bittersweet Life Seon-wu’s desire for his boss’s young lover, Hui-su, triggers his premature fall and leads him to seek revenge. In Beat, the deaths of the protagonists are caused by their attempts to subvert the established order. Min abides by neither the gang order nor the social order and often reacts impulsively, while Tae-su is betrayed by his boss, who claims Tae-su is ‘‘too ambitious.’’ Both Jun-seok and Dong-su in Friend fall victim to the social order of the gang world. The elliptical narrative structure attributes their fall to circumstances rather than to character ﬂaws. Jun-seok, who is portrayed as prudent and discreet, gives the order not to retaliate upon Dong-su, but his subordinates plan to kill Dong-su without Jun-seok’s approval. The endless battle between the two gangs begins unintentionally. Dong-su and his henchmen retaliate, eventually killing Junseok’s cousin, which leads Jun-seok to feel obligated to get rid of Dong-su. There remains only an empty succession of battles, deprived of moral significance, which ultimately takes the lives of both Dong-su and Jun-seok. The frequent use of the high school as a setting for Korean gangster cinema is perhaps most peculiar element; this type of setting is hard to ﬁnd in Hong Kong gangster cinema except in Young and Dangerous: The Prequel (Andrew Lau, 1998). The high school in Korean gangster cinema represents a society that replicates as well as substitutes for some social norms of power and hierarchy. A tug of war among adolescents mirrors a power struggle between rival gangs; at the same time, the high school days comprise a distinctive period, marked by a hierarchical structure involving teachers and parents as well as students. Students rebel against teachers and momentarily Gangster Cinema 69

disrupt the order; however, the order is reestablished when the students are expelled from school. In their adolescent years, both Min and Tae-su in Beat may have succeeded in temporarily subverting the social hierarchy by rebelling against authority. In Friend, when a teacher not only physically punishes Jun-seok and Dong-su for their bad grades but also insults them, Jun-seok rebels against the teacher by leaving class, as does Dong-su. Shortly after the group ﬁght at the theatre, Dong-su smashes the windows in the school hallway and in the teachers’ lounge. However, all four characters fail to adjust to the larger society, in which power and hierarchy are mapped out somewhat differently than in high school, and this failure ultimately leads to their death. In Green Fish, the character Mak-dong has just been discharged from the military, which is another institution governed by strict rules and regulations. In this regard, Korean gangster cinema presents the same core conﬂicts as male coming-of-age stories such as Spirit of Jeet Kune Do (a.k.a. Once Upon a Time in High School, Yu Ha, 2004)—individual vs. society, desire vs. duty, rebellion vs. conformity, and longing vs. contentment≤∏ — and in both, the male protagonists neither make successful transitions from adolescence to adulthood nor come to terms with their own identities. Despite the fact that romantic plots are more prominent in the Korean gangster cinema than that from Hong Kong, female characters still lack agency. Ro-mi and Hui-su, in Beat and A Bittersweet Life, respectively, are unintentional femme fatale ﬁgures: they trigger the disintegration of a male relationship but fall short of being seductresses. The romance between Min and Ro-mi makes it impossible for Min to maintain his relationship with either Hwan-gyu or Tae-su. Although there is mutual attraction between Min and Ro-mi, Ro-mi is unobtainable for Min because of their class differences. Min cannot satisfy the material demands of the self-absorbed Ro-mi, and so he reverts to gang activity and violence. When Ro-mi leaves Min, Min is devastated and spends a night with Sun-a, who Hwan-gyu has a crush on. When Mr. Kang asks Seon-wu to keep an eye on Hui-su while he’s away on a business trip, Seon-wu pays a visit to Hui-su. Hui-su comes down the stairs, changes into high heels, and trips—showing she is beautiful, yes, but still young and immature. Women in the gangster cinema also serve as an indication of the hierarchy. In Friend, Sang-taek and Jun-seok seem to be equals because they both have a relationship with the same woman. The conﬂict involves Sangtaek’s infatuation with a female bandleader, Jin-suk. Sang-taek, who is the nerd among the four friends, falls for Jin-suk after he sees her perform. At a 70

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small gathering at Jun-seok’s house, he introduces Sang-taek to Jin-suk. Dong-su confronts Jun-seok, thinking that Jun-seok favors Sang-taek over himself. Later in the ﬁlm we ﬁnd out that Jun-seok has married (or at least lives with) Jin-suk. One may ﬁnd exceptions to this rule. In No Blood No Tears (Ryu Seungwan, 2002) two female protagonists, aspiring singer Su-ji and cab driver Gyeong-seon, team up to snatch money that was bet on a dog ﬁght run by Bulldog, Suji’s psychotic gangster boyfriend. My Wife Is a Gangster (Jo Jingyu, 2001) features a female mob boss, Eun-jin, who is able to defend her subordinates and her husband from attacks by rivals. But whereas No Blood No Tears does not grant full agency to the two women whose plan goes wrong, My Wife Is a Gangster utilizes the gender role reversal as a comic device. Although the audience’s reception of the ﬁlm indicates that they experience a vicarious pleasure when watching the apparent agency in a comedy such as My Wife Is a Gangster,≤π it is not the femininity of these female protagonists that allow them to earn agency—which is, in any case, limited. Also, female agency is incompatible with the reproductive capacity. During the ﬁnal ﬁght, Eun-jin pleads for her life by pointing to the fact that she’s pregnant. Kim Kyung-hyun claims that the fetishized male icons and body images manifest in contemporary action blockbusters such as Shiri and JSA can be seen as a remasculinization process, a restoration of the masculinity that was lost as a consequence of the historical trauma of the military era. Frances Gateward expands on Kim’s observation, concluding that Korean blockbusters and gangster cinema engage male audiences as Hollywood blockbusters did in the Reagan era, which was a period of ‘‘reassertion of American military strength, economic power (for some), and male patriarchy.’’≤∫ Local critics such as Kim Ji-mi also express concern about the infantilizing of male characters in gangster cinema, in which they are seen as sympathetic precisely because the melodramatic structure has deprived them of agency.≤Ω In discussing masculinity depicted in such Korean ﬁlms, one must note the ambivalence, both in ﬁlm narratives and in the industry as a whole, over the use of gangster codes to represent virility. This ambivalence is evidenced by the tonal shift within gangster ﬁlms themselves and the popularity of gangster comedies such as My Wife Is a Gangster, Marrying the Maﬁa, and My Boss My Hero, which will be discussed shortly. Gangsters are from southern provinces—Jeonra or Gyeongsang—have heavy accents, and remain ‘‘marginal’’; they neither acquire the level of hegemonic power they Gangster Cinema 71

desire, nor are they morally redeemed. ‘‘Am I your sidekick?’’ goes one of the famous lines from Friend, which underscores Dong-su’s inability to ascend the social hierarchy. When Dong-su is stabbed, the viewers’ sympathy for him is ampliﬁed through music, which starts as he steps out of the club. Having been betrayed by his own henchman Eun-gi and by Jun-seok, Dong-su is attacked by Jun-seok’s henchman, who has been hiding in the street. After being stabbed over and over in front of his limo, Dong-su tries to escape. As he runs offscreen left, a high-pitched female vocal begins. The music not only highlights the drama of the scene, it also helps to deﬁne the meaning of Dongsu’s death and establishes him as a victim. As Dong-su is ruthlessly stabbed by the rookie gangster, we see ﬁsh that have been thrown from a crashed truck and are ﬂopping around in the middle of the street. The camera slowly moves away from Dong-su, following rainwater mixed with blood as it ﬂows toward the sewer. Although this is a powerful moment, neither Jun-seok nor Dong-su is morally redeemed. Jun-seok disapproves of Sang-gon, Dong-su’s boss, because Sang-gon does not follow the gang’s code of honor. However, Kwak does not fully establish the moral differences between the two. Although we get glimpses of the way the two rival gangs operate, their differences do not appear to be signiﬁcant. In the scene in which Dong-su and his gang attack a ﬁsh factory, there are cross-cuts that show Jun-seok instructing newcomers to his gang on how to stab a person. Jun-seok behaves no more humanely than Dong-su and his gang. The viewers, like the protagonists, are fascinated only with the superﬁcial aspects of gangster life, but the viewers’ sympathy for the protagonist is temporary. The viewers grieve over the loss—or the absence—of friendship, rather than celebrate the heroic acts of either Jun-seok or Dong-su. What would be fruitful here is a distinction between ‘‘narrative’’ agency and ‘‘moral’’ agency and, more importantly, the relationship between the two. Melodrama not only concerns the narrative impasse but also how the moral agency—or the act of desire or will—is blocked or unfulﬁlled by the narrative impasse. Lea Jacobs delineates the relationship between the two when discussing narrative agency and situation. Rosa, in King Vidor’s Beyond the Forest (1949), makes decisions and initiates actions that are blocked by untimely situations (such as her pregnancy) or the actions of others (such as her husband’s loyal friend).≥≠ The protagonists in Korean gangster cinema may lack narrative agency in the sense that their actions are motivated by external forces—family, gangster, or other types of obligations—but what is important is whether they carry 72

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any moral agency, regardless of whether it is ultimately fulﬁlled or not. Some of the gangster protagonists, including Jun-seok and Dong-su, lack such agency—or else it is not strong enough to enlist the viewer’s moral allegiance. Thus the accidental deaths of some of the protagonists in recent Korean gangster ﬁlms, such as Blood Tie and A Bittersweet Life, should be examined to determine whether they foreclose the narrative or moral agency of the characters. Furthermore, as the gangster cinema evolves, more self-conscious gangster ﬁlms emerge. Kwak’s Mutt Boy (2003), although not strictly a gangster ﬁlm, deals with the futility of false empowerment through allegiance with gang activity. Dirty Carnival (Yu Ha, 2006) also investigates Korean society’s exploitation of the gangster icons—how the apparent legitimacy of both the ‘‘underground’’ business such as clubs and bars and the Korean ﬁlm industry is dependent upon exploitation of gangsters or conceptions of gangsters in Korean society. A ﬁlm like Cruel Winter Blues (Lee Jeong-beom, 2006) explores the trend of ‘‘rural gangster’’ drama, in which gangsters are sent to the countryside and ﬁnd themselves transformed into members of a local community.≥∞ The industry’s concerns about criticisms of the gangster ﬁlm in general are also manifest in the discourse on ﬁlm style. When Beat was ﬁrst released, critics and audiences raved about its unique look. Although Wong Kar-wai’s ﬁlms have not been commercially successful in Korea, his style has inﬂuenced many contemporary Korean directors, including Kim Sung-su and Lee Myung-se. Kim has adopted some of Wong’s stylistic characteristics: impressionistic ﬁght scenes shot with swift camera movement; blurred images generated by step printing, low-key lighting, and saturated color. However, although Wong moves away from mainstream ﬁlm techniques by loosening up his narratives, Kim refashions Wong’s style for commercial purposes by combining it with more mainstream narratives. Wong and Kim punctuate action sequences in a similar way: by alternating between blurred action shots and deftly executed close-ups. For example, when Tae-su attacks a gangster at a restaurant, we see Tae-su enter the room with a knife in his hand, framed from Min’s point of view. As Tae-su is thrown out with a man whose back is bleeding, their actions are seen as a blurred image (ﬁgure 3.2). We see Tae-su in handheld camera shots brandishing the knife and threatening the people surrounding him (ﬁgure 3.3), followed by a shot of Tae-su being pushed toward a table by henchmen. The action continues in the next shot but is seen more impressionistically as the camera cuts to Gangster Cinema 73

Figure 3.2 Tae-su thrown out of the room after stabbing a mobster.

(Beat, Kim Sung-su, 1997)

Figure 3.3 An impressionistic ﬁght scene, reminiscent of the Wong Kar Wai aesthetics. (Beat, Kim Sung-su, 1997)

Figure 3.4 Min punctuates the impressionistic ﬁght.

(Beat, Kim Sung-su, 1997)

frame Tae-su more closely. The camera then pans left to reveal Min at the restaurant door and follows him as he enters (ﬁgure 3.4). We see Tae-su bleeding, crosscut a few times with reaction shots of Min. The camera, then, pans right to reveal the police. Kim’s action sequences are not as elaborate and rhythmic as Wong’s. An example can be found in As Tears Go By, at the moment when Wah avenges Fly’s treatment. Wong increases the visual tension by using more camera set-ups than Kim usually does and by changing the rhythm more rapidly through fast-paced editing. What Kim tries to accomplish simultaneously in Beat is an elevation of his own ﬁlm’s style and a commercialization of Wong’s style, which is internationally acknowledged as aesthetically worthy. The discourse on ‘‘gritty realism’’ and ‘‘ﬁlm noir’’ in the Korean ﬁlm industry further underscores the anxiety over the status of the gangster trend and the industry’s attempt to elevate it beyond the aesthetic level of the action ﬁlm that valorizes gruesome violence. The fact that director Kwak’s Friend is semiautobiographical is often used as a counterargument to the criticism of its representation of excessive violence. Blood Tie (Choi Ho, 2006), which is also set in Busan, was praised for its ‘‘realistic’’ depiction of Gangster Cinema 75

drug trafﬁcking and addicts; Running Wild (Kim Sung-su, [not to be confused with the director of Beat] 2006), Blood Tie, and A Bittersweet Life were marketed as ‘‘hard-boiled noir,’’ an aesthetic cachet in both industry and critical discourses.≥≤ Two reviews of Running Wild, although they come to opposite conclusions on the ﬁlm’s aesthetic merit, measure it against noir conventions. A Bittersweet Life, which seems to be most faithful to ﬁlm noir aesthetics with respect to mise-en-scène, showcases the intricate exploration of light and shade as well as the imaginative use of color. Whether gangster cinema advocates and sustains patriarchy is an important question to be discussed with respect to individual cases, but more signiﬁcant is the active exchange involving the industry, critics, and the audience on the representation of masculinity and how industry responds to critical observations on the social signiﬁcance and consequences of gangster cinema’s popularity.

We Are a ‘‘Family’’ The Gangster Comedy Cycle

The birth of gangster comedy may be attributed to the success of gangster ﬁlms such as Friend: but prior to Friend, action comedies such as the Two Cops series (Kang Woo-suk, Kim Sang-jin, 1993–1998) and the gangster comedy No. 3 began to form a cycle within the Korean ﬁlm industry. High-concept comedies such as My Wife Is a Gangster and Marrying the Maﬁa turned out to be lucrative. With a mid-range budget of $1.5 to 2.5 million, the revenue from these movies was twenty times their original cost. My Wife Is a Gangster attracted over 5 million viewers, bagging $30 million on a budget of $1.5 million,≥≥ and Marrying the Maﬁa marked the biggest local gross in 2003. Gangster comedy targets two holiday seasons: the Korean Thanksgiving holiday, chusoek, and the lunar New Year’s Day, seol. With its growing and proven popularity, gangster comedy can secure the saturated booking that blockbuster ﬁlms enjoy and be seen on up to ﬁve hundred screens nationwide. My Boss My Student (a.k.a. My Boss My Teacher, Kim Dong-won, 2006), a sequel to My Boss My Hero (Yun Je-gyun, 2001), opened in over four hundred theaters in the spring of 2006, while Marrying the Maﬁa III (2006) reached ﬁve hundred theaters. Over the past decade, gangster comedy has established itself as a reliable moneymaker within the Korean ﬁlm industry and the rare cycle that fostered successful sequels.≥∂ Remake rights to many 76

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of the gangster comedies were sold to Hollywood: Miramax bought the remake rights to My Wife Is a Gangster and Jail Breakers, while mgm picked up Hi! Dharma! In so-called sammai comedy, a term coined within the Korean industry, one-dimensional characters—gangsters, punks, or cops—with bad taste and manners become major sources of humor. Examples include the Two Cops series, No. 3, and Kim Sang-jin’s Attack the Gas Station (1999), Kick the Moon (2001), and Jail Breakers (2002). Other gangster comedies create gags via the role reversal that results from gangsters’ interaction with ordinary people (My Wife Is a Gangster, and Marrying the Maﬁa I, II) and the ‘‘ﬁsh out of water’’ scenarios, My Wife Is a Gangster II: The Legend Returns, Hi! Dharma! (Park Cheol-kwan, 2001), the My Boss My Hero series, and Mapado (Chu Chang-min, 2005). The word sammai originally came from Japanese kabuki theater billing practices. Sammaime refers to actors with third-tier billing, most of whom are comic actors with minor roles in the play, while nimaime, with secondary billing, are often young and handsome male actors. In the Korean usage the word is abbreviated, and it carries a connotation of ‘‘cheap’’ or ‘‘low.’’ No. 3, which earned actor Song Kang-ho stardom for his stuttering character and also helped circulate the word sammai, is a satiric portrayal of gang codes of honor and loyalty. The ﬁlm follows eight characters introduced in the opening of the ﬁlm: Tae-ju, his wife Hyeon-ji, district attorney Ma, starving hit man Jo-pil, a poet named Rimbaud, Ashtray, Do-shik the boss, and Do-shik’s wife Gina. The ﬁlm revolves around the tangled relationships among these eight characters, although Tae-ju and Ma become more salient than the rest during the course of the ﬁlm. Gangster ﬁlm is parodied by an unﬂattering representation of gangsters themselves—for instance, Tae-ju’s mullet hairstyle, Do-shik’s lack of manners, and Jo-pil’s struggle to make a living—in contrast to the slick look of gangsters in Hong Kong and Korean gangster cinema. But more importantly, as ‘‘Swan,’’ the title of the ﬁrst act indicates, this ﬁlm underscores the hypocrisy and superﬁciality manifested in the supposed trust between husband and wife, boss and subordinates, and citizens and law enforcers. In No. 3, trust within each pair is easily broken. The ﬁrst act demonstrates the instability of each relationship: Hyeon-ji has an affair with her tutor Rimbaud; Do-shik is betrayed by his right-hand man; Tae-ju eventually becomes disloyal to Do-shik. Kang and Kim solidify sammai comedy as a lucrative cycle. After the success of Two Cops (1993), Kang Woo-suk directed its sequel Two Cops 2 Gangster Cinema 77

(1996) and produced Two Cops 3 (1998). The Two Cops series revolves around a pair of police ofﬁcers, a veteran and a rookie, who try to tame each other as they work together. In the ﬁrst installment, the veteran cop teaches the stubborn rookie how to handle criminals and compromise with local mob ofﬁcials. In its sequel, when the rookie-turned-veteran tries to pass on tips to a rookie, a behavior he learned from his previous partner, he ﬁnds that the rookie is even more stubborn than he himself was a few years before. The Two Cops series combines elements from various cycles, such as Hollywood ‘‘buddy action’’ movies and Hong Kong gangster ﬁlms. Throughout the Two Cops series, Hong Kong gangster movies function both as a common reference and an object of satire. The Two Cops series evokes an atmosphere similar to that found in Hong Kong gangster ﬁlms, emphasizing night scenes and the mobsters’ lifestyle. Yet the series differentiates itself by poking fun at some of the typical features of Hong Kong gangster ﬁlms. In both the ﬁrst and second Two Cops, the rookie claims that he wants to be a cop because it is ‘‘cool.’’ The veteran quickly dismisses this notion by saying that the rookie has watched too many Hong Kong movies. And in the ﬁrst Two Cops the rookie steals a bag of cocaine while investigating a theft and tries to sell it to mobsters. The veteran reluctantly joins in this venture. On their way to trade cocaine for money, the cops predict that the mobsters will not have guns because ‘‘this is not Hong Kong.’’ The mobsters predict the same of our protagonists. Kim Sang-jin, an assistant director to Kang and the director of Two Cops 3, spins off this trend. After teaming with a new ﬁlm company, Fun and Happiness, he directed his breakthrough ﬁlm Attack the Gas Station (1999), which features four adolescents robbing a gas station for no reason. His next ﬁlm, Kick the Moon (2001), has a more coherent narrative than his ﬁrst, with greater emphasis on the romantic plot. In it, two friends encounter one another ten years after they graduated from the same high school. The one who used to be the tougher of the two now teaches at a local high school, while the one who was a geek during his high school years is now a powerful member of a mob syndicate. They compete for the love of the owner of a small ramen noodle shop. Jail Breakers (2002), the last of Kim’s sammai comedies, is closer to Attack the Gas Station in terms of its narrative structure. In it, two inmates escape from prison, not knowing they are scheduled to be pardoned and released the next day. 78

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The success of Kang’s and Kim’s ﬁlms contributes to the creation of a brand—sammai comedy—but an important difference should be noted between the two directors with respect to both their both visual style and their narrative structure. Kang often creates visually parallel situations in which repetition and variation lead to comedic situations. For instance, in Two Cops 2 there are numerous parallels and contrasts in the actions of the veteran and of the rookie, as on the different occasions when each chases a criminal on a motorcycle. There are also many references to the ﬁrst installment of Two Cops. Kim, on the other hand, relies on oblique angles and extreme close-ups to render the protagonists grotesque and humorous, as in Attack the Gas Station. While the narrative structure of Kang’s ﬁlms, especially Two Cops and Two Cops 2, is additive, organized via visual and narrative parallels, that of Kim’s ﬁlms, especially Attack the Gas Station and Jail Breakers, builds toward an explosive, chaotic battle near the end. All three ﬁlms directed by Kim—Attack the Gas Station, Kick the Moon, and Jail Breakers—contain anarchic moments in which a ﬁght takes place in the midst of a massive crowd. In Attack the Gas Station there is a battle among the four main protagonists, some cops, and local gangs who are unintentionally brought into the ﬁght. In Kick the Moon, a geek-turned-mob-boss is chased by both a local cop and a gang. He and his high school teacher friend are nearly beaten to death by members of a rival gang. Some of the teacher’s students join the ﬁght to save both him and the mob boss. Eventually the cops arrive to stop the ﬁght. In Jail Breakers, the security chief begs the escapees to come back to prison before high-ranking ofﬁcials come for an inspection. Hardened by physical labor, other inmates instigate a riot and take over the prison. Kim’s comedies may be compared to the anarchistic comedies of the Marx Brothers, although Attack the Gas Station lacks the dual plot structure involving a conventional young romantic couple and a clown that is reminiscent of Hollywood anarchistic comedies of the 1920s and 1930s.≥∑ However, the tension between social order and disorder is a vital part of the narrative, and it ultimately leads to a chaotic ﬁnale. The four adolescents in Attack the Gas Station are discontented with ‘‘repressive’’ social norms. In Kick the Moon, high school—a setting, as we have seen, that is often found in Korean ﬁlms—is portrayed as a place that restrains freedom and creativity. In Jail Breakers, two inmates try to escape from prison, a place where order is strictly maintained—one for love, the other for freedom. The events in all three ﬁlms are, in one way or another, reactions against social norms. Gangster Cinema 79

It is interesting to note, however, that social order is restored—however weakly or ironically—at the end of Kim’s ﬁlms. During the end credits of Attack the Gas Station we see each character pursuing his dream and becoming a legitimate member of society. Ironically, the rock music accompanying the end credits undergoes a transition into the Korean national anthem. In Kick the Moon, the mob boss turns himself in to the police. In Jail Breakers, the two escapees return to the prison and stop the riot. In the last scene of the ﬁlm, we see the two ex-convicts opening a bakery and a restaurant and working as active members of their local community. These endings may be viewed merely as a generic closure that provides a temporary end point for what has appeared to be a chaotic moment. Alternatively, such endings may be seen as curbing the subversive undertone of the ﬁlms. Regardless, Kim’s comedy forms an anarchic ﬁlm cycle of a kind rarely found in the Korean ﬁlm industry. Kim’s partnership with the screenwriter Park Jeong-wu ended after their cooperation on Jail Breakers; Kim subsequently directed a ghost ﬁlm called Ghost House (2004) and Park debuted as the director of Dance with the Wind (2003). My Wife Is a Gangster begins with a lavish ﬁght scene, as Romeo (a.k.a. Ppada) retells to his rookie friend Boxers (a.k.a. Ppanseu) the legend about his boss Eun-jin (a.k.a. Mantis) rescuing him and Mazingga from a gang battle. The source of humor resides in the conﬂicting gender roles assigned to Eun-jin as both mob boss and wife. As a boss Eun-jin’s ﬁghting skill is legendary; she is calm and well respected by her henchmen. As a wife, her androgynous side gets in the way. Eun-jin tracks down her long-lost sister afﬂicted with terminal cancer. The sister’s dying wish is to see her little sister Eun-jin get married and settle down. Inexperienced in the dating scene, Eun-jin gets tips on how to attract men from Sherrie, who works at a club. A series of gags emerge, based on Eun-jin’s lack of femininity, from the red cocktail dress that she wears on her ﬁrst blind date, to her wedding gown, which reveals huge tattoos on her back. The comedy escalates when her sister hopes that Eun-jin will present her with a niece before she dies—but Eun-jin needs lessons from Sherrie on how to consummate her marriage with Su-il. Fight scenes, especially the ones that feature Eun-jin at the beginning, middle, and end of the ﬁlm, provide visual spectacles. However, each ﬁght scene is handled in a different style. The opening sequence is a ﬂashback by Romeo, who embellishes the legend of Eun-jin. Shot in an impressionistic style, it shows only fragmentary actions in silhouette against a darkly lit 80

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bluish background, and it includes references to Korean gangster ﬁlms such as Lee Myung-se’s Nowhere to Hide (1999). In the second ﬁght scene, which takes place in a ﬁeld, long grass partially blocks the view of both Eun-jin and the Japanese-trained hit man she is ﬁghting. The rhythm of their ﬁght builds slowly while preserving the integrity of the action. Character actions are clearly legible from shot to shot despite differing camera angles and scales. The scene is sometimes punctuated by offbeat witty moments, such as when Eun-jin disappears in the middle of the ﬁght to urinate. The last ﬁght scene, which takes place in a garage, includes more exaggerated action sequences. This time, Eun-jin ﬁghts alone against a group of gangsters to avenge the death of Romeo. Wired action sequences are juxtaposed with slow-motion reactions, not only to underscore the power of Eun-jin’s blows and kicks but to mark her heightened emotion. Jeong Heung-sun directed the sequel, My Wife Is a Gangster: The Legend Returns, one year after his gangster comedy hit Marrying the Maﬁa. The sequel relies less on the previously established persona of Eun-jin than on an entirely new persona that she takes on as a result of an accident. After falling from a rooftop during a gang battle, she is found and eventually hired by Jae-cheol, a Chinese restaurant owner. Widower Jae-cheol and his rebellious teenage daughter grow attached to Eun-jin, while her henchmen desperately seek her whereabouts. Although sometimes Eun-jin’s mobster attitude seeps into her present character—she teaches a foul-mouthed merchant a lesson and suppresses a robbery at a local bank—the sequel focuses on her futile attempts to regain her memory, utilizing shock therapy, hypnosis, and spirituality. As the ﬁlm nears its ﬁnale, Eun-jin’s past as a mob boss is revealed to her neighbors. Eun-jin visits a pottery factory where her rival gang, White Shark, is holding hostage Jae-cheol’s daughter, Ji-hyeon. The ﬁnal ﬁght sequence, with its rough transition between the shots of Shin and shots of her stunt, is less elaborate than the one in the ﬁrst installment. Cho Jin-gyu, the director of the ﬁrst installment, returned to direct the last installment of My Wife Is a Gangster III, featuring Shu Qui and Lee Beom-su. In My Wife Is a Gangster, courtship between a gangster and a layperson constitutes an integral part of the narrative development, though to a lesser degree than in the sequel. Marrying the Maﬁa (2002) expands this plot further. A local mob family attempts to marry off their youngest daughter, Jin-gyeong, to Dae-su, who graduated from a prestigious university and is currently the ceo of an Internet company. Dae-su ﬁnds himself lying next to Jin-gyeong after a drunken night. Jin-gyeong’s mob brothers threaten to Gangster Cinema 81

force him to marry her. In the sequel, Marrying the Maﬁa II (Jeong Yong-ki, 2005), In-jae, the eldest son of a mob family led by his mother Deok-ja, rescues female prosecutor Jin-gyeong in a parking garage. Love blossoms between the two without Jin-gyeong knowing about In-jae’s background. The treatment of marriage in the Marrying the Maﬁa series mirrors as well as reverses the Korean melodrama plot in which the female protagonist marries a man from a rich family in order to elevate her social status. Gangsters’ afﬂuence, having been obtained by dubious means, certainly does not guarantee the respect they hope to earn from the public. What is ironic, at least in the ﬁrst installment, is the fact that the elite son-in-law unintentionally ignites a battle between Jin-gyeong’s family and a rival mob. It is not Dae-su’s law degree that settles the unreasonable bill charged by a nightclub owner but rather his phone call to his future brothers-in-law. In contrast, in the second installment In-jae earns Jin-gyeong’s love through his redemption. The ﬁnal scene ends with Deok-ja, the mob boss, dismissing her gang, while Jin-gyeong lovingly observes the scene. Just as the gangster’s lack of legitimacy motivates a marriage with a respectable member of society in the Marrying the Maﬁa series, it gives rise to the need for further education in My Boss My Hero. Dusabuilche, the Korean title of the ﬁlm, pokes fun at the Confucian dictum Gunsabuilche, which can be literally translated as ‘‘ruler, teacher, and father are one and the same.’’ It promotes parallel devotions to father, teacher, and the state. In the Korean title of the ﬁlm, gun (ruler) is replaced by du (boss), adding the connotation that a gang boss can demand the same kind of devotion and obligation from his henchmen as in the other ﬁve social relationships in Confucianism: father-son, ruler-minister, husband-wife, elder brother– younger brother, and friend-friend. Du-sik, a middleman in a mob, is promised that he will be in charge of the lucrative downtown area when he earns a high school diploma. Instead of furthering his knowledge, however, Du-sik uncovers the corruption of the principal and his association with the underworld. The principal sexually harasses a female teacher and ﬁres teachers who refuse to manipulate students’ grades. Yun-ju, a female student with whom Du-sik has developed a special bond, is severely beaten up by the principal and then expelled from the school after she posts a charge on a government Web site. Du-sik is at ﬁrst hesitant to confront the school ofﬁcials out of fear that he won’t be able to graduate, but he eventually gives up his share of the promised territory in order to join the teachers’ and students’ protest against the principal. 82

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In the sequel, My Boss My Student, Du-sik returns to high school, but this time as a college student fulﬁlling his practicum requirement. He is assigned to teach ethics; even worse, his boss is enrolled as a student in his class. Dusik manages to earn respect from some students and makes friends with one of them: Mi-jeong. The sequel follows a formula similar to that used in the ﬁrst installment. Du-sik’s action is triggered by the death of the female lead, who is the victim of sexual harassment by a teacher. The idea that both the humor and the tragedy in this cycle stem from the gangsters’ motto dusabuilcha—meaning boss, teacher, and father are one and the same—is untenable. The ﬁlms in the series omit one of these three relationships, that of father and son, and focus on the other two. Du-sik’s relationships with his sidekicks, Sang-du and Daegari, and with his boss, though absurd, are uncompromised, while the relationship between teachers and students within the institution is severely hampered. It is interesting to note that in the gangster melodrama examined earlier neither relationship is tenable. My Boss My Student begins with a voiceover by a female student, reminiscing of the time she ﬁrst met Du-sik. But Du-sik’s bond with his students can only be maintained outside the institution. After the gang battle with Shin Gang-nam and his henchmen, Du-sik goes to jail and is seen reading letters from his former student. The irony resides in the fact that his original intention to pursue higher education is undercut: in the ﬁrst installment Du-sik gets expelled, and in the second he is ﬁred. Gangster comedy, like many cycles of Korean cinema, incorporates a range of conventions: those of gangster-hero cinema, action ﬁlm, comedy, and melodrama. However, the tonal shift is more frequent and abrupt than in gangster drama. In Friend, for example, the overall tone of the ﬁlm gradually darkens in accordance with the degradation of the friendship between Dong-su and Jun-seok. In contrast, in gangster comedy the tone often ﬂuctuates even within a single scene. For instance, in My Wife Is a Gangster, we see Eun-jin in her ofﬁce as a competent boss when Boxers is introduced to her. Shortly after, her deputy Mazingga receives a phone call that informs them that Eun-jin’s long-lost sister has ﬁnally been located. A ﬂashback to the orphanage where Eun-jin and her sister grew up is then intercut with Eun-jin heading to the hospital to meet her sister. Shot in black and white, the footage depicts Eun-jin’s deplorable childhood. After the sisters’ teary reunion, we see Eun-jin threatening the doctors with a scalpel and ordering them to save her sister! Or, as in the last battle in My Boss My Hero, the solemn tone is only momentary and immediately undercut by Du-sik’s passGangster Cinema 83

ing jokes and his sidekick’s asides. When Du-sik falls as a result of his opponent dealing him a sudden blow to the head, Daegari holds the bloodied Du-sik and asks whether he is okay. Du-sik bluntly answers, ‘‘Do I look okay to you?’’ During one-on-one duels between the two gangs, Sang-du whispers to a female teacher, Ms. Lee, detailing the impact of each blow as if broadcasting a boxing match. A narrative twist that motivates the protagonist’s ﬁnal line of action often occurs three-quarters of the way through a ﬁlm. The death of Romeo and of Jae-cheol in the My Wife Is a Gangster series seems unnecessary at the level of narrative. Romeo dies after having been stabbed by a group of local punks while he was waiting for his girlfriend Sherri to show up. As he is dying in the rain, he tells Sherri that he had planned to propose to her that night. The function of such twists, however, differs from those in the gangster ﬁlms examined earlier. In gangster cinema, the contingency of the narrative (rather than causal necessity) often makes the protagonist deliberate, sometimes prohibiting him from effectively pursuing his goal; in gangster comedy, on the other hand, the contingency propels the protagonist to act upon the situation. For example, in the gangster melodrama Friend, the fact that Dong-su and Jun-seok used to be friends delays their retaliations against each other. Jun-seok orders his henchman to wait until after Dong-su and his gang have attacked the ﬁsh factory. Dong-su’s death, even though it has been ordered by Jun-seok himself, prevents him from ﬂeeing the country. But in the comedy My Wife Is a Gangster, the death of Romeo not only yields the emotionally charged ﬁnal ﬁght scene between Eun-jin and the White Shark gang but, more importantly, forces Eun-jin to avenge him. Similarly, in My Boss My Student Min-ju, who is a friend of Du-sik’s, has been sexually harassed by a teacher; and as she walks away she is accidentally killed by an oncoming vehicle. This accidental death sets Du-sik on the path of revenge, which was fueled by the anger ﬁrst exhibited at Min-ju’s funeral. Generic hybridity is one of the most prominent characteristics in Korean cinema: similar to those narrative shifts just discussed, it attempts to maximize emotional impact. However, one should assess the apparent similarities with an eye on the differing narrative function of generic hybridity, despite the melodramatic undertone shared by both forms. As the incorporation of melodrama convention within gangster cinema deprives the protagonists of agency (in the sense that they act out of obligation and duty), in the gangster comedy sentimental moments are inserted to facilitate characters’ actions. 84

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4

I’m Not a Girl, Yet Not a Woman Contemporary Korean Romance Films

With the corporate conglomeration of the Korean ﬁlm industry, spectacle-driven action blockbusters and gangster cinema have emerged as attractive trends that appeal to ﬁlmmakers and audiences alike. However, romance ﬁlms’ box-ofﬁce draws remained strong. Most notable is the romantic comedy My Sassy Girl (Kwak Jae-young, 2001), which was second at the box ofﬁce in 2001 (grossing $26 million) and then became a pan-Asian phenomenon.∞ The romantic comedy My Tutor Friend (Kim Kyeong-hyeong, 2003) also drew more than 5 million admissions nationwide ($25 million).≤ Melodrama cycles of the late 1990s turned out to be lucrative. The Letter (Lee Jeong-guk, 1997) and A Promise (Kim Yu-jin, 1998) were top-ten national box-ofﬁce hits in 1998.≥ The Contact (Jang Yoon-hyun, 1997), An Affair (E J-yong, 1998), and Christmas in August (Hur Jin-ho, 1998) enjoyed both box-ofﬁce success and critical acclaim. Melodrama resurfaced in 2004–2005 with such ﬁlms as A Moment to Remember (John H. Lee, 2004) and You Are My Sunshine (Park Jin-pyo, 2005), drawing more than 3 million in domestic audiences. Romances on the big screen were welcomed by audiences in the wider East Asian region as well. In Japan, My Sassy Girl earned $4.2 million in a limited release in 2003, while Kwak’s subsequent romantic comedy, Windstruck, made $15.2 million in 2005.∂ A Moment to Remember (John H. Lee, 2004) set a box-ofﬁce record of $25.6 million for Korean ﬁlms released in Japan,∑ and outperformed Korean megastar Bae Yong-joon’s April Snow (Hur Jin-ho, 2005) with $21 million in box-ofﬁce receipts.∏ Christmas in August, which was commercially released in Hong Kong, grossed 795,000 hkd.π The local and regional popularity of South Korean romance ﬁlms is signiﬁcant: but not just as an industry ﬁnancial success story. The popularity of romance ﬁlms and their stars in Southeast and East Asia indeed contributed to a Korean export boom in the region and ignited series of international coproductions. Although disappointing at the box ofﬁce, E J-yong’s sophomore feature Asako in Ruby Shoes (2000) was a product of Koo & Film in 85

Korea and Shochiku Co. in Japan. Hur Jin-ho’s One Fine Spring Day (2001) was coﬁnanced by Korea’s Sidus, Japan’s Shochiku, and Hong Kong’s Applause Pictures. Lee Hye-won, the marketing manager of then Sidus (currently Sidus F&H), claims that coﬁnancing is an attractive strategy for local producers: it lowers the ﬁnancial risk by enabling ﬁlms to reach the overseas market.∫ More importantly, as ﬁlm scholar Chung Hye-seung notes, the regional success of melodrama and romantic comedy suggests that there exists a shared regional sensibility and a longing for genteel love among the Asian regional audiences. This contests the prevalent theoretical assumption about Korean cinema that the melodramatic impulse manifest in Korean cinema is unique to its culture and sensibility, han.Ω This chapter focuses on romance ﬁlms. In South Korea, what Variety calls ‘‘romancer’’ (Korean equivalent romance-mul) perhaps earned more currency in popular and critical discourse than within the industry, referring to ﬁlms’ treatment of (often) heterosexual romance—both its comedic and dramatic variants.∞≠ Romance ﬁlms’ appeal can be found in their versatility and adaptability to audiences’ taste, responding quickly to changes in gender dynamics and cultivating an alternate conception of gender. Romantic comedies such as Art Museum by the Zoo (Lee Jeong-hyang, 1998), My Sassy Girl (Kwak Jae-young, 2001), and My Tutor Friend (Kim Kyeong-hyeong, 2003), each of which features an eccentric heroine, attempt to destabilize the binary categories of gender and open up more ﬂuid forms of sexuality. The title of this chapter, ‘‘I’m Not a Girl, Yet Not a Woman’’ (a play on the Britney Spears song of the same title), nicely captures the liminal freedom assigned to female characters prior to their coming to terms with motherhood. To what extent is such representation of gender inﬂuenced by the norms of romantic or screwball comedies? Is the inversion of gender roles used merely for comedic effect, or is it intended to subvert gender norms? Unlike Korean gangster cinema, the genealogy of which is traced to Hong Kong gangster cinema of the 1980s and 1990s, this chapter ﬁnds a close tie between Korean and Japanese romance ﬁlms. The popularity of formulaic romance on regional television and the audiences’ familiarity with it secures a certain demographic market, but this further provides local ﬁlmmakers with room for narrative and stylistic experimentation. Although in television drama series more traditional obstacles such as parental objections, class differences, and many kinds of health problems are employed to delay the union of a romantic couple, many romantic dramas utilize ‘‘abstract blockage.’’ The Contact, Il Mare (Lee Hyun-seung, 2000), and 86

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Asako in Ruby Shoes (E J-Yong, 2000) use spatial and temporal barriers to prevent the union of heterosexual couples.

I’m Not a Girl, Yet Not a Woman

The immense popularity of My Sassy Girl in 2001 revived the box-ofﬁce draw of romantic comedy. Romantic comedy, both domestically produced and imported from Hollywood, constituted one of the prominent ﬁlm cycles in the early 1990s. The ‘‘battle of the sexes’’-style comedies of the early 1990s, in such ﬁlms as My Love, My Bride (Lee Myung-se, 1990) and The Marriage Story (Kim Ui-seok, 1992) signaled the beginning of a cycle, followed by such ﬁlms as Mr. Mama (Kang Woo-suk, 1992), How To Top My Wife (Kang Woo-suk, 1994), A Different Kind of Man (Gaseum Dallin Namja, Shin Seung-su, 1993) and Dr. Bong (Lee Gwang-hun, 1995). The Marriage Story, a Sin-Cine production ﬁnanced by Korean conglomerate Samsung, marks a signiﬁcant turning point within the modernization process of the Korean ﬁlm industry. It was preceded by a careful preproduction and accompanied by audience-research-driven marketing. Korean ﬁlm scholar and critic Yu Ji-na attributes the box-ofﬁce success of such a cycle to both external and internal factors: the popularity of Hollywood romance imports—especially the Nora Ephron–scripted Meg Ryan vehicle When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner, 1989) and Sleepless In Seattle (Nora Ephron, 1993)—and the growing population of women in the South Korean workplace and female desire for gender equality.∞∞ The popularity of leading actresses Choi Jin-sil, who earned fandom through television commercials and drama, and Shim Hye-jin, who starred in such Korean New Wave ﬁlms as Park Kwang-su’s The Black Republic (1990), further solidiﬁed the lucrative box-ofﬁce draw of the cycle. Romantic comedy, however, slowly gave way to a subdued romantic style in the late 1990s as seen in The Contact (1997) and An Affair (1998). This shift also coincided with production companies’ efforts to cater to the tastes of a younger generation—teenagers and those in their early twenties—and with a generational shift in talent, as increasingly younger stars were being cast in major ﬁlms. By the late 1990s, female stars such as Jeon Ji-hyun, Kim Hee-sun, Ko So-yong, Shim Eun-ha and Jeon Do-yeon, replaced the slightly older generation of actresses such as Choi and Shim Hye-jin, who led the battle-of-the-sexes comedies half a decade previously. David Desser further claims that the presence of young protagonists and talents in Korean ﬁlm Romance Films 87

indeed propelled the Korean industry boom into an international phenomenon.∞≤ The prevalence of high school, the transgeneric setting for many Korean ﬁlm cycles of this era, can be credited to such generational shifts both in talent and targeted audiences. The speciﬁc appeal of romance ﬁlms is that it fosters active crossover of talents and facilitates media synergy among cinema, television, and the Internet. My Sassy Girl is an adaptation of the eponymous Internet column, which had already gained popularity on the net in August 1999.∞≥ Jeon and Cha, male and female leads in My Sassy Girl, starred as a couple in the television drama series Happy Together (aired on SBS from June 16–Aug. 5, 1999). My Tutor Friend, which is also based on the novel posted on the Internet, stars Kim Ha-neul, another crossover celebrity. Kim’s debut was in the ﬁlm Bye June (1998), but she earned recognition for her role on the television show Happy Together, costarring with Jeon and Cha. Not only female leads but also male actors such as Lee Byung-hun, Jang Dong-gun, and Kwon Sang-woo crossed over to the ﬁlm industry after successful television careers. During the ﬁrst decade of the twenty-ﬁrst century, Korean television programs have grown enormously popular throughout Asia. Represented by Yun Seok-ho’s Season series—Autumn Tale (2000), Winter Sonata (2002), Summer Scent (2004), and Spring Waltz (2006)—the Korean miniseries drama continues to stir the melodramatic imagination of its female audience. Hallyu (or ‘‘Korean Wave’’) had gained a following in Taiwan but reached its peak with the Japanese craze surrounding Winter Sonata. The series, which originally aired in Korea in 2002, appeared twice on NHK (Japan’s public television network) in 2004. During his ﬁrst visit to Japan, Bae Yong-joon, who has gained international fame from his role in Winter Sonata, was mobbed by thousands of female fans.∞∂ Hallyu became one of the region’s most discussed cultural phenomena. The signiﬁcance of hallyu can be assessed on both commercial and cultural grounds. Korean actors’ fame not only yields international revenue for the Korean entertainment industry but has also spurred cultural exchange in the region. Content-hungry cable networks, in conjunction with audiences’ demands for Korean dramas (or ‘‘K-’’ dramas), provide the Korean entertainment industry with an ample ancillary market. Rights to distribute Korean cinema, piggybacked on the craze surrounding Korean movie stars, are presold to neighboring countries. April Snow (Hur Jin-ho, 2005), which features Bae as the male lead, was presold its distribution rights for $7.5 million 88

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to Japan, and it is one of the ﬁrst Korean ﬁlms released simultaneously in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia.∞∑ Korean ﬁlm exports beneﬁted from Korean stars such as Choi Ji-woo and Kwon Sangwoo, who earned fame for their work in the popular drama series Winter Sonata and Stairway to Heaven (sbs, Dec. 3, 2003–Feb. 5, 2004): Kwon’s romance Almost Love (Cheongchun manhwa, $ 4.5 million) and crime-stiller Running Wild ($4 million), and Choi’s Yeonriji Here and Forever ($3.5. million).∞∏ With the growing interest in Korean dramas, tourism in Korea has also soared. Several Web sites have been launched to promote tourism in the locations where popular dramas such as Winter Sonata and Stairway to Heaven were ﬁlmed. In 2004 the number of Japanese tourists visiting Korea increased by 38 percent compared to the previous year.∞π Although Korean television drama attracted a wider range of viewers around the globe than Korean ﬁlms,∞∫ romance ﬁlms ‘‘reached’’ both Europe and the United States via adaptations—The Contact was remade in Germany as Frau2 seeks Happyend (Edward Berger, 2001), My Sassy Girl and Il Mare were remade in the United States as My Sassy Girl (Yann Samuell, 2008) and The Lake House (Alejandro Agresti, 2006), respectively. The Lake House was ranked fourth at the box ofﬁce in its opening week and drew $52 million in U.S. box-ofﬁce receipts.∞Ω Despite the growing importance of romantic ﬁlms in the region, contemporary romantic comedy is neglected by scholarly discourse, compared to the South Korean melodrama of the golden age. According to leading South Korean feminist ﬁlm scholar Kim Soyoung, yeosong ﬁlm refers to ‘‘both ﬁlms that targeted a female audience and explicitly feminist ﬁlms.’’≤≠ Romantic comedy partially falls under the rubric of yeosong ﬁlm in that it targets female audiences in their twenties and thirties. However, many discussions center on the representation of female sexuality in South Korean melodramas of the 1950s and 1960s.≤∞ Romantic comedy may seem to lack the subversive dimension assigned to the melodramas of Korean directors from the 1960s such as Shin Sang-ok, Han Hyeong-mo, and Kim Kiyeong. Postwar melodramas Madame Freedom (Han Hyeong-mo, 1956) and The Housemaid (Kim Ki-young, 1960) unearth a repressed female sexuality that lurks behind the longing for a modern lifestyle. Romantic heroines have not yet been the subject of scholarly discussion the way melodrama has. Instead, more attention has been given to contemporary documentaries such as The Murmuring (Byun Young-joo, 1995), which portray so-called comfort women and their experiences.≤≤ Romantic heroines may be seen as Romance Films 89

succumbing to a conventional life: a heterosexual union and often marriage.≤≥ Such an assessment of the cycle as a whole, however, is weak; for while complying with formulaic conventions, each ﬁlm portrays the gender dynamic rather differently. In the paragraphs that follow, I will examine three romantic comedies featuring the ‘‘eccentric’’ heroine and discuss how gender roles are differently conﬁgured. My Sassy Girl, the English title of the 2001 Korean romantic comedy hit Yeobgi-jeogin Geunyeo, does not adequately characterize the eccentric behavior of the female protagonist, played by Jeon Ji-hyun. She bosses her boyfriend Gyeon-u around, beats him up, and publicly embarrasses him. Her behavior is hardly sassy; it is rather hysterical, even sadistic. The eccentric heroine presented in My Sassy Girl is a recurring character type in contemporary Korean romantic comedy. Eccentric heroines in contemporary Korean romantic comedy can best be characterized in terms of their ‘‘boyishness’’ in both physique and personality. These heroines are lacking in signs of adult female sexuality. Their slim bodies, curveless ﬁgures, or their loose-ﬁtting clothing conceal their femininity. These heroines also lack the markers of motherhood: they are clumsy and hardly domestic. Chun-hui in Art Museum by the Zoo, for example, walks barefoot in her apartment like a boy and imitates chimpanzee noises at the dinner table. Unlike the many television commercials featuring Jeon, in which the sensuality of her body is accentuated, My Sassy Girl presents Jeon as a rather desexualized character who hides her sensuality with casual clothing. In My Tutor Friend Su-wan expresses her frustration at Ji-hun, an unruly student she is tutoring, by screaming in the church confessional. The eccentric behavior of romantic heroines serves ﬁrst and foremost as a narrative device to achieve a comic effect. However, an examination of how the narrative posits the origin of such behavior will further illuminate how female sexuality or agency is viewed or fantasized. Art Museum by the Zoo, directed by Lee Jeong-hyang, features a couple falling in love with each other after a brief forced living arrangement. Cheolsu, who is on vacation from active duty, visits his girlfriend, Da-hye. Da-hye, however, has already moved out of her old apartment without informing Cheol-su. Chun-hui, who shoots wedding videos, lives in Da-hye’s old apartment. Chun-hui has a crush on In-gong, a secretary of the Senate, who is a popular guest at many of the wedding ceremonies Chun-hui has been assigned to. Cheol-su runs into Chun-hui’s landlady, who complains about the

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rent being late. Thinking that Da-hye owes the landlady money, Cheol-su pays the rent on her behalf. But Cheol-su soon learns that Da-hye is engaged to someone else. Chun-hui is short of money and unable to pay Cheol-su back until she gets her next paycheck, and Cheol-su has no place to stay: so the two decide to live together in the studio apartment until Cheol-su must return to military duty. Cheol-su also volunteers to help Chun-hui ﬁnish a ﬁlm script that she hopes to submit for a contest. A gender inversion between Chun-hui and Cheol-su in the beginning of the ﬁlm creates a tension between the sexes. Chun-hui is boyish— ‘‘unladylike’’—while Cheol-su displays feminine traits. Cheol-su complains about Chun-hui’s dusty apartment. Chun-hui is clumsy: she has no drinking glasses left because all of them have been broken. Chun-hui’s curly hair is always messy, and she feels more comfortable in a sweatshirt and baseball cap than in formal attire. Cheol-su, on the other hand, is domestic. Cheol-su knows how to cook, and he cleans the apartment in Chun-hui’s absence. He even cries—although with his back to Chun-hui—when Chun-hui reads her favorite poem. Nevertheless, male and female characters still retain conventional gender roles. Chun-hui’s infatuation with ‘‘platonic’’ love makes her fall for Ingong, whom she barely knows, while Cheol-su’s rejection by Da-hye makes him retreat from his true emotions. While Cheol-su explains events scientifically, Chun-hui takes a more empathetic approach. For example, when Chun-hui enjoys a sunset, Cheol-su informs her that it is just dust making the sun look red. And when, as they work on their ﬁlm script, Da-hye tells In-gong that the earth is the star that all the other stars envy the most, Ingong bluntly corrects her by saying that the earth is not a star but a planet. Their opposite perspectives underscore Chun-hui’s naiveté as well as her immaturity. Throughout the ﬁlm, Chun-hui’s sexual inexperience is the butt of Cheolsu’s jokes. Cheol-su asserts his superiority to Chun-hui with respect to sex. When Chun-hui and Cheol-su discuss their sleeping arrangements, Chunhui insists that she will take the bed, as if it is her sanctuary. Cheol-su dismisses that idea quickly and says that he has been sleeping in the bed— which used to be Da-hye’s—longer than Chun-hui has, thereby revealing his premarital sexual relationship with Da-hye. Furthermore, Cheol-su demands that they insert sex scenes in their ﬁlm script, claiming that without sexually charged scenes viewers will not be interested. Chun-hui, however, is

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not coy about her virginity. She declares that she does not take such a matter lightly and that if someone cares enough about her he will understand and respect her decision. The differences between the hero and heroine in romantic comedies can be reconciled only after the two mature as a result of their interaction. Throughout the ﬁlm, the mutual learning process between Chun-hui and Cheol-su is projected onto the changing relationship between their characters In-gong and Da–hye, whom Chun-hui and Cheol-su have named after the objects of their affection. Both of the ﬁlm’s protagonists, like Chun-hui and Cheol-su, eventually learn to love each other. One common feminist criticism of romantic comedy as a ‘‘conservative’’ genre resides in the fact that although the transformation of a couple in romantic comedy is mutual, it is often the case that males and females are not transformed equally. As Steve Neale points out, it is mostly men who educate women.≤∂ A similar observation can be made about the gender dynamic in Art Museum by the Zoo. Chun-hui is the one who becomes educated by Cheolsu—about femininity as well as about sexuality. Also, throughout the ﬁlm, Cheol-su becomes more and more attentive to Chun-hui’s needs—buying plastic glasses that won’t break or buying a stereo that she couldn’t afford. However, it must be said that Cheol-su is portrayed as a nurturer from the beginning of the ﬁlm, and Chun-hui appreciates that quality in him. On the other hand, we witness more character development on Chun-hui’s part. Chun-hui’s boyish behavior becomes more subdued as the ﬁlm unfolds. She follows the instructions suggested or imposed by Cheol-su: she dries her umbrellas in the sun, wears socks, and no longer makes chimpanzee noises at the dinner table. It is Chun-hui who launches the ﬁlm as well as the ﬁlm script, but it is Cheol-su who decides how both stories end. To a certain extent, however, Art Museum by the Zoo complicates the apparent gender inequality sketched above. The romantic plot between a ﬁctional couple in Chun-hui’s script functions as more than just a site on which Chun-hui and Cheol-su can project their own hopes and frustrations in romantic relationships. More importantly, it functions as a reﬂexive device, playing with and commenting on generic norms and closure. The rigidity of In-gong’s character and the childishness of Da-hye’s—as evident in her costumes, hair, voice, and diction—are not a sign of the couple’s playfulness as they would be in a conventional romantic comedy; but they do become a source of humor. By exaggerating gender stereotypes and the conventional characteristics of a romantic couple, the ﬁlm underscores the 92

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artiﬁciality and the constructed nature of gender and sexuality as it is depicted in romantic comedy. Toward the end of the ﬁlm, Chun-hui herself questions the plausibility of the happy ending for In-gong and Da-hye. Nevertheless, Chun-hui and Cheol-su’s romantic relationship mimics that of the ﬁctional couple, no matter how artiﬁcial it may be. The convergence of these two plots— combining the ﬁctional and the real—in the ﬁlm is also indicated toward the end of the ﬁlm. Cheol-su, before he returns to the military base, and Chunhui, after she realizes Cheol-su has left, return to the museum and the zoo separately: places that each would possibly visit. On their respective visits, Chun-hui and Cheol-su pass the ﬁctional couple—In-gong and Da-hye— riding a bicycle. In-gong and Da-hye are not only linked the soon-to-beunited ‘‘real’’ couple spatially but also foreshadow the generic outcome of their romantic journey. Cheol-su and Chun-hui ﬁnally meet under signs that point in the direction of the museum and zoo, respectively. Cheol-su kisses Chun-hui and says, ‘‘This is how I ended the script. Do you like it?’’ Chun-hui smiles and then nods silently. The narrative conﬂict between Chun-hui and Cheol-su can be resolved only via Chun-hui’s reconceptualization of romantic love, but it still cannot escape the same generic ending as In-gong and Da-hye experience. Recent scholarship carefully reexamines the implications of the apparent afﬁrmation of romantic love in contemporary romantic comedy. Although the generic ending of what Neale classiﬁes as the ‘‘new romance’’ of the 1980s and 1990s is ‘‘happy,’’ it signiﬁes something rather different from the heterosexual unions characterizing romantic comedies of the 1930s and 1940s. New romances assert the previously discredited values of oldfashioned romance or courtship in the ‘‘nervous comedy’’ of the 1970s, exempliﬁed by Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979), but they do so self-consciously, which underscores the fabricated nature of romantic love, as in When Harry Met Sally (1989), or presents it merely as wish-fulﬁllment, as in Pretty Woman (1990).≤∑ Art Museum by the Zoo is in many respects indebted to When Harry Met Sally, including the insertion of couples’ interviews about how they met and fell in love, and its use of jazz music. The union between Harry and Sally, however, appears to signify something rather different from that of Cheol-su and Chun-hui. If the former takes the form of a negotiation that the protagonists come to embrace after their awareness of the illusion of love, the latter—at least on Chun-hui’s part—is the ﬁrst step toward the unRomance Films 93

masking of the illusion of love. As Krutnik puts it in When Harry Met Sally, ‘‘What impels the ﬁlm’s validation of heterosexual monogamy is not a genuinely romantic vision of transcendent union but the terror of isolation.’’≤∏ In contrast, Chun-hui has not yet experienced a ‘‘real’’—not imaginary— relationship with a ‘‘real’’ man and the subsequent complications that would naturally arise from such a relationship. Chun-hui is suspicious of the implausible happy ending for her ﬁctional characters, but she still hopes that both the ﬁctional and real-life endings are the same. Although Art Museum by the Zoo selectively incorporates the generic conventions of both romantic comedy and screwball comedy, its adoption of these norms seems rather minimal. First, the eccentricities that characterize Chun-hui are rather weak compared to those of other contemporary Korean romantic heroines, such as Jeon in My Sassy Girl or Su-wan in My Tutor Friend. Secondly, the union of the romantic couple in this ﬁlm is delayed not by external circumstances such as parental ﬁgures, romantic rivalries, or class differences, but by character ﬂaws. There exist false couples— ‘‘Cheol-su and Da-hye’’ and ‘‘Chun-hui and In-gong’’—but their roles are downplayed. Except for a few occasions, such as the brief encounter between Chun-hui and In-gong in an elevator and a three-way meeting between Cheol-su, Chun-hui, and Da-hye at a restaurant, we rarely see them interact. The presence of In-gong and Da-hye mostly remains off screen. Unlike the Hollywood screwball comedies of the 1930s, in which class differences—and conﬂicting class ideologies—function as an obstacle to the union of the romantic couple, as in It Happened One Night (1934), such a tension does not bear great narrative signiﬁcance in Art Museum by the Zoo. One reason Cheol-su is rejected by Da-hye is because Cheol-su is still serving in the military and thus is unable to provide the ﬁnancial security Da-hye expects from marriage. However, such class difference is pushed aside. Most importantly, Art Museum by the Zoo lacks one of the quintessential elements of screwball comedy: the ‘‘playfulness’’ of the couple. Although Cheol-su and Chun-hui console each other over the emotional wounds they have received from previous love interests, they hardly manifest the ‘‘playfulness’’ that signals the ‘‘compatibility’’ and ‘‘specialness’’ of a couple. This is because both the male and female characters are introverted. The two seem compatible, but there is nothing ‘‘special’’ about them. My Sassy Girl pushes gender inversion further as a comic device. Ranked in the top two at the box ofﬁce in 2001 (next to Friend), My Sassy Girl brought legacy back to Shin Cine, a production company that initiated the 94

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‘‘battle of the sexes’’ comedy cycle in the early 1990s with its ﬁlm The Marriage Story (1992). However, despite the apparent quirky behavior of the female protagonist, referred to only as ‘‘she’’ throughout the ﬁlm, My Sassy Girl embodies a rather conservative gender ideology. The tripartite narrative structure— ‘‘ﬁrst half,’’ ‘‘second half,’’ and ‘‘overtime’’—reﬂects the development of the courtship between Gyeon-u and ‘‘she.’’ In the ‘‘ﬁrst half’’ we witness how Gyeon-u and ‘‘she’’ ‘‘meet cute.’’ Gyeon-u is misidentiﬁed as her boyfriend because ‘‘she’’ calls him ‘‘Honey’’ when she vomits on a fellow passenger’s head in a subway. In the ‘‘second half,’’ the relationship between Gyeon-u and her develops into mutual affection, but it faces obstacles because ‘‘she’’ feels guilt over her boyfriend, who has passed away. In ‘‘overtime,’’ the uncertain prospect of the romantic relationship between the two is resolved—but only by pure luck and chance. Jeon’s character possesses an odd combination of feminine and adolescent boyish traits. Jeon’s long hair and slim body make her resemble a typical female character from sunjeong manhwa (shojo manga in Japanese; a girl’s comic book). But ‘‘she’’ gets drunk, vomits in public, walks up to strangers to lecture them about propriety, beats up her boyfriend, and makes her boyfriend walk in her high-heeled shoes. Gyeon-u lets his girlfriend boss him around, sometimes willingly and sometimes unwillingly. Despite their semisadomasochistic relationship, Gyeon-u’s and her playfulness marks the couple as special. For example, on the hundredth day after they met, ‘‘she’’ asks Gyeon-u to bring his high school uniform to the campus. Wearing these uniforms, they visit places underage youngsters are forbidden to go, such as nightclubs and bars. They dance, drink, and smoke, enjoying their pretended adolescent rebellion as high school students. As the ﬁlm unfolds, however, it takes a melodramatic turn, identifying the eccentric behavior of Jeon’s character as a mere front for her vulnerable nature: she acts tough in order to overcome the sorrow she feels about the death of her ex-boyfriend. Such a shift of genre and tone takes agency away from Jeon’s character. Eccentric women and their deviation from social norms not only become a source of laughter but also represent a challenge to patriarchal social norms and restrictions. In the beginning of the ﬁlm, ‘‘she’’ is discontented with conventional gender representations and tries to distance herself from sentimentality. For example, in her treatment entitled ‘‘Demolition Terminator,’’ which parodies The Terminator, it is a female warrior who comes to earth from the future to save her boyfriend. On another occasion, Gyeon-u attributes most Koreans’ fondness for meloRomance Films 95

drama to a famous Korean short story called ‘‘Showers’’; particularly inﬂuential is its sentimental but deeply suggestive ending, which resonates as an innocent adolescent love. A girl spends an afternoon with a boy underneath a hut during a summer shower. The boy later ﬁnds out that the girl was seriously ill. As a dying wish, the girl asks her parents to bury her in the clothes she wore that rainy day. ‘‘She’’ expresses dissatisfaction with the sentimental ending and insists that it be rewritten. In their imaginary reenactment of the story, her character’s dying wish is a request that the boy be buried alive with her. However, the sentimental side of Jeon’s character gradually overshadows her eccentric side. One sequence begins as ‘‘she’’ introduces Gyeon-u to her date, thereby betraying the sadistic aspect of her behavior. In hers absence, Gyeon-u gives her date a list of rules to observe when around her, and then he leaves the café. Moved by Gyeon-u’s considerateness, ‘‘she’’ runs off looking for him. Desperately, she calls Gyeon-u’s name in the announcing booth of a subway station. Although she punches Gyeon-u in the face when he ﬁnally embraces her in the booth, the scene is still marked by her sentimentality. The most sentimental scene takes place soon after Jeon’s father forbids Gyeon-u to see his daughter. Before the two break up, they decide to take a trip to the vicinity of Seoul. Unbeknownst to Gyeon-u, ‘‘she’’ acknowledges to herself that she is unable to erase the memory of her deceased boyfriend. The revelation of her ‘‘true’’ self and feelings makes the viewer reassess, in retrospect, the eccentric behavior of Jeon’s character. Unfortunately, My Sassy Girl stops short of locating female eccentricities in their sexual desires. That is, female eccentric behavior is not presented as a positive liberation from the norm, but rather as a defensive mechanism to cope with emotional vulnerability. My Sassy Girl combines the conventions of screwball comedy with the sentimentality of romantic drama, and perhaps this is the reason for the ﬁlm’s popularity.≤π In screwball comedy of the 1930s and 1940s, as Neale notes, courtship is conducted without such sentimentality, taking instead the form of a competition.≤∫ Despite the fact that My Sassy Girl is divided into three parts like a sporting event—ﬁrst half, second half, and overtime—the battle between the sexes comes to an end rather early. There is an attempt on Gyeon-u’s part to get even with Jeon by acting the same way she did: becoming intoxicated and acting irresponsibly. However, he miserably loses the battle and ends up in jail. The rest of the narrative is episodic, stressing the belief that chance will bring a couple together if they are ‘‘meant to be.’’ 96

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If the battle of the sexes is downplayed in My Sassy Girl—as a result of Gyeon-u’s voluntary submission to his girlfriend—My Tutor Friend further exploits the combative nature of romantic courtship in screwball comedy. Su-wan, a college student, tutors Ji-hun, a rich, spoiled high school student. Despite the fact that Su-wan, played by Kim Ha-neul, is more androgynous than Chun-hui or Jeon in the other two ﬁlms examined so far, Su-wan is paired up with Ji-hun, a more masculine type than either Cheol-su or Gyeon-u. The scene in which Su-wan and Ji-hun are introduced is crosscut with scenes in which we see Su-wan being harassed by mischievous boys during her tutoring, while Ji-hun beats up his high school peers at the gym. Ji-hun’s masculinity is foregrounded throughout the ﬁlm; we, like Su-wan, witness his virility numerous times. Unlike My Sassy Girl, in which characters do not have speciﬁc goals other than having fun—they would rather waste time together than do anything else—the narrative of My Tutor Friend comprises a dual structure: Ji-hun must graduate from high school in order to receive ﬁnancial support from his father, and he will achieve his goal with help from Su-wan. In the ﬁrst half of the ﬁlm, the narrative revolves around the power game of the tutor-pupil relationship. The ﬁlm repeatedly cuts back to Ji-hun’s room where the tutoring takes place, and it observes the changing power dynamic between Ji-hun and Su-wan. Su-wan is at ﬁrst intimidated by Ji-hun’s unruly behavior. He smokes in front of her without asking permission, suggests that they use a Playboy magazine as an English textbook, and makes fun of Su-wan’s androgynous body. However, when Ji-hun treats her as if she is a replaceable commodity, Su-wan refuses to tolerate his arrogance. Su-wan’s triumph lasts only momentarily, though. After she witnesses Ji-hun’s ﬁght with his peers on a building rooftop Su-wan is physically intimidated by him. However, it would seem that the battle between Ji-hun and Su-wan must end as soon as Ji-hun’s father presents himself as an immediate obstacle to Ji-hun’s goal. One day Ji-hun is severely wounded in a ﬁght and is arrested by the police. His father bails him out and orders him to return to the United States in order to stay out of trouble. Ji-hun pleads with his father to allow him to stay in Korea, promising that he will pass his midterm exam with a mark of more than 50 percent. Ji-hun seeks help from Su-wan, but he soon turns this occasion into a battle of the sexes by daring Su-wan to dance in front of a crowd if he succeeds in his task. My Tutor Friend explores quite conventional devices, such as the use of parental ﬁgures, class difference, or ‘‘false couples’’ to delay the a couple’s Romance Films 97

union, unlike Art Museum by the Zoo or My Sassy Girl, in which the blockages to a romantic union are internal to the characters (character ﬂaws) or external but not fully developed. It is true that there are parental ﬁgures in both My Sassy Girl and My Tutor Friend, with their narrative function more prominent in the latter than in the former. Both parents of Jeon’s character in My Sassy Girl disapprove of Gyeon-u, but they do not function as a real obstacle to the union of the two. Their roles are rather subsidiary, because the real cause of the break-up between Jeon’s character and Gyeon-u is the guilt she feels in relation to her deceased boyfriend rather than her parents’ disapproval. On the other hand, Ji-hun’s father in My Tutor Friend both blocks and facilitates the romantic union between Ji-hun and Su-wan. If Jihun cannot meet his father’s demand, Ji-hun and Su-wan will not be given a chance to become a couple; at the same time, in order for Ji-hun to stay in the country as he wishes, he needs help from Su-wan. Perhaps the most difﬁcult obstacle to overcome in Ji-hun and Su-wan’s union is the conﬂicting class ideology between the two. The romantic conﬂict between them is, to a certain extent, a displacement of the class conﬂict between two families. Su-wan’s father lost his job during an economic depression, and her family now owns a small restaurant that specializes in chicken dishes. Sometimes Su-wan herself delivers the food. On the other hand, Ji-hun’s family is wealthy, although by rather dubious means. In his prayer at the dinner table, Ji-hun’s father thanks all the famous gangsters in modern Korean history, and he keeps his henchmen around him in his ofﬁce. Su-wan is personally offended not so much by Ji-hun’s bad behavior as his vanity and his disrespect for her. It is when Ji-hun throws a couple hundred dollars at Su-wan for a taxi ride that Su-wan ﬁnally explodes. Suwan’s perception of Ji-hun as a rich, spoiled high school kid blinds her from seeing him for who he truly is and accepting his feelings for her. While they are skydiving, Ji-hun confesses that he has feelings for Su-wan, but she pretends that she cannot hear him. A few scenes later, in an amusement park, Su-wan and Ji-hun run into a friend of Su-wan’s who suspects that they are in a relationship. Su-wan strongly denies such a possibility, telling her friend that she wouldn’t date a high school student. Ji-hun accuses Su-wan of snobbishness and claims she is no different from Ho-gyeong, a girl who is after Ji-hun for his money. Neither Ho-gyeong nor Su-wan is able to see a person for what he or she is; they see only what he or she has. Although less potent than class conﬂict, the false couples in My Tutor

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Friend do add another layer to narrative conﬂict. Ho-gyeong, who desires Jihun, is more or less a female version of Ji-hun. A wealthy spoiled high school girl as hot-tempered as Ji-hun, Ho-gyeong buys Ji-hun expensive gifts such as Calvin Klein perfume and a Bulgari watch. Si-gyeong, the object of Suwan’s affection, is a mirror image of Su-wan, and the opposite of Ji-hun. He, like Su-wan, is innocent, compassionate, and generous; but unlike Ji-hun he is short and effeminate. The viewer is soon cued to suspect that Ji-hun and Su-wan are involved with the wrong people. Ji-hun does not enjoy Hogyeong’s company. When they are singing karaoke songs together they are constantly interrupted for one reason or another—ﬁrst by the malfunctioning machine, then by the police. Because of his devotion to God, Si-gyeong must give up Su-wan. The presence of these blocking characters is less a narrative device than a way of presenting a wide spectrum of gender—from masculine to effeminate to androgynous to feminine. Ji-hun and Su-wan are nearly at the opposite ends of the gender spectrum, but Su-wan is wiser and more knowledgeable than Ji-hun. ‘‘Education,’’ which may be taken as a metaphor for a relationship in romantic comedy, has a literal role in My Tutor Friend in the form of ‘‘tutoring.’’ However, what Ji-hun learns from Su-wan is not so much knowledge as independence, a sense of fun, sincerity, and compassion for other people. Having lost the bet with Ji-hun on whether he could earn more than 50 percent in his midterm exam, Su-wan dances in front of a crowd at her college to the female singer Park Ji-yoon’s song ‘‘Seong-in-sik.’’ While the lyric says ‘‘I’m no longer a girl,’’ Su-wan at ﬁrst appears to be embarrassed, but soon she enjoys making a spectacle of herself (ﬁgure 4.1). When Ho-gyeong cries hopelessly like a child after Ji-hun chooses Su-wan over her, Su-wan consoles her. Unlike the other heroines examined so far, whose eccentricities are tempered toward the end of the ﬁlm, Su-wan retains her personality and agency. In the ﬁnal ﬁght scene, despite the fact that Su-wan is physically helpless and weaker than most of the other characters in the scene, she manages to rescue Ji-hun. Ji-hun falls to the ground after ﬁghting with a gang boss. Anxiously observing the ﬁght between the two men from afar, Su-wan gets up, swiftly jumps over the bodies on the ground, and kicks the boss from behind in the groin, stopping the seemingly endless ﬁght. In the next shot, we see Su-wan driving away on her red scooter with Ji-hun on the back seat, reﬂecting the reversal in the power relationship between the two. The romantic union in this ﬁlm implies neither marriage nor a socio-

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Figure 4.1 Su-wan enjoys the attention from the enthusiastic crowd.

(My Tutor Friend, Kim Kyeong-hyeong, 2003)

economic change for Su-wan. The last scene of the ﬁlm indicates that Suwan will maintain her freedom as a college student for a while longer. In Jihun’s room, Su-wan is seated in the same position as she was earlier in the ﬁlm when she taught Ji-hun; now she teaches another student, Sae-hun, Ji-hun’s brother. The union of Ji-hun and Su-wan provides her with another job—according to Su-wan’s mother early in the ﬁlm, ‘‘enough money to pay for her tuition’’—and Ji-hun’s role remains merely as a helper in taming another rebellious student. Katherine Rowe, in The Unruly Woman, claims that the unruliness of female protagonists in the comedic genre may be associated not only with overt sexuality—as with Lady Lou (played by Mae West) in She Done Him Wrong—but also with virginity—as with Ellen in It Happened One Night.≤Ω While melodrama explores the sacriﬁce and suffering associated with maternity and motherhood, the comedic genre explores the liminal freedom assigned to the female virgin. Rowe argues that female virginity does not signify a prohibition against sex: but it is, rather, a shelter from maternity and a means to obtain freedom.≥≠ The playfulness of the comic heroine in romantic or screwball comedy is partly attributable to the fact that she has no children. 100

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Such status frees a female protagonist from having familial responsibility and provides the heroine with room for at least limited freedom. However, it is not virginity per se that endows the heroine with freedom. All the female characters examined in this section are in transition from adolescence to mature womanhood—they are not girls, and yet not women —but their agency and freedom also depend upon other factors, such as ﬁnancial independence. Moreover, there is no indication that the union of a couple in the ﬁlm implies the loss of female virginity. If so, virginity—a seeming virtue for an unmarried woman in Korea—connotes rather different things for each heroine. In Art Museum by the Zoo—the ﬁlm that talks about virginity most explicitly among the three ﬁlms—Chun-hui has a job, if not a high-paying job, and manages to live by herself. Her apartment provides her with a protective harbor for her fantasies and illusions of love. Despite the fact that Chun-hui is twenty-six years old, she still daydreams about In-gong, who she does not even dare speak with. Her fantasy crumbles only with Cheol-su’s intrusion into both her private space and her imagination. On the other hand, Jeon lives with her parents and is being pressured to marry. Her mother constantly sends her on blind dates and attempts to ﬁnd her a good candidate for a husband. In the last scene, both ‘‘she’’ and Gyeon-u are dressed up to meet Gyeon-u’s aunt. Perhaps the whole ﬁlm simply traces the two ‘‘growing up’’ together. However, it is uncertain whether this union will allow Jeon’s character to retain her eccentric self or force her to take on an adult self; also uncertain is to what extent this union will allow her to prolong her freedom. Su-wan, who makes just enough money to pay her college tuition, is well aware of the ﬁnancial burdens her family faces. However, such a ﬁnancial burden does not make her feel ashamed—unlike many heroines of melodrama; instead, it becomes the source of her energy, maturity, and sincerity. As indicated in the last scene, Su-wan will retain her independence and freedom, although to a limited extent, by tutoring a student and maintaining her eccentricity. The apparent similarity of the eccentric heroines in these romantic comedies may disguise a contradiction embedded in gender roles. Although Jeon’s character in My Sassy Girl appears to be the most eccentric female protagonist—to the point that she beats her boyfriend!—the ﬁlm fails to sustain her rebellious behavior. In contrast, My Tutor Friend, despite its employment of all the conventional devices of romantic comedy, presents Su-wan as an independent and sincere female character who can assert herself as well as kick a man’s butt—without becoming masculinized. Romance Films 101

Until Chance Brings Us Back Together

In My Sassy Girl, Jeon and Gyeon-u bury letters addressed to each other under a tree and promise to meet and read the letters two years later. Jeon does not show up. A year later than the time she was supposed to meet Gyeon-u, she visits the spot and runs into an old man. In her conversation with the old man, Jeon says she believes that Gyeon-u and she would have bumped into each other by chance if they were destined to be together. The old man responds, ‘‘Fate means building a bridge of chance for someone you love.’’ His meaning is that fate will bring people together, but only when they make an effort. That is, fate or destiny is not random chance: it is a reward given to people who aspire to achieve the objects of their desire. The ending of My Sassy Girl explores the romantic conception that chance will bring together two people who are meant to be together. The plot structure of the ﬁlm reinforces such an idea. Instead of following a linear trajectory, the ﬁlm starts from the fact that the promise made by the two lovers is broken: it shows Gyeon-u waiting for Jeon’s character to show up. The ﬁlm then cuts to the present, in which Gyeon-u answers a call from his aunt on his cell phone while he is having his passport photo taken. After a short ﬂashback to his childhood, we see him drinking with his friends and, again, answering his cell phone. This time the phone call is from his mother, asking him to visit and console his aunt, whose son passed away a year earlier. Toward the end of the ﬁlm, on his way to his aunt, Gyeon-u just misses the subway train that carries Jeon’s character. Jeon’s character arrives to meet Gyeon-u’s aunt at a restaurant before Gyeon-u does. The two ﬁnally meet, and discover that Gyeon-u is a cousin of her deceased boyfriend. Gyeon-u’s aunt says that she has been trying to introduce the two for a long time. The ﬁlm completes its circle, inviting the viewer to think back to the beginning of the ﬁlm, when Gyeon-u answers the phone call from his aunt. Despite spending three years apart because of their lack of conviction, they are still meant to be together. Incorporating ‘‘chance’’ in a romantic comedy fulﬁlls various functions. First, it appeals to the common perception, cultivated in soap operas and television dramas, that a romantic relationship inevitably faces obstacles and that a romance between two lovers can be fulﬁlled only with the help of something like fate, chance, or luck. But an incorporation of chance can provide episodic ﬁlm narratives with unity, and, more importantly, can give the appearance of necessity to narrative resolution in the absence of strict 102

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causality. That is, chance provides the viewer with a justiﬁcation for the resolution of a narrative conﬂict. Reliance on chance becomes more salient and is sometimes a major theme in romantic dramas about ‘‘love across the borders of time and space.’’≥∞ The narrative presents a couple who do not meet face to face because of spatial distance or a temporal barrier until their paths ﬁnally intersect near the end of ﬁlm. As Derek Elley of Variety notes, Korean cinema at the turn of the century has obsessively dealt with such love stories.≥≤ In The Contact, the producer of a nighttime music program on a radio station and a telemarketer chat via the Internet and meet only at the end of the ﬁlm. Ditto (Kim Jeongkwon, 2000) shows a couple communicating between different time periods, 1979 and 2000 in this case. In Il Mare (Lee Hyun-seung, 2000), Seong-hyeon and Eun-ju occupy different times—they are two years apart—and correspond by letters that they leave in a mysterious mailbox that seems to exist outside time. Asako in Ruby Shoes features two protagonists, living in Seoul and Tokyo respectively, who meet on an Internet porn site and eventually run into each other by chance at an airport in Alaska. Bungee Jumping of Their Own (Kim Dae-seung, 2001) deals with a heterosexual love that is later reincarnated in a homosexual relationship. Failan (Song Hae-sung, 2001) depicts a hoodlum who learns too late that the only real love he ever experienced was with a wife he never met and only married for green-card purposes. David Martin-Jones observes that the experiment with temporality in contemporary Korean ﬁlms provides a cinematic device with which to reﬂect on recent history and to negotiate imposed gender roles.≥≥ MartinJones considers this aesthetic strategy comparable to an international trend of parallel narratives such as Blind Chance (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1987), Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993), and Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998), and more conventional Hollywood ﬁlms such as Sleepless in Seattle (Nora Ephron, 1993).≥∂ This trend, I contend, can be traced back to Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Véronique (1991) and ﬁlms by ‘‘art cinema-minded’’ Asian directors such as Iwai Shunji’s Love Letter (1995) and Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express (1994) and Fallen Angels (1995). Although the number of imports has declined of late, European cinema used to provide an attractive alternative to Hollywood. In 1992, for example, four French ﬁlms, including The Lover (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1991), Indochine (Régis Wargnier, 1992), Lovers on the Pont Neuf (Leos Carax, 1991), and Manon of the Spring (Claude Berri, 1986), were among the twenty ﬁlms Romance Films 103

that garnered over two hundred thousand admissions in Seoul.≥∑ In 1997 European ﬁlms accounted for 20 percent of imported ﬁlms, and earned a 10 percent market share in Korea.≥∏ Kieslowski’s The Double Life received limited theatrical release in 1991 in Seoul in art-house theaters. But the twoweek retrospective of the French New Wave (Mar. 3–16, 2006), sponsored by kofic and the French embassy, is telling. The ﬁlm catalog includes not only ﬁlms directed by French directors such as Robert Bresson, Louis Malle, Jean-Luc Godard, and François Truffaut, but also The Double Life of Véronique and Kieslowki’s trilogy—Blue (1993), White (1994), and Red (1994). By virtue of the settings and actors used, this Polish director, along with Leos Carax, represented the European art cinema of the 1990s and the skewed ‘‘Frenchness’’ for the Korean audience. Iwai Shunji’s Love Letter, the Japanese release of which dates back to 1995, was released theatrically in Korea in 1999, one year after Korea’s ban on Japanese cinema was lifted. Love Letter was ranked among the top ten ﬁlms at the Korean box ofﬁce, along with Hollywood blockbusters such as The Mummy, The Matrix, and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.≥π The regional popularity of Love Letter, which was unquestionably inﬂuenced by The Double Life of Véronique, may have provided some incentives to Korean producers to fund romantic dramas with narrative sophistication and subtlety. Darrell Davis and Emily Yeh locate closer aesthetic afﬁnity between romance ﬁlms in East Asia and J-dorama (Japanese television drama) than the European counterpart.≥∫ It is not my intention here to establish or contest the strict causal history between the two categories, but I am more interested in exploring aesthetic exchanges taking place in the region. There might be a similarity in terms of visual aesthetics and perhaps a nostalgic tone, as Davis and Yeh claim, but it is hard to ﬁnd within J-dorama the narrative experimentation manifest in both Japanese and Korean romance ﬁlms. In recent years, narrative structures have been developed that facilitate the presence of more than two protagonists or storylines. Films such as Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999) and Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2003) demonstrate such a possibility. With the success of Love Actually in the domestic market, Korean ﬁlms such as Sad Movie (Kwon Jong-kwan, 2005) and My Lovely Week (Min Kyu-dong, 2005) adopted a similar narrative pattern. Family Ties (Kim Tae-yong, 2006) is a tripartite story. The ﬁrst two parts present two dysfunctional families on separate narrative paths, while the last part ties the two family narratives together. The expansion of 104

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narrative via multiple plot lines is worthy of further discussion in and of itself, but here I will simply examine the dual parallel narrative structures manifested both in European and Japanese cinema and in contemporary Korean romantic dramas. Both The Double Life of Véronique and Love Letter feature two female protagonists who look alike, live in two different places, and who have two different fates awaiting them. The Double Life of Véronique traces the lives of two classical music singers—Weronika in Poland and Véronique in France. In Love Letter, Watanabe Hiroko, whose ﬁancé died in a mountain-climbing accident, sends a letter to his old address in Otaru. Fujii Itsuki, a female librarian in Otaru whose name is the same as Hiroko’s deceased ﬁancé’s, receives the letter from Hiroko and begins responding. As the ﬁlm unfolds, however, the viewer observes these two women going through opposite processes: Hiroko in Kobe aims to forget her loved one and move on with her life, while the female Itsuki in Otaru learns, in retrospect, about the male Itsuki’s innocent love for her. As much as these two ﬁlms have in common—such as the reliance on two look-a-like female protagonists—the narrative structures of these ﬁlms diverge considerably. The Double Life follows what can be called an additive or linear parallel structure—that is, the presentation of one story after another. For instance, after the death of Weronika is announced in the concert hall, the ﬁlm cuts to show Véronique in France on the same day. On the other hand, Love Letter follows what may be called an interactive or simultaneous parallel structure—that is, the presentation of two plot lines simultaneously by crosscutting between them. In Love Letter, two—in fact, three—stories are interwoven and presented simultaneously: the story of Hiroko, who still mourns her ﬁancé’s death; anecdotes about Ituski’s acquaintance with the male Itsuki unfolding in ﬂashbacks; and Ituski’s present life with her family. Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s two companion pieces—Chungking Express (1994) and Fallen Angels (1995)—also follow an additive and an interactive parallel pattern, respectively, although they do not feature the identical twin–like heroines as found in The Double Life and Love Letter. How then does contemporary Korean romantic drama utilize or appropriate parallel narrative structure? Whereas in the ﬁlms discussed above— The Double Life, Love Letter, Chungking Express, and Fallen Angels—the spatiotemporal gap between two parallel plot lines is a by-product of the incorporation of two independent plot lines, the spatiotemporal gap in contemporary Korean romantic drama is what motivates the protagonists to Romance Films 105

interact. Spatial distance and temporal barriers become more narrativized and function as an obstacle to the union of a romantic couple. Both of Wong’s ﬁlms, The Double Life and Love Letter, portray heterosexual romance and love, but the romance between the protagonists is contained within each plot: it does not cross separate plots. In contrast, in The Contact, Il Mare, and Asako in Ruby Shoes, a romantic interest grows between two characters who are involved in two separate plots. Instead of depicting how a relationship evolves—a couple meet, ﬁght, break up and then return to each other—these ﬁlms end where other romantic dramas usually begin. To borrow U-in’s last line in Asako in Ruby Shoes, ‘‘This is how our story begins.’’ One can postulate some of the reasons that contemporary romantic drama utilizes spatial distance or temporal barriers as the main obstacles that keep a couple apart. Perhaps parental disapproval and class difference— the conventional blocking devices in Korean melodrama and contemporary Korean tv series—have become less important to a younger generation’s romantic involvements. (Or perhaps they still do matter, but only in relation to marriage). Another reason might be rooted in the changing experience of space and time in contemporary society. The development of communications technology, such as cellular phones and the Internet, facilitates communication across space and even across national boundaries. But such communication still falls short of emotionally connecting two people. I will examine some narrative devices that link parallel plot lines, with a focus on the role of ‘‘chance’’ or ‘‘coincidence.’’ In parallel narrative structures, since interactions among characters are limited, two plot lines are often linked by means of parallel motifs and the doubling of characters. For instance, in The Double Life of Véronique, both Weronika and Véronique have special bonds with their fathers. Both are singers, and the two share some similar habits. Both Weronika and Véronique use their rings to comb their lower eyelashes. We once see Weronika play with a string that binds a book of musical scores while she is singing. Véronique receives a string in the mail from an unknown man, which is his way of helping her locate him. In Chungking Express, both male protagonists are referred to by their id numbers: 223 and 633. The two are spatially linked by the fact that they go to the same midnight snack corner, called Midnight Express. Chungking Express is ﬁlled with an almost inexhaustible list of motifs shared by the two stories.≥Ω Characters also often ﬁnd themselves in similar situations that motivate 106

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them to interact or share their knowledge. For instance, in Il Mare both Seong-hyeon and Eun-ju are recuperating from their previous relationships. Seong-hyeon is angry at his father’s abandonment of him when he was seven, and Eun-ju resents the fact that her boyfriend succumbs to loneliness and chooses another woman over her. Similarly, Dong-hyeon and Su-hyeon in The Contact were emotionally wounded by their unfulﬁlled romantic relationships with Yeong-hye and Gi-cheol, respectively. Both U-in and Aya in Asako in Ruby Shoes seek to escape the banality of everyday life. Aya works at a gym and for an Internet porn site to earn enough money to travel on her birthday. Asako (Aya’s nickname on her porn site) becomes the displaced object of U-in’s desire as well as the remedy for his loneliness. U-in is intrigued by the Web site ‘‘Asako in Ruby Shoes’’ precisely because Asako resembles Mi-a, who U-in is attracted to. Asako serves U-in as a substitute for Mi-a, and she provides an outlet for his sexual frustration. As U-in’s niece puts it when she spots him looking at a porn site, ‘‘Asako is a doll that shows up on the computer screen to console U-in whenever he is lonely.’’ However, situational parallelism and motif parallelism are not mutually exclusive. Situational parallels in the ﬁlms examined in this section complement and are constituted by parallel motifs. In The Contact, there exists an undeniable similarity between Dong-hyeon and Gi-cheol in terms of their looks (their similar hairstyles) and their personalities (their indecisiveness). Su-hyeon suffers from dry eyes and needs to apply eye drops to relieve the pain, while an employee at the convenience store that Dong-hyeon often visits also applies eye drops, but for an infection. In Asako in Ruby Shoes, Asako and Mi-a are visually doubled by their hairstyle and color. U-in even buys Mi-a a pair of ruby shoes that look exactly like Aya’s. The ‘‘doll’’ motif is reinforced by an extreme long shot of Aya ﬂoating in a gigantic outdoor swimming pool at the gym, an act that gets Aya ﬁred. This image is later mirrored in a shot of a Barbie doll ﬂoating in the middle of U-in’s bathtub. The main function of ‘‘chance’’ in a parallel narrative structure is, then, to provide points at which two plots—or storylines—come together momentarily in the absence of both strict causality and the lack of direct interactions or communication among the characters. However, a linear parallel structure tends to utilize few convergent points. In both The Double Life and Chungking Express there is only one convergent point, or possibly two, in which the characters encounter each other. In The Double Life, Weronika, in Poland, sees Véronique on a tour bus taking photos. Toward the end of the ﬁlm, Véronique learns of the existence of her double, Weronika, by Romance Films 107

means of the photographs of Weronika that Véronique herself accidentally took during her trip to Eastern Europe. But this is a moment of revelation rather than a convergent point. In Chungking, a shift from a story about Ofﬁce 223 to that of Faye takes place when he runs into her, predicting in the voiceover that she will fall in love in six hours. There is an interesting convergent point in the ﬁrst story. We see Faye exiting a store holding a huge Garﬁeld while Brigitte Lin is waiting outside the store. This second convergent point seems to reverse the temporal order, since at this point Faye hasn’t yet met Ofﬁcer 633. Or this second convergent point can be approached as a mere introduction of Faye, who will soon appear in the second story. For we see all three characters of the second story—the ﬂight attendant with whom Ofﬁcer 633 has a relationship, Ofﬁcer 633, and Faye— in the ﬁrst story. The ﬂight attendant is waiting for a taxi at the airport, while Brigitte Lin’s character takes Indians to the airport; Ofﬁcer 633 is waiting outside a subway while Cop 233 runs up an escalator in despair when he ﬁnds out that May will not be returning to him. Despite the fact that Love Letter exempliﬁes an interactive parallel structure, there is only one convergent point in the ﬁlm. Hiroko visits Otaru with her boyfriend Akiba to solve the mystery of the responses to her letters. On the street, a taxi carrying Itsuki passes Hiroko and Akiba. When the two actually take the same taxi in succession, the driver is perplexed by the striking similarity between Itsuki and Hiroko. In the next shot, Hiroko, while saying good-bye to Akiba’s friend in town, sees Itsuki pass by on her bicycle. An interactive parallel structure, especially when it is employed to block a romantic couple from being united, tends to contain multiple convergent points. More importantly, the two plot lines must converge in order to bring the couple together at the end of the ﬁlm. The Contact begins with the two protagonists’ accidental encounter. In the ﬁlm’s opening shot, the camera tracks fast toward the facade of a theater from which we see Su-hyeon exiting. She is stopped by the pouring rain. Soon after, we see a crowd exiting the theater, among whom is Dong-hyeon. Su-hyeon and Dong-hyeon are seen in the same frame, and Su-hyeon glances at Dong-hyeon, observing how he is handling the bad weather. Dong-hyeon covers his head with his bag and starts running in the rain. Su-hyeon does the same. This scene is partially repeated later in the ﬁlm during an Internet correspondence between Dong-hyeon and Su-hyeon as they discuss the frustrations of going to see a movie alone. In the course of the ﬁlm, Dong-hyeon and Su-hyeon pass each other 108

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twice without being aware of it. Su-hyeon visits a used record store on the second ﬂoor of a building. She is looking for an album by the Velvet Underground, a band that Dong-hyeon played on the radio one night and to which Su-hyeon has been attached ever since. As Su-hyeon exits the store without having found the album, Dong-hyeon enters the building. The two bump into each other on the narrow staircase. The moment is repeated twice, the second time in slow motion. Now the circle that links the three characters— Dong-hyeon, Yeong-hye, and Su-hyeon—begins to reach completion. At the beginning of the ﬁlm there is a crosscutting sequence between Su-hyeon and Yeong-hye with both of them driving, as the Velvet Underground’s ‘‘Pale Blue Eyes’’ is playing on the radio. Yeong-hye speeds up, and the image of these two women driving in opposite directions onscreen creates suspense that the two might crash. Yeong-hye’s car crosses the center line and collides with an oncoming vehicle. Su-hyeon barely misses the accident, and she later tells Dong-hyeon her reason for liking the music: when she witnessed the car accident she felt she had just escaped danger. The circle connecting these three characters will be completed later, after Dong-hyeon visits Yeong-hye at the hospital. The next point of convergence occurs when Dong-hyeon and Su-hyeon take the same subway train. We see Dong-hyeon being interviewed by an immigration ofﬁcer at the Australian embassy, and then Su-hyeon walking down a ﬂight of stairs to a subway station. In a voiceover, Dong-hyeon explains to Su-hyeon what happened between Dong-hyeon and Yeong-hye. Su-hyeon enters a train car that Dong-hyeon is riding in and takes a seat opposite him. Su-hyeon gets off the train before Dong-hyeon does. When Su-hyeon visits the radio station, she learns that Dong-hyeon already has quit his job. Another convergent point, one that does not carry as much narrative signiﬁcance, involves Dong-hyeon and Su-hyeon witnessing a man on the subway who claims to be practicing his public-speaking skills in order to ﬁx his stutter. He says he is doing so because he wishes to make friends now that he has someone to love. Both Dong-hyeon and Su-hyeon project themselves onto this stranger: a man obviously trying to overcome his shortcomings and reach out to people instead of withdrawing into solipsism. Dong-hyeon and Su-hyeon need to overcome the kind of fear and despair that the stranger may have suffered through. At the end of the ﬁlm we return to the same location, where Su-hyeon painfully waits for Dong-hyeon. The two ﬁnally meet after Dong-hyeon’s agonizing deliberation. Romance Films 109

In Asako in Ruby Shoes there is no direct convergent point at the level of plot—although there is one at the level of story—until Aya and U-in ﬁnally meet at the airport in Alaska. There only exist a few ‘‘imaginary’’ or ‘‘indirect’’ convergent points. During U-in’s brother-in-law and niece’s visit to U-in’s house, the three watch a tv interview with Rie—a friend of Aya from the gym. U-in’s brother-in-law quickly changes to a channel similar to Discovery. But during the brief moment of Rie’s interview, we see Aya standing in the background. Furthermore, while U-in and his co-worker are hiding as they attempt to catch a stray cat, U-in momentarily imagines himself in a suit standing in front of Mi-a in a kimono, possibly representing his fantasy involving both Mi-a and Asako. Lastly, U-in passes Aya in the subway. U-in is seated in a train and glances at the ads posted on the wall (ﬁgure 4.2). In one of the ads, Kim Min-hee—the actress who plays Mi-a—is smiling (ﬁgure 4.3). (It is unclear whether the ﬁlm makes an extraﬁctional reference to the actress herself, or whether Mi-a in fact becomes a model in the ﬁctional world.) U-in gets up as his destination approaches. As he exits, he bumps into Aya in regular clothes entering the train (ﬁgure 4.4), and they appear to recognize each other (ﬁgure 4.5, 4.6). The ﬁlm then cuts to Aya seated in the subway, but now they are in Japan, which indicates that U-in did not actually see Aya entering the subway in Seoul. It may have taken place in his imagination, or perhaps it was a hallucination. Or is this cinematic premonition? But the parallel moments linking the two plots mark the important decisions reached by both U-in and Aya: their decisions to escape the banality that constrains and smothers them. In the next scene, we see U-in recording an outgoing message for his answering machine, indicating he’s preparing to leave his place, while Aya packs for her birthday trip. But the most signiﬁcant truth awaits when Aya is clearing up her desk. She ﬁnds photos of her trip to Korea, in which she and her friends posed with a Korean man who turns out to be U-in. The fact that these two have met earlier provides the minimal narrative link necessary for them to meet in the airport in Alaska. All the convergent points in Asako in Ruby Shoes are mediated or imagined—either via tv or in U-in’s imagination or fantasy. This can be partly ascribed to the nature of the Internet—especially porn sites—where the interaction between participants is asymmetrical. The voyeur creates fantasies and pretends to interact with what is shown on the computer screen. Such an illusion is well exposed in one scene, in which Asako acts as if she responds to U-in’s requests. Asako slowly gets up from the couch and comes

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Figure 4.2 U-in glancing at the wall of a subway train. (Asako in Ruby Shoes, E J-Yong, 2000)

Figure 4.3 An advertisement features actress Kim Min-hee.

(Asako in Ruby Shoes, E J-Yong, 2000)

Figure 4.4 An imaginary encounter between U-in and Aya.

(Asako in Ruby Shoes, E J-Yong, 2000)

Figure 4.5 U-in turning around in pain.

(Asako in Ruby Shoes, E J-Yong, 2000)

Figure 4.6 Aya glancing back at U-in.

(Asako in Ruby Shoes, E J-Yong, 2000)

forward to the computer screen as U-in asks her to. Then the ﬁlm cuts to the studio: Asako is merely responding to the instructions of the director behind the camera. Chung Hye-seung and David Scott Diffrient point out that in contemporary Korean cinema, male anxiety over loss of masculinity in the face of the economic crisis is manifest in the depiction of Korean women as threatening —as in My Wife Is a Gangster and My Sassy Girl—or the absence of a Korean female character altogether (Asako in Ruby Shoes). Instead, the traditional values associated with femininity are projected onto ethnic minorities (Failan) or ethnic ‘‘others’’ (Asako in Ruby Shoes).∂≠ However, this ﬁlm underscores the illusion of such interactions by disclosing the mechanism that feeds into such a fantasy. U-in is represented not as romantic but as pathetic, which makes the Korean title of the ﬁlm, Sunaebo (‘‘a story of pure love’’), ironic. Unlike The Contact or Asako, in which spatial distance keeps the protagonists apart until their eventual meeting, in Il Mare temporal barriers keep the protagonists from being united. The ﬁlm begins in the present, with Eun-ju moving out of a minimalist-style house called ‘‘Il Mare.’’ After the credits, the ﬁlm ﬂashes back to Seong-hyeon moving into the same Romance Films 113

house. Eun-ju, who is a voice actor, and Seong-hyeon, who is a recent college dropout who had majored in architecture, correspond by letter after Seonghyeon receives Eun-ju’s Christmas card. In the card, Eun-ju asks Seonghyeon to forward her mail to her new address. The two protagonists meet four times throughout the ﬁlm before their last rendezvous. The ﬁrst time, Eun-ju, in 2000, asks Seong-hyeon to ﬁnd the tape recorder that Eun-ju had left on the bench at a subway station in 1998. Seong-hyeon arrives at the subway station to meet her, but he misses Eun-ju by a second and ends up returning the recorder to her by leaving it in the mystery mailbox. The second time, Seong-hyeon revisits the subway station and sits next to Eun-ju. He even tries the earplugs that Eun-ju gave him as a gift. Eun-ju in 1998, however, is unable to recognize him, and she laughs at his rather comical look. At the third meeting, Seong-hyeon stops Eun-ju to talk with her in front of a subway train, but she leaves the spot with her boyfriend, Ji-hun. Finally, Seong-hyeon, on his way to persuade Eun-ju’s boyfriend, Ji-hun, not to go abroad alone, is hit by a car. Eun-ju, inside a café, drops her glass at the sight of the accident. Until the moment he dies, Seonghyeon is looking in Eun-ju’s direction, as if he’s lamenting the fact that he couldn’t be of any help to her and that he is unable to alter the future that awaits her. These four encounters, unlike those in the other ﬁlms examined in this section, are not coincidences. Eun-ju informs Seong-hyeon where he can ﬁnd her tape recorder and when and where she usually takes the subway train home. Also, Eun-ju desperately asks Seong-hyeon for help in persuading her boyfriend not to leave. What is interesting about this structure is that the temporal gap between these two protagonists creates disparity in their ranges of knowledge as well as in the range of knowledge of the viewers. In the present, Eun-ju has more knowledge concerning what will happen to Seong-hyeon—for example, she ﬁnds out that his father will pass away in 1998—but she cannot act to rectify the situation. In the past, Seong-hyeon has agency, but no foreknowledge. The frequency of the (failed) encounters between Seung-hun and Eun-ju not only represents Seong-hyeon’s desire to meet Eun-ju in person but also shows the ‘‘structural’’ impossibility of their meeting in the past, because of the difference in their ranges of knowledge, which prohibits the two characters from being connected; Eun-ju is not even able to recognize Seong-hyeon. Later in the ﬁlm, Eun-ju learns that Seong-hyeon died in an accident on his way to help her, and she hurries back to Il Mare to leave a note for him. She 114

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begs him not to come to the café. Then the ﬁlm returns to the beginning scenario, in which Eun-ju is moving out. Eun-ju writes the same Christmas card for a prospective tenant, asking if he or she can forward the mail for her. At the beginning of the ﬁlm, a mover approached Eun-ju and asked whether the box left outside the house is the last one. This time Seong-hyeon approaches Eun-ju and tells her that she won’t believe the story he is about to tell. The three couples in The Contact, Asako in Ruby Shoes, and Il Mare run into each other on or near a subway. The employment of such a ‘‘vehicle’’ motif accentuates the notion that modern communication technologies, however convenient, are incapable of assisting people in reaching out to one another on an emotional level. Cellular phones or the Internet can instantly connect people, but as a means of communication, or as a means of obtaining love, they are still too indirect and incomplete. Perhaps the idea here is that love cannot transcend space or time. The contemporary Korean romantic drama examined here provides an alternative to more conventional Korean melodramas. Their moody portrayals of their protagonists’ desire to put an end to their isolation and alienation might be one of the reasons they appeal to a young audience. The Contact was one of the top grossing ﬁlms in 1997, and Il Mare attracted audiences both at home and in Hong Kong. Slowly paced parallel narratives adequately represent the difﬁculty of obtaining romantic love, despite the development of all sorts of communication technologies. Parallel narrative devices employed in these dramas can be traced back to a trend within the festival circuit in the 1990s, in which ﬁlmmakers consciously attempted to depart from mainstream Hollywood’s linear dual-focus structure by loosening causality and instead employing coincidences or chance to link characters or separate plotlines. But the Korean directors popularized such conventions for commercial purposes, and their sophistication appealed to a range of audiences. It is interesting to note that it was Il Mare (not a Korean blockbuster ﬁlm) that was the ﬁrst Korean ﬁlm to be remade into a Hollywood picture: The Lake House. By grabbing the attention of Hollywood buyers with this love story that spans space and time through inventive storytelling, Korean producers and ﬁlmmakers have thereby secured an ancillary market.

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5

Once Upon a Time in High School Teen Pics

As David Desser observes, the turn toward youth culture— ‘‘youth audiences consuming and appreciating the youth ﬁlms of young directors’’—propelled new styles of ﬁlmmaking in the Korean ﬁlm industry and attracted audiences both at home and around the world. But more speciﬁcally, I must add, there was the appearance of the high school in ﬁlm after ﬁlm. The high school has become a place of peer pressure and social ostracism—the Whispering Corridors series (Park Ki-hyeong et al., 1998– 2005), Spirit of Jeet Kune Do (a.k.a. Once Upon a Time in High School, Yu Ha, 2004), and Art of Fighting (Shin Han-sol, 2006); authoritative oppression— Beat (Kim Sung-su, 1997), Volcano High (Kim Tae-gyun, 2001), Friend (Kwak Kyung-taek, 2001), and the My Boss My Hero series (Yun Je-gyun, Kim Dong-won, 2001, 2006); ﬁrst love/romance—Classic (Kwak Jae-young, 2003), Romance of Their Own (Kim Tae-gyun, 2004), He Was Cool (Lee Hwan-gyeong, 2004), A Millionaire’s First Love (Kim Tae-gyun, 2006), and My Little Bride (Kim Ho-joon, 2004); adolescent sexuality and identity— Wet Dreams (Jung Cho-shin, 2002), The Aggressives (Jeong Jae-eun, 2005), and Flying Boys (Byun Young-joo, 2004); heist—Make It Big (Jo Ui-seok, 2002); and juvenile delinquency—Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie (Jang Sunwoo, 1998) and Tears (Im Sang-soo, 2000). Not all of these ﬁlms are strictly so-called ‘‘teen pics.’’ In ﬁlms such as Beat and Friend, high school remains peripheral in terms of screen time allotted, although high school ‘‘experience’’ provides a backstory for character relations and motivations. The presence of high school in so many popular Korean ﬁlms indicates a growing youth market. The population of high school students has increased over the last thirty years. Enrollment in high school for those between the ages of ﬁfteen and seventeen rose from 19.9 percent in 1960 to 88.7 percent in 1994, with the number of high school students increasing from 273,000 to over 2 million.∞ University enrollment also expanded rapidly as well, from 90,000 in 1960 to 1.15 million in 1994. According to Kim Linsu, ‘‘The returns on education were greater and more direct in Korea 116

than in societies in which upward mobility depended more on vested social interests; hence the private demand for education was greater in Korea.’’≤ However, the Korean government was so preoccupied with short-term production and export targets that it neglected to upgrade the quality of education. Government subsidies accounted for only one third of the total expenditure in education, with the remainder being borne by the private sector and parents, reﬂecting the high commitment to education within Korean society.≥ The responsibility for a child’s education often falls on the mother, who in the modern era has been portrayed as one who bribes the child’s homeroom teacher in order to secure favoritism at school.∂ Most Korean students undergo ‘‘examination hell’’ from kindergarten on to win a competitive entrance examination at an upper-level school. Students are required to study long hours after the regular curriculum—often ten to twelve hours a day. Tensions among students escalate, as their current student status is in part indicative of not only the present but also the future. After graduating from middle school, students must make a choice, depending upon whether they intend to pursue post–high school education: students apply for either vocational/tech school—where they are trained for ofﬁce managerial jobs and manual-labor jobs in addition to studying a high school curriculum—or high school, the curriculum of which is exclusively geared toward preparation for college. Reasons to enroll in vocational schools vary—some are afraid that they won’t be able to afford college tuitions, while others are unable to pass the entrance exam. In the Korean society, where social mobility is less permissive than in the United States, conﬂicts among students foreshadow class and moral conﬂicts that they will soon experience after graduation. Take Care of My Cat (Jeong Jae-eun, 2001), which depicts the deteriorating friendships among ﬁve female adolescents after graduating from the same vocational school, accurately portrays some of the limits and constraints in pursuing their career, regardless of ambition and capability. For many viewers—both teenage and adult—high school remains an important cultural site, one that is not only a center of deplorable practices but also a locus of nostalgia. In Korea, the high school years are further marked by their visibility. Except for a brief window between 1983 and 1990, in which the school uniform requirement was temporarily lifted,∑ middle and high school students have been mandated to wear school uniforms, deterring them from easily passing into the adult realm. High school ﬁlms set in the past thus enjoy crossgenerational appeal by virtue of apparent simiTeen Pics 117

larities between generations, such as school uniforms and other regulations that continued to persist over a few decades. Comedies such as My Boss My Hero and She’s On Duty, exploit such potential by featuring the adult protagonist—the mobster middleman and a female cop, respectively—disguised as high school students. In Korean cinema, high school has proved to be a popular setting for youth-oriented ﬁlms since the mid-1960s, if not earlier, in such ﬁlms as Yalgaejeon (1965). In the ’70s, a few series rose to popularity. Seok Raemyeong’s Yalgae series—Yalgae, A Joker in High School (1976) and Prankster of Girls’ High School (Yeogo-yalgae, 1977)—continued until the early 1980s, following the characters within the series as they developed an increasingly pressing need to graduate from high school. 1982’s Wild Scoundrels of College (Daehak Yalgae, Cho Heun-pa), casts Lee Seung-hyeon, the same protagonist from the ﬁrst installment of the Yalgae series, and depicts the changing dynamic between the character Seung-hyeon, who is still in high school, and his friends, who are now in college. The Yalgae series deals with the pressure to enter college and curiosity about adolescent sexuality in both a comical and didactic manner. Another series piggybacking the then-young stars Lee Deok-hwa and Lim Yeo-jin also garnered a following. High school in contemporary Korean cinema, however, functions as more than a mere backdrop for teenage protagonists to interact with their peers. High school is, ﬁrst and foremost, the site of oppression and repression where narrative conﬂicts await various generic solutions. Timothy Shary traces a set of cycles in youth ﬁlms, especially those prevalent in 1980s and 1990s Hollywood: school ﬁlms, juvenile delinquent ﬁlms, youth horror ﬁlms, teen science ﬁction ﬁlms, and teen romance/sex.∏ These categories do not encompass all the cycles and trends of youth-oriented ﬁlms in Hollywood or in Korea; furthermore, these categories often overlap. However, this typology provides us a comparative framework to examine the representation of high school as an institution, as well as different high school environments, subcultures, and values, manifested in Hollywood and Korean teen ﬁlms. This chapter examines a few emerging trends in youth-oriented ﬁlms in contemporary Korean cinema, especially the ‘‘high-schooler’’—which includes delinquents inside and outside of high school, teen horror ﬁlms, and high school romance. How does the Korean ﬁlm industry cater to the tastes of teenage viewers? How do teen pics offer solutions—symbolic or didactic— to the pressing issues facing contemporary teenage viewers? To what extent do teen pics manifest and inﬂuence a subculture or even a counterculture? 118

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Inside and Outside of High School

One of the deﬁning characteristics of ‘‘school ﬁlms,’’ according to Shary, can be found in their ensemble casts of nerds, rebels, delinquents, popular girls (or boys), and jocks.π Each character is distinguished via a deplorable or attractive trait: the nerd, which is a less prominent character in Korean teen pics, may excel in academics but is socially awkward and isolated; the rebel, the epitome of which is Jim Stark (James Dean) in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955), is an angst-ridden nonconformist; the delinquent ﬁghts and commits crimes; the popular girl (or boy) is the one everyone knows and wants to be; and the jock is an athlete dedicated to a given sport. During the high school years covered in Friend, an unlikely friendship develops between Sang-taek—a nerd—and Jun-seok, who is a delinquent/ rebel. Beat revolves around the unattainable romance between rebel/ delinquent Min and model student Ro-mi. In Spin Kick, Min-gyu is a jock who must team up with delinquents led by Yeong-gaek in order to win the group competition in a Taekwondo tournament. During their training, both Min-gyu and Yeong-gaek fall for popular girl Su-bin. In Spirit of Jeet Kune Do, Hyeon-su is a newly transferred student who completes a circle of nerdjock-popular-delinquent-rebel transformation. In the beginning of the ﬁlm, we see that Hyeon-su is the only student who could solve a math question when asked by his homeroom teacher, and he excels during a basketball game, which earns him acceptance and friendship from U-sik. Hyeon-su and U-sik hang out at adult-only nightclubs. Hyeon-su shows his sensitive side to Eun-ju, the object of his crush, by demonstrating how to decorate postcards so as to be chosen by a radio host. However, after his friendship with U-sik deteriorates, Hyeon-su masters Jeet Kune Do in order to ﬁght bully Jong-hun. Films such as Volcano High and Dasepo Naughty Girls, which boast generic hybridity, base their major plotlines on teen pic stereotypes. Volcano High, a combination of martial arts ﬁlm, comedy, and teen pic, is set in the virtual universe with what looks to be early twentieth-century costumes and architecture. It’s a movie in which both teachers and students search for the ‘‘Secret Manuscript,’’ through which one can master the martial arts skills needed to rule the school. This ﬁlm revolves around the popular Chae-i (a.k.a. Icy Jade), the elite Hak-rim (a.k.a. Elegant Crane), the delinquentturned-rebel Gyeong-su and delinquent Jang Ryang (a.k.a. Dark Ox), and the heads of other athletic clubs such as the judo and rugby teams. Dasepo Teen Pics 119

Naughty Girls (E J-yong, 2006) parodies the stereotypes in high school ﬁlms: there is the popular kid Anthony, the one-eyed Cyclops (who literally has one eye), and ‘‘Poor Girl’’ (the only virgin in her class) who carries ‘‘Poverty’’ (shaped like the Pillsbury doughboy) on her back. The ﬁlm emphasizes the fact that transformation from one social type to another can be based on simple random chance. Shary claims that the goal of adolescent protagonists in school ﬁlms is to get recognition either from peers or teachers (or both) by cultivating traits— good looks, money, intelligence, athletic skills, and toughness—that will earn them acceptance.∫ The fact that the protagonists in both Volcano High and Spirit of Jeet Kune Do are new transfer students may lead the ﬁlm narratives to revolve around their socializing process in a new environment. However, unlike Hollywood school ﬁlms where social acceptability is the key, neither Gyeong-su nor Hyeon-su is eager to be accepted by their peers or teachers. Both are ‘‘reluctant’’ rebels. Gyeong-su hopes to keep out of trouble, since it is his last chance to graduate, after having been expelled eight times from other schools for vandalism and female harassment. Hyeon-su does bond with U-sik after Hyeon-su helps win a basketball game against Jong-hun’s team; but Hyeon-su lacks direction until he sets out to avenge U-sik, who drops out of school after he’s defeated by Jong-hun, and turns to Jeet Kune Do for self-protection. What motivates these protagonists to act on their anger is resistance to conformity, regardless of whether the ﬁlm relies on fantasy—as in Volcano High and Dasepo Naughty Girls—or gritty realism as in Spirit of Jeet Kune Do and Gangster High. Gyeong-su in Volcano High hopes to remain indifferent to the tug of war among the athletic teams: kendo, weightlifting, rugby, and judo clubs. When the ﬁve best ﬁghters are enlisted by the vice principal to discipline the rebels, Gyeong-su ﬁnally revolts against school authorities. In Dasepo Naughty Girls, students at Useless High also become suspicious of the principal, as students become nerds after their individual meetings with him. Students learn that the principal has been possessed by an imoogi with Medusa’s hairdo. They attack her with male students’ sexual power: ‘‘yang force.’’ The conﬂict between students and teachers in these two ﬁlms is a backdrop for stylistic exploration and experiment. But these ﬁlms not only acknowledge it as a prevalent narrative trope exploited in many Korean youth ﬁlms but also poke fun at uniformity and conformity imposed in high school and in Korean society at large. Commenting on the light social critique in Dasepo Naughty Girls, Derek Elley offers, ‘‘Film’s 120

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underlying message is tolerance towards those who are different, and overall the movie sends up Korean’s obsession with social conformity.’’Ω Spirit of Jeet Kune Do appears to concern conﬂict among students instead of one between students and teachers.∞≠ However, the rivalry between U-sik and Jong-hun in the ﬁlm is actually a displacement of power struggle between students and teachers. Taking down Jong-hun, who bullies his peers with the implicit sanction from school authorities, means taking on the school system. After the brutal battle with Jong-hun on the rooftop, Hyeonsu’s outcry against the Korean education system is clear: it neglects and even fosters violence as a means to discipline and control students. What Hyeonsu did not realize until the end of ﬁlm, however, is that his Jeet Kune Do training may have empowered him, but it also turns him into the kind of person he detests. During the training sequence, the viewer not only witnesses Hyeon-su’s ﬁghting skills gradually improving but also his emulation of the menacing look that Jong-hun often makes to intimidate his opponents. The ﬁlm ends with Hyeon-su’s realization that self-esteem, which he sought to gain through Jeet Kune Do, provides a false sense of empowerment that leads him to near self-destruction. Hyeon-su’s father quietly asks Hyeon-su whether Bruce Lee, whom Hyeon-su worships, entered the college, insinuating that Hyeon-su’s action was not in the true spirit of Jeet Kune Do. This scene is followed by Hyeon-su learning that he has passed the preliminary exam to earn a high school diploma. Male protagonists in high school ﬁlms often turn to violence as a means to self-defense and empowerment—for example, Jeet Kune Do in Spirit of Jeet Kune Do, gang violence in Gangster High (Park Ki-hyeong, 2006) and magical palm-power waves in Volcano High, respectively—although these ﬁlms justify such a turn rather differently. Hyeon-su is able to gain independence only outside the institution after he is expelled. On the other hand, Gyeong-su becomes the popular boy after he defeats the leader of ﬁve ‘‘super’’ ﬁghters. During the end credit sequence, we see Gyeong-su busily taking up a challenge from Ryang as well as joining in all the extracurricular activities. Each ending may be generically motivated but Volcano High certainly lacks the critical/reﬂexive dimension palpable in Spirit of Jeet Kune Do. Instead, it is preoccupied with leaving open the possibility for a sequel, with the introduction of a new transfer student—a female version of Gyeong-su. However, the sequel never materialized. It is interesting to observe that teen pics directed by women ﬁlmmakers seek alternate solutions to the dramatic conﬂicts in high school ﬁlms. Byun Teen Pics 121

Young-joo, who started her career by directing the documentary The Murmuring (1995), turns to ﬁction with Ardor (2002). In her second feature, Flying Boys (2004), each character ﬁnds an emotional outlet in a ballet class at a local community center. In The Aggressives (Jeong Jae-eun, 2005), So-yo spends far more time practicing in-line skating than studying and ﬁnds a temporary alternate family with in-line skater Mo-gi and his girlfriend Han-ju. Shary distinguishes teen delinquent ﬁlms from high school ﬁlms by paying attention to the shift of the major setting to outside the school. Youth delinquent ﬁlms range from dance-themed delinquent ﬁlms, such as Footloose (1984) and Dirty Dancing (1987), to beach ﬁlms from the 1960s; and there are the youth crime dramas such as Boyz N the Hood (1991).∞∞ Flying Boys and The Aggressives can be compared to dance and surf ﬁlms, in which one discovers direction, peace, and maturity by belonging to a group formed via a leisure activity outside the school setting. Min-jae in Flying Boys is a senior in high school and has a crush on Sujin, a girl who lives in the same apartment complex. Min-jae takes a ballet class to be with his two buddies—Dong-wan and Chang-seob; while Su-jin’s mother forces her to take the class out of concern for her lack of femininity. A certain distance can be detected underneath Min-jae’s casual relationship with his father. Min-jae resents his father’s neglect that led to the death of his mother and feels frustrated by his father’s high expectations for him. Min-jae leaves home after a confrontation with his father on New Year’s Day, and stays at the ballet studio while he’s juggling a few manual jobs to earn money. For Min-jae and his friends, the ballet studio becomes a refuge as well as space for fun, communication, understanding, and trust—with ballet instructor Jeong-suk and video-rental-shop owner Do-il serving as their surrogate parents. Although the ballet studio functions as a surrogate home, it is merely a transitional space between home and the public sphere (high school), as adolescence is a transitional period from childhood to adulthood. The ballet performance—the ﬁnale of the ﬁlm—momentarily replaces the incomplete family of each character with an ideal one. In the performance, Do-il and the old delivery lady (‘‘Yogurt Lady’’) become the King and the Queen with Chinese-food delivery boy Jong-seok as a Prince. Jeong-suk protects this surrogate family from an intruder, Dong-wan’s father, when he comes onstage to drag his son out of the performance. Ballet teacher Jeong-suk kicks Dong-wan’s father off the stage. However, the day after the performance, 122

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Min-jae returns home and reconciles with his father. All the characters, including Min-jae and Su-jin, learn to live and deal with the ﬂaws of their respective family as well as themselves. In Flying Boys, family is the place to return to, although it is as vulnerable as adolescence; and family members, although as imperfect as the protagonists themselves, are those one needs to accept rather than reject. Self-identity is presented as something that must be formed through relations such as familial love, friendship, heterosexual or homosexual love, or trust. The Aggressives, however, does not seem to grant a signiﬁcant role to family—real or surrogate—as a means to ﬁnd one’s own identity. The Aggressives is the second feature ﬁlm directed by Jeong Jae-eun, signaling Jeong’s attempt to align herself with commercially viable ﬁlmmaking after the box-ofﬁce disaster of her critically acclaimed Take Care of My Cat (35,000 admissions). The Aggressives, however, earned a meager 50,000 admissions.∞≤ Despite apparent disparities between The Aggressives and Take Care of My Cat in tone and gender dynamic, one can ﬁnd a thematic continuity between the two. In director Jeong’s world, friendship cannot survive, although each ﬁlm expresses different reasons for this. The conﬂict among ﬁve protagonists in Take Care of My Cat partially resides in the contradictions embedded in social institutions—there are so few options available for the underprivileged after graduating from a vocational school. In The Aggressives, conﬂicts originate from within the protagonists themselves. Gap-ba is the leader of an in-line skating group and works as a manager of a skating rink. He sometimes ﬁnds jobs for the group—doing stunts in a tv commercial or performing in an opening show at a shopping mall. When his parents ﬂee the country unable to pay back their debt, So-yo is left home alone. So-yo grows attached to Mo-gi—the most free-spirited among the members of his group—and Mo-gi’s girlfriend Han-ju, who ﬁlms their skating with her video camera. In-line skating replaces So-yo’s school activities, and Mo-gi and Han-ju replace So-yo’s parents. However, this surrogate family, unlike the one seen in Flying Boys, crumbles: it is as vulnerable as the skaters without proper protection. Throughout the ﬁlm, we witness So-yo enduring numerous falls until he ﬁnally ‘‘gets it.’’ Unlike the ballet performance in Flying Boys, the last show that So-yo and others put on is barely successful: Mo-gi does not participate; So-yo makes mistakes in his jump, although he handles it rather humorously; and Gap-ba must quit skating to serve his military duty. The ﬁlm ends with So-yo entering an international in-line skating comTeen Pics 123

petition, which Mo-gi wasn’t able to complete a few years back. Self-identity of the protagonist in this ﬁlm is formed via self-reﬂection and even isolation, rather than through forming an alternate kinship through shared interests or concerns. Gap-ba wants to transform the negative image associated with in-line skaters by proving to the adult world that they are serious and trustworthy. On the other hand, Mo-gi gives up skating when the skating and expectations imposed by his peers begin to suffocate him. Still, the ﬁlm leaves So-yo’s motivation to enter the competition rather ambiguous. After the introduction of So-yo at the competition, the camera cuts to show Mogi’s skates in the lost and found of a subway station: Mo-gi had left these in the subway train, signaling that he is giving up skating. Does it mean that Mo-gi will live his dream through So-yo? Whatever the case, Mo-gi has neither dreams nor ambition. Min-jae and So-yo are hardly rebels, nor are they delinquents in the narrow sense of the term. Rather, these ﬁlms examine a possibility in which troubled youths, due to family circumstances or otherwise, solve their dilemmas outside the school setting—either within a family or an alternate family. Flying Boys afﬁrms such a possibility, while The Aggressives doesn’t.

A Cinema of Girlhood The Whispering Corridors Series

Youth-oriented horror ﬁlm adds another cycle to Korean teen pics. Park Ki-hyeong’s surprise hit Whispering Corridors (1998), a horror ﬁlm set in a girls’ high school, helped initiate the most recent horror cycle in the Korean ﬁlm industry. Highly successful at the box ofﬁce, Whispering Corridors ranked third among domestically produced ﬁlms for the year, following The Letter and A Promise.∞≥ Four sequels have followed so far— Memento Mori (Kim Tae-yong, Min Kyu-dong, 1999), Wishing Stairs (Yun Jae-yeon, 2003), Voice (Choe Ik-hwan, 2005), and Blood Pledge (Lee Jongyong, 2009). The commercial success of the recent Korean horror cycle demonstrates the case of a niche marketing strategy successfully adopted by the Korean ﬁlm industry, as it continued a process of conglomeration that had begun in the late 1980s. More importantly, these ﬁlms’ attempts to appeal to adolescents and portray their social circumstances not only bring to the fore the consequences of the Korean education system but also seemingly authorize a culture of adolescent sensibility. The emergence of this horror cycle in Korea has not been an isolated 124

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phenomenon. The attention given to the horror genre and its revival in general occurred in tandem with a growing popularity in horror cinema both within the region and worldwide. However, the cultural and aesthetic significance of this distinctly Korean horror cinema should be located within both a changing mediascape and the ﬁlm policies that propelled the restructuring of the Korean cinema industry. The rising dominance of conglomerations in the Korean ﬁlm industry has lead to a demand for commercially oriented ﬁlmmaking. Horror cinema, with its relatively low production costs, offered a viable option for independent companies such as Cine 2000, the production house for the Whispering Corridors series. In an interview, Lee Chun-yeon, the production head of the company, explains that each installment of the series has been directed by a ﬁrst-time director with casts of relatively unknown or new actresses.∞∂ Whispering Corridors cost only $600,000 to make and completed its shooting in only twenty-eight days.∞∑ In so doing, Cine 2000 lowered its production costs while targeting its product to a younger generation of audiences. The increasing number of multiplex theatres and the revival of midnight screenings have also contributed to the popularity of the horror genre. The ﬁrst chain of multiplexes, cgv —a co-venture between Korean conglomerate cj Entertainment, Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest, and Australia’s Village Roadshow—opened with an eleven-screen theater in April 1998.∞∏ The success of cgv triggered the emergence of multiplexes, not only in Seoul, but nationwide as well. Between 1999 and 2000 alone, the number of movie screens rose by 42 percent, while the number of individual theatres actually dropped by 33 percent.∞π Whispering Corridors was released in May 1998, shortly after the multiplex boom started within the Korean ﬁlm industry, securing eight screens at cgv 11 alone. The box-ofﬁce success of Whispering Corridors, along with The Soul Guardians (Park Kwang-chun, 1998) and the horror comedy A Quiet Family (Kim Ji-woon, 1998), offered production companies an incentive to create sequels and the subsequent horror cycles. Memento Mori (Kim Tae-yong, Min Kyu-dong, 1999), the second installment of the Whispering Corridors series, was applauded for showcasing a nuanced character psychology with a keen feminine sensitivity, although it proved merely a lukewarm box-ofﬁce draw.∞∫ Ring (Kim Dong-bin, 1999), the Korean remake of the Japanese ﬁlm Ringu (1998) appeared in the summer of 1999, six months before the theatrical release of the original in Korea.∞Ω Until 2004, when the Korean ﬁlm market completely abolished its long-standing regulation of Japanese imTeen Pics 125

ports, Korean ﬁlm policies had limited the theatrical release of Japanese ﬁlms to only those that had won awards at any of the seventy or so international ﬁlm festivals. And the showing of the original Ringu was delayed until 1999, after the ﬁlm had won the Golden Raven award at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film.≤≠ The most successful horror ﬁlm in the Korean domestic market in 1999, however, was The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan), which placed ﬁfth at the domestic box ofﬁce for the year (see Appendix 1).≤∞ After the critical attention given to horror ﬁlms such as Sorum (Yun Jong-chan, 2001), as well as sporadic box-ofﬁce successes such as the 2.6 million admissions of Ahn Byeong-gi’s Phone (2002), an attempt to aesthetically elevate the horror genre was witnessed in Kim Ji-woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters (2003).≤≤ Co-produced by Oh Ki-min and the production company B.O.M., A Tale of Two Sisters replaced the raw aesthetics of lowbudget horror cinema with a meticulous use of mise-en-scène. The ﬁlm was welcomed by Korean audiences and broke the all-time box-ofﬁce record for Korean horror cinema with 3 million admissions.≤≥ The emergence of the horror cycle in Korea may be a consequence of globalization affecting the Korean ﬁlm industry and a by-product of the regionalization of screen culture. However, one of the speciﬁcities of Korean horror cinema can be found in its foregrounding of a sonyeo (girls’) sensibility. ‘‘Sensibility,’’ I would argue, provides a conceptual alternative to ‘‘sexuality,’’ on which many of the previous approaches to the horror genre have been based. ‘‘Sensibility’’ is a more inclusive term than ‘‘sexuality,’’ encompassing both emotional predilections and psychological and behavioral dispositions and tendencies. It is often conceived of as a collective trait associated with a particular demographic or subculture. Sensibility may be an innate disposition to a certain extent, but it can also be cultivated and sometimes exploited by a cultural industry. Wu Cuncun, in her discussion of homoerotic literature in the late Quing dynasty, aptly points out that the value of sexual behavior and practices within a speciﬁc historical context cannot be properly assessed without looking into the sensibility surrounding them, which is supported and fed by social fashion.≤∂ Underneath the sonyeo sensibility manifest in Korean horror ﬁlms, therefore, one must uncover a collective fantasy: a form of female bonding and sexual performance that may or may not be socially sanctioned. Production and marketing strategies appeal more to sensibility than to sexuality, as in the case of the Korean horror cycle. A focus on sensibility, then, provides us with a way to analyze any links or disparities between production strategies within the industry 126

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and actual audience reception of their products. Audiences can share a similar sensibility beyond a speciﬁc demographic group and push beyond the cultures and national boundaries from which they initially originated. A shared sensibility, then, can become the starting point for an understanding and appreciation of a subculture; sensibility can also help us to explain audience engagement with characters beyond gender-bound identiﬁcation, as is often construed within a psychoanalytic approach.≤∑ By focusing on the Whispering Corridors series, I examine the industrial, ideological, and aesthetic signiﬁcance of the sonyeo sensibility to the Korean horror cycle of the late 1990s and early 2000s. How is the sonyeo sensibility culturally speciﬁc? What are some of the reasons that ghost stories are recited among teenagers in Korea? How is such discourse encoded into the horror cycle? How is adolescent female sensibility shaped and trampled by Korean institutions such as the family and the educational system? How does the excessive decorative impulse, a symptom of the sonyeo sensibility, function to foreground the lack of (or changes in) private space in the Whispering Corridors series and A Tale of Two Sisters? Oh Ki-min, the producer of the ﬁrst two installments of the Whispering Corridors series—Whispering Corridors and Memento Mori—along with A Tale of Two Sisters, hopes to depict female adolescent psychology as: ‘‘neurosis, imperfection, vulnerability, and mystery.’’≤∏ Oh underscores the need to appeal to female adolescent sensitivity and sensibility in the horror genre, by reference to sonyeo-jueui, a term coined by Oh himself. It literally means ‘‘girls’’ and ‘‘-ism’’ in Korean and can be roughly translated as a ‘‘cinema of girlhood’’—a cinema that targets female teenage audiences by dealing with problems pertinent to their lives and by evoking an overall mood rather than stirring emotions. It has become a staple of the Korean horror genre, counterbalancing trends toward more male-oriented genres. If adolescent male protagonist–centered ﬁlms, such as Beat (Kim Sung-su, 1997), Friend (Kwak Kyung-taek, 2001), and Spirit of Jeet Kune Do (Yu Ha, 2004), tend to underscore masculinity and portray the pursuit of and suffering from a distorted ego ideal, the ﬁlms produced by Oh, including Take Care of My Cat (Jeong Jae-eun, 2001), counterbalance such a trend by featuring female protagonists and disclosing the subtle psychology of these characters. One of the peculiarities of the Whispering Corridors series is that these ﬁlms are set in all-girl high schools. In the last decade, high school has served as a major setting for both Korean and Japanese cinema as well as television drama series across genres: Battle Royale (Fukasaku Kinji, 2000), Teen Pics 127

All About Lily Chou Chou (Iwai Shunji, 2001), and Suicide Club (Sono Sion, 2002). The high school years might bear more weight in rigid societies such as Japan and Korea, where social latitude and ﬂexibility are still not fully granted. But one may speculate on the reasons for selecting such locations for the Korean horror genre on both realistic and generic grounds. Students in Korea are encouraged by school ofﬁcials to stay and study in school until late at night. Such a policy provides a prime location and time for the recitation of ghost stories. Within such ghost talk, the school becomes a site associated with the uncanny and dread—a place that both distances and draws students. Memento Mori begins with Hyo-sin’s description of the previous six suicides committed in her school, and it is when students are about to leave the building after studying into the night that Hyo-sin’s ghost locks the school’s doors, preventing both students and teachers from leaving the building. Voice (Choe Ik-hwan, 2005), the fourth installment of the series, begins with a scene of students being dismissed at night. In addition, junior high and high school coeducation is less common than either all-boy or all-girl high schools. Beneath such gender segregation can still be found the Confucian ideology that distinctive social and gender norms need to be taught to boys and girls. On the wall of one classroom in Whispering Corridors, we see a portrait of Shinsaimdang (1504–1551), a historical ﬁgure who is widely taught in all-girl schools as the emblem of ideal womanhood in Korea. Toward the end of the ﬁlm, the camera cuts back to the portrait, this time covered with blood tears shed by the ghost Jinju as she ﬁnally decides to leave the school. Such a scene may indicate that this rather outdated and vacuous cultural icon has lost its signiﬁcance for contemporary Korean adolescents. Also palpable under the current education system is the attempt to suppress adolescent sexuality at the institutional level by prohibiting direct encounters between opposite sexes in the learning environment. Teen courtship is allowed only outside the institution. In the Whispering Corridors series, sexuality is often replaced by exclusive friendships among the same sex, sometimes more explicitly imbued with homosexuality. An all-girl high school would generically make for a more appropriate setting than an all-boy high school for the adoption of the ghost-story formula. Narrative conﬂicts set in all-boy high schools are often resolved by recourse to physical violence, as seen in Spirit of Jeet Kune Do. In an all-girl high school, by contrast, students are more likely to endure or internalize conﬂicts with their teachers and peers, rather than confronting them or re128

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solving them in physical terms. In such an environment, the supernatural, fantastic elements of horror cinema can appeal to teenagers by providing symbolic solutions to teen problems—thus serving as an entertaining fantasy to teenage audiences. In Whispering Corridors, Ji-o has to endure Mr. Oh’s sexual harassment as well as physical abuse. It is the ghost Jin-ju that murders him out of loyalty to Ji-o after he beats Ji-o over one of her paintings. Both traditional and contemporary Korean horror ﬁlms employ the ghost-revenge plot, but the latter departs from the former in terms of the motivation for revenge. In the horror cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, a threat to heterosexual union or family drives the narrative, triggering female rivalry and consequent death: two or more women share an object of desire, and one kills the other to take her place. The female protagonist often kills herself out of fear of being raped by a villain or is murdered when she is falsely accused of being an inadequate wife. The ghost of the female victim then, in revenge, haunts her nemesis. In A Bloodthirsty Killer (a.k.a. Salinma, Lee Yong-min, 1965), the wife is accused by her mother-in-law and her cousin of being unfaithful. When the wife is drugged and about to be raped by a painter (who collaborates with the two women) the wife kills herself, and her ghost takes revenge on them. A variation of this cycle can be found in the ﬁlm in The Public Cemetery of Wol-ha (a.k.a. The Public Cemetery Under the Moon, Kwon Cheol-hwi, 1967), in which a dead mother haunts a stepmother in order to protect her child. The title character Wol-ha becomes a gisaeng, comparable to a Japanese geisha, out of ﬁnancial need in order to support her ﬁancé and her brother, both of whom are imprisoned. She is ﬁnally married to her ﬁancé when he is released from jail. Wol-ha, however, gets accused of having an affair and is poisoned by her mother-inlaw and the lustful nanny. As Wol-ha’s son is also about to be murdered, the ghost of Wol-ha returns to protect her son. In the Whispering Corridors series, on the other hand, what needs to be protected is friendship, not kinship. A threatened friendship causes the ghosts to exercise their supernatural powers. In Whispering Corridors, Jin-ju has been killed in an accident, but she resents the fact that her friend Eunyeong did not defend their friendship from other schoolgirls. The ghost kills Ms. Park just as she is about to discover that the ghost of Jin-ju had been attending school under other aliases for nine years. Such a discovery would endanger Jin-ju’s newly developed friendship with Ji-o. In Memento Mori, Hyo-sin commits suicide when her friendship with Si-eun comes to a dead end. Wishing Stairs (Yun Jae-yeon, 2003) portrays a friendship between JinTeen Pics 129

seong and So-hui that turns into a rivalry. So-hui suffers injuries to her legs in an accident, which ultimately causes her to commit suicide. Her spirit haunts and punishes several characters, including Jin-seong. A threatened friendship, again, becomes the reason for a ghost to murder Cho-a in Voice. The Whispering Corridors series also deals with the violated family relationship, especially between parents and children. Although parents often remain off-screen in the ﬁrst three installments, in the last installment, Voice, there is a surprise revelation that Yeong-eon hoped for the death of her mother, who had been ill and hospitalized for a long time. One may ﬁnd an explanation for such a shift in terms of changing family relationships in contemporary Korean society. Friendship may be seen as a form of displacement from heterosexual or homosexual union in that these relationships demand ‘‘exclusivity’’ from a partner. This friendship can be shared by only the two people involved; thus the relationship cannot include another, and neither person involved can be replaced. This idea of friendship is embodied in the relationship between Si-eun and Hyo-sin in Memento Mori or between So-hui and Jin-seong in Wishing Stairs. Such an exclusive relationship is portrayed as the key to enduring the hardships during the high school years and is characterized by metaphorical extremities in the life or death of a character. The sheer amount of time high school students spend with their peers and the pressures they face from their parents to attend prestigious colleges or to have successful careers make students value friendship over family. Exclusivity is further secured by communication methods inaccessible to others: Si-eun and Hyo-sin in Memento Mori keep a secret diary and read each other’s mind via telepathy, while Seon-min in Voice can hear the voice of her deceased friend Yeong-eun. Situating the school as the prime location for plot development in the Whispering Corridors series has several narrative consequences. First, students are entirely removed from home, and the conventional divide between public and private space has broken down. Both the school and the home become sites of oppression and cause psychological burdens. The ‘‘private’’ spaces for students in these ﬁlms continue to be found within the public sphere, often merely in the places neglected by or hidden from school authorities: at a piano, or in a basement, storage room, or rooftop. Jin-ju and Jio ﬁnd their own space in an abandoned building believed to be haunted. Hyo-sin and Si-eun hang out on the rooftop. But these ‘‘private’’ spaces are soon invaded or become haunted, as both Hye-ju’s basement art studio and Jin-seong’s dorm room in Wishing Stairs are haunted by So-hui’s ghost. 130

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Voice is the only ﬁlm in which we have a glimpse of characters’ homes, but Yeong-eon’s crummy apartment is shown as an abandoned, soulless place rather than a place exuding comfort and love. Second, private space or lack thereof is replaced by and reduced to elements of the mise-en-scène, especially a character’s decorative impulse, as manifested in her personal belongings. When Ji-o has a glimpse of Jin-ju’s diary, she ﬁnds it ﬁlled with girlie comic-book characters—with big eyes and long curly hair—except the supposed portrait of Ji-o. In Memento Mori, the precredit sequence is intercut between a scene of Hyo-sin writing in and decorating her diary and a scene showing Hyo-sin and Si-eun clad in their school uniforms and sinking in a swimming pool with their legs tied together. Hyo-sin’s affection for and obsession with Si-eun is manifest in the excessive decorating of their exchange diary, while the imaginary swimming scene foreshadows the tragic ending to their relationship. As Min-a traces the trajectory of the relationship between Hyo-sin and Si-eun, she discovers the piano, the bottom of which is ﬁlled with Hyo-sin’s presents for Si-eun and memorabilia (ﬁgure 5.1, 5.2). In Wishing Stairs, the drawings in Hye-ju’s diary not only show her being ostracized by her peers but also represent her belief in the myth that the stairs near the dorm would fulﬁll her dear wish to be thin. How is it, then, that the sonyeo sensibility represented transforms the generic norms of the horror genre? Female ghosts in the Whispering Corridors series may be regarded as monsters in terms of Noël Carroll’s deﬁnition: ghosts are supernatural, conceptually hybrid entities that threaten the community.≤π Characters are portrayed as ‘‘aberrant’’ in that they challenge the norms. In a ﬂashback in Memento Mori, the viewer learns that Hyo-sin became ostracized by her classmates after reciting her poem negating the binary oppositions between existence and nonexistence and truth and lies. Hyo-sin earns praise from her literature teacher and becomes the object of other students’ jealousy. When Hyo-sin has a beer with Mr. Goh, she also questions categorical imperatives such as ‘‘You shall not kill people.’’ She denies the absoluteness of such a dictum by recourse to a situational ground, claiming that one simply does not know unless one has ﬁrsthand knowledge of such a situation. Hyo-sin’s sexuality—homosexuality or bisexuality—further isolates her from her peers, and her kiss with Si-eun in public is indeed a suicidal act that literally leads to her suicide within the plot. Despite Hyo-sin’s deviance from or violation of social norms, she is portrayed as a victim rather than a threat. Teen Pics 131

Figure 5.1 The white piano evokes a usual horror mood.

(Memento Mori, Kim Tae-yong, Min Kyu-dong, 1999)

Figure 5.2 Memorabilia-ﬁlled piano manifests the decorative impulse of the

teenage protagonist. (Memento Mori, Kim Tae-yong, Min Kyu-dong, 1999)

Homosexuality is portrayed more as an act of resistance to conformity than as a sign of monstrosity. Andrew Grossman and Jooran Lee aptly note that the ghostly nature of homosexuality in Memento Mori ‘‘remains a method intensifying eros rather than stigmatizing it.’’≤∫ Furthermore, Hyo-sin’s affair with the male teacher helps underscore the fact that teachers are the victims of the same system as students. Her sexual relationship with him should not be attributed to her attraction to him nor her curiosity about him; rather, it resides in her sympathy for him. In one scene in an empty classroom, we see Hyo-sin stroking Mr. Goh’s hair, underscoring the reversed relationship between the two: Hyo-sin acts like a care-giver rather than a student/lover. The real monstrosity resides in the school itself and, more speciﬁcally, the Korean education system, which deprives students of individual freedoms and happiness. In the ﬁrst installment, So-yeong claims that her goal is to enter the top university in the country. Higher education loses its purpose; it is not a means to ﬁnd and develop one’s dreams but becomes an end in itself. One way to survive within such a system is passivity: remaining ‘‘unnoticed’’ as the ghost Jin-ju wishes. She was not even recognized by her own teachers and was able to remain in school for nine years as a ghost. The ﬁrst two installments suggest that the deplorable traits of teachers partly result from the system itself, as indicated by Ji-o’s didactic speech about her portrait of Ms. Park. Such an idea is visually reinforced when another student, Jeong-suk, commits suicide. Ms. Park and Jeong-suk, both of whom eventually die hanging from the same bridge, are visually linked via similar camera movements and shot compositions (ﬁgure 5.3 and 5.4). When Ji-o ﬁrst ﬁnds Ms. Park’s body, Ji-o puts her hands on Jin-ju’s face to keep Jin-ju from seeing Ms. Park. There is a montage of student reactions, including Ji-o and Jin-ju and two other students. When the camera cuts back to Ji-o and Jin-ju and then tilts up, we see Jeong-suk by the window witnessing Ms. Park’s death. Later in the ﬁlm, there is a shot of Jeong-suk’s body hanging in a similar manner, when her body is found by another student at night. The establishing shot renders Jeong-suk’s body comparable to Ms. Park’s, and the probing camera moves up from her legs to reveal her face. The maladjustment experienced by newly employed teachers such as Eun-yeong and Mr. Goh in the ﬁrst and the second installment, respectively, further underscores the fact that both teachers and students are victims of the same education system. Even for those characters with apparent agency, such as Hyo-sin in the second installment or Jin-seong in the third, their agency is not sustained Teen Pics 133

Figure 5.3 Ms. Park hanging from the overpass.

(Whispering Corridors, Park Ki-hyeong, 1998)

at the level of both narrative and style. Character actions are not seen in their entirety, their integrity being constantly interrupted by the camera or the looks of classmates. For instance, after Si-eun and Hyo-sin decide to ‘‘go public,’’ we see Si-eun and Hyo-sin holding hands. A teacher slaps Si-eun’s face, and Hyo-sin storms out of the classroom with her diary. The camera arcs around the classroom, underscoring the uniformity of classmates’ stunned reactions, and awaits Hyo-sin’s entrance through the backdoor. Then the camera zooms in on Si-eun as Hyo-sin runs toward her. Instead of using a 360-degree arcing camera shot, which is often used to shoot kisses between lovers, the kiss between Si-eun and Hyo-sin is disrupted as Si-eun tries to push Hyo-sin away until the two are broken apart by a classmate with the teacher’s help. But their kiss is also disrupted stylistically, shifting between extreme long shots and close-ups of their faces. The kiss here is not a token of affection; it is an act of resistance. This exempliﬁes Hyo-sin’s refusal to be assimilated with her classmates. A less elaborate case is found in the scene where both Jin-seong and So-hui skip practice to attend a music concert, but only Jin-seong gets punished and humiliated by her teacher in

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Figure 5.4 Jeong-suk’s suicide visually parallels Ms. Park’s death.

(Whispering Corridors, Park Ki-hyeong, 1998)

front of her peers. We see a close-up of Jin-seong’s feet heading toward screen left (ﬁgure 5.5), followed by a close-up of her face looking in the opposite direction (ﬁgure 5.6). The visual punctuation here indicates Jinseong’s anger and frustration about unfairness and favoritism. Furthermore, her disintegrated body conveys her conﬂicting desires, torn between her cherished friendship with So-hui and her wish to win the competition. The incorporation of the ghost-story formula is not unique to Korean horror cinema. However, the Whispering Corridors series successfully encodes the horriﬁc and traumatic high school experiences speciﬁc to Korean students by selectively adopting horror iconography and conventions. Memento Mori was less successful at the box ofﬁce than the other installments —even though it was critically acclaimed both at home and abroad. Reasons for this comparative failure can be found in the ﬁlm’s imbalance between the elements it incorporates from coming-of-age movies and horror cinema. Unlike the ﬁrst and the fourth installments, which follow a ‘‘whodunit’’ plot structure, the ﬁlm foregrounds the emotional trajectory of the two protagonists over the course of the plot’s development. In the beginning of the ﬁlm,

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Figure 5.5 Jin-seong’s truncated feet.

(Whishing Stairs, Yun Jae-yun, 2003)

Memento Mori imitates conventional horror-ﬁlm style by providing the viewer with false cues through disjointed camera and ﬁgure movements, with the camera constantly passing by Si-eun practicing on the track. In horror ﬁlms, such a style often misleads the viewer to suspect the presence of a ghost or a stalker. As the camera cuts to an interior shot of the classroom to introduce Ji-won and Yeon-an, the unstable camera temporarily conﬁrms the viewer’s hunch—which is then instantly undercut when Ji-won is shown operating a camcorder. The ﬁlm, however, fails to sustain both stylistic and narrative suspense after Hyo-sin’s death. Hyo-sin’s ghostly presence is clearly marked by her reincarnation into a red bird or a shift in color tone. The ﬁlm is more preoccupied in building up to the emotional climax of the ﬁlm, while the need to resolve narrative conﬂicts is nearly absent. The ﬁlm’s climax is neither the confrontation between the ghost of Hyo-sin and the people who bullied her nor the revelation of how Hyo-sin died. Rather, it coincides with the lowest point of the emotional trajectory between Hyo-sin and Si-eun: Si-eun once again rejects Hyo-sin, who then seeks reconciliation. Noël Carroll writes that the two emotional overtones of horror ﬁlms are fear and disgust.≤Ω But the emotional overtone of Memento Mori is neither fear nor disgust: it is sadness. 136

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Figure 5.6 Jin-seong sheds tears out of frustration. (Wishing Stairs, Yun Jae-yun, 2003)

These ﬁlms show a Korean high school system solely dedicated to student preparation for college admission, thus blocks students from cultivating a sensibility of their own. Within such a system, the sonyeo sensibility is completely stiﬂed, and friendship becomes unsustainable in the narrative. An evocation of horror imbued with sadness is further pursued in such ﬁlms as A Tale of Two Sisters, the third feature by Kim Ji-woon. The original title of the ﬁlm, Janghwa, Hongryeon, references a Korean folktale with the same title, which shares only a vague resemblance to Kim’s ﬁlm in that the narrative conﬂict arises from the familial relationship between a stepmother and two daughters. The ages of the two protagonists—the overbearing Sumi and naive Su-yeon—are left unspeciﬁed; but the setting is in a country house far from school, and the trauma that propels the narrative is hardly the hardship of high school life. But A Tale of Two Sisters shares an important aesthetic strategy employed in Memento Mori in addition to its evocation of sadness: the externalization of character psychology. As Hyo-sin’s obsession with Si-eun is manifested through her decorative impulse—the secret diary and the piano ﬁlled with small gifts and memorabilia—Su-mi’s neuroses and psychoses are externalized via the juxtaposition of a bucolic exterior and a gothic interior. Teen Pics 137

The emergence of teen horror might be contingent upon various factors —changing mediascapes in the Korean ﬁlm industry, the rise of new independent production companies, niche marketing, and growing multiplexes. Yet it provides an outlet for dramatizing some of the conﬂicts familiar to Korean female adolescents and succeeds in appealing to female sensitivity, which has been neglected in many mainstream genres.

‘‘Impossible’’ Romance of Their Own

One of the dilemmas of youth-oriented ﬁlms, according to Shary, is that they address young audiences, yet the images of youth have always been traditionally ﬁltered through adult perspectives.≥≠ Most teen pics are created by generations removed from their target audience, with ﬁlmmakers relying on the experiences of their own youth—Spirit of Jeet Kune Do—or struggling to anticipate teenage tastes. There have been attempts to incorporate a teen perspective, including Jang Sun-woo’s Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie, by casting nonprofessional actors and allowing them to write their own script. The Korean ﬁlm industry found a more convenient way to appeal to young audiences’ sensibilities: the Internet. In July 2004 two Korean teen pics, He Was Cool (Lee Hwan-gyeong) and Romance of Their Own (Kim Tae-gyun), were released simultaneously. Both were adaptations of serial novels from the same teenage author, named Guiyeoni (a.k.a. Gwiyeoni), whose work has increasingly gained popularity on the Internet. Both ﬁlms tell a similar story, though in differing tones, about the love interests of an average teenage girl—Ye-won and Han-gyeong, respectively—as she is pursued by a handsome boy in the neighborhood. These two stories—Guiyeoni does not refer to her works as ‘‘novels’’ but rather as ‘‘stories’’—were originally posted on a Web site called Humor-nara, and on her current fan site, called Gui-sa-mo, in 2001 and 2002, respectively. She usually posts one (up to three installments) per day, which in two to four months will become a complete ‘‘story.’’ All of her work is subsequently published in book form. Romance of Their Own, one of the two ﬁlm adaptations of her stories, attracted an audience of over 2 million, a ﬁgure comparable to the Korean admissions for Hollywood blockbusters such as Harry Potter or Troy.≥∞ Merchandizing followed suit, piggybacking on the popularity of the stories and characters. The Guiyeoni syndrome is one of the many instances of synergy created between different media co-opting and targeting the same niche market. But 138

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the reception of Guiyeoni’s work and the ﬁlms is polarized; it is either dismissed as merely an indulgence in girls’ fantasy or granted value as a subcultural phenomenon. Nevertheless, an examination of the relationship between Guiyeoni’s stories and their ﬁlm adaptations is necessary to evaluate their respective subcultural value. How does the ﬁlm medium incorporate or replace the aesthetics of Internet novels? How do these media differ in terms of placing the turning points within stories? In what way are the endings in both media happy endings under an erasure that appeals to both wish fulﬁllment and its impossibility? In what respect do these two ﬁlms extend or distort teenage fantasy? Guiyeoni’s stories are told from a ﬁrst-person perspective and written in short sentences, most of which consist of dialogue interspersed with brief descriptions of character actions. Her writings are notorious for her excessive use of emoticons (such as - -, - -; ] [, -o-), which earned currency among not only teenagers but also many Internet and mobile phone users. Guiyeoni constantly replaces the descriptions of character psychology or reactions with emoticons. Emoticons employed in the electronic text, like Guiyeoni’s stories, render a formal gap that may be bridged by the ﬁlm medium, but with embedded limitations. Both He Was Cool and Romance of Their Own mimic the functions of emoticons via an animated text message or the insert of the text message itself on the upper-right-hand corner of the screen. In one scene, Ye-won is strangled by an animated text message sent by Eun-seong and his friends. But the apparent similarity between the two media ends there. Emoticons/text messages in the ﬁlms serve a different purpose from those in the original story. In Guiyeoni’s writings, emoticons punctuate dialogue: sometimes momentarily disrupting the ﬂow of conversation, as when they are used in the middle of the sentences, or sometimes bracketing and underlining the dialogue when emoticons are added to the beginning and the end of sentences. On the other hand, in ﬁlms they merely function as a visualization of the message that female protagonists send or receive. Neither ﬁlm, however, pursues this strategy further. Rather it is a gesture or allusion to the well-known characteristic of the original stories. Further textual differences are to be found in the narratives due to the modes of production and consumption of the two media. Guiyeoni and her readers form an exclusive community in which only members have access to her stories. Within this cybercommunity, readers are able to partake in Teen Pics 139

shaping the trajectory of a story. In her interview with ﬁlm critic Jeong Seong-il, Guiyeoni claims that she, in fact, changed the portion allotted for Tae-seong in Romance of Their Own as the character gained more popularity among her readers.≥≤ Guiyeoni responds to reader feedback by expanding Tae-seong’s plotline and saving him from surgery he needs halfway through the story. But the interaction between her and her readers goes beyond this. Guiyeoni builds up the reader’s expectations and then cruelly violates them. After all, she did kill Tae-seong’s character mercilessly at the end of her story! It is play engaged in by both Guiyeoni and her readers. Film structure lacks a feedback loop comparable to that of Internet serials and Korean television series, which sometimes change the plot considerably in accordance with viewer feedback. Film is a uniﬁed whole with a deﬁnite beginning and ending, with no room for such interactions as those Guiyeoni established with her Internet audiences. A comparison of how the turning point is placed and handled in Romance of Their Own—both the story and the ﬁlm—will further underscore the divergent aesthetics manifested in these two media. Both the story and the ﬁlm align the viewer with Taeseong, who keeps a secret from the rest of the characters. Early on, audiences are informed through a ﬂashback that Tae-seong is Han-gyeong’s half-brother, a son that Han-gyeong’s deceased father had with another woman. Although Han-gyeong discovers the truth in different ways in the two media—in the story by eavesdropping on a conversation between her mother and stepfather and in the ﬁlm by seeing an old photo of Tae-seong with her father and herself—the moment of revelation is conjoined with a melodramatic twist. Tae-seong gets into a motorcycle accident on his way to conﬁrm with Han-gyeong that they are siblings. The two media also employ different aesthetics. Guiyoeni’s story adopts the aesthetics of soap operas, in which the moment of revelation is constantly delayed. Guiyeoni writes over twenty installments leading up to the point when Tae-seong needs a potentially dangerous surgery after the accident. Furthermore, the accident and the upcoming surgery increases the conﬂict between Han-gyeong and her boyfriend, Hae-won, as she decides not to reveal the truth until after Tae-seong’s surgery. In the next couple of installments, Guiyeoni adds a family melodrama as Tae-seong is to be (re)united with his grandmother and aunt, who didn’t know of his existence. To make things worse, Han-gyeong declares she will move out of her parents’ place to live with Tae-seong. Although the ﬁlm contains most of the information mentioned in condensed form (an event per shot), it omits Tae140

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seong’s surgery. Instead, the scene sets up why Tae-seong needs heart surgery: he receives the operation toward the end of the ﬁlm and dies from surgery-related complications. At this juncture, however, the fact that Taeseong and Han-gyeong are siblings seems to reinforce the apparent resolution of a triangular relationship among the three adolescents seen earlier, as Han-gyeong chooses Hae-won over Tae-seong. How, then, do these ﬁlms adapt and transform the original stories? Do they merely follow the overall narrative trajectory and appropriate witty dialogue? Film critic Jeong claims that if He Was Cool renders the original story too cute, Romance of Their Own turns it into a gritty story. If the former dilutes the sexuality and sexual fantasy palpable in the original story, the latter turns the story into a ‘‘macho action fantasy.’’≥≥ In He Was Cool, after the misunderstanding between Ye-won and Eun-seong is resolved, the story jumps ﬁve years into the future, when the two live together. The ﬁlm, however, presents their union as a fairytale ending: Ye-won’s wish comes true as she is reunited with her boyfriend on the ﬁrst day of snowfall. Male protagonists in both of Guiyeoni’s stories are portrayed as rebels, whose virility is expressed through visceral (gang) ﬁghts. Interestingly, both ﬁlms open with ﬁght scenes. In Romance of Their Own, Kim Tae-gyun, who previously directed Volcano High, turns the ﬁght scenes into enjoyable spectacles. The ﬁlm starts with a gang ﬁght led by two male protagonists. Throughout the ﬁlm, ﬁghts become the basis for the bonding between the two male leads. Kim adds another ﬁght toward the end of the ﬁlm that is absent in the original story. The scene takes place after we see Han-gyeong break up with her boyfriend and confront Tae-seong about his involvement in their breakup. This nearly four-minute ﬁght scene is excessive and provides the viewer with one last spectacle to enjoy. But how does the insertion of ﬁght scenes turn this ﬁlm into a ‘‘male’’ fantasy? As both critics and audiences note, Guiyeoni’s stories are blatant fantasies. The distribution and consumption of these stories may have lifted from the then-teenage author a burden of imposing verisimilitude. Thus Guiyeoni is less constrained by the norms and conventions of literature. However, as Elizabeth Cowie observes, fantasy is characterized not by the achievement of desired objects, but by ‘‘the arranging and setting out of desire.’’≥∂ The ending of both stories—regardless of whether it is happy as in He Was Cool or tragic as in Romance of Their Own—points to the wish/ desire that structures and shapes romantic fantasy but simultaneously underscores the impossibility of such wish fulﬁllment. Although these two Teen Pics 141

ﬁlms can be interpreted in terms of ‘‘originary’’ fantasy—seduction fantasy or oedipal scenario—which is not pursued here, one can question whether this fantasy belongs to a speciﬁc demographic group and gender—i.e., teenage girls—and to what extent these ﬁlms and their narrative structure inhibit teenagers and even adults from entering into that fantasy. According to Jeong, the fantasy world of Guiyeoni is destroyed when adults, including the directors of both ﬁlms, pretend to understand her world. He argues that her stories aim to be a failure in communicating with adults. She creates a fantasy world constructed against the adult world and designed to exclude adults. One must, however, consider to what extent we can attribute the origin of this fantasy to the author (and her readers) and exclusively to teenagers. Her fantasy on masculinity in original stories is partially derived from the representations of male characters in contemporary Korean cinema. She claims that she wanted to create masculine heroes because of her belief that masculinity is valued in men by men.≥∑ Certainly such a belief may be attributed to the dominant representation of masculinity in other ﬁlms—gangster cinema or many contemporary Korean ﬁlms set in high school—which is all fed into her own fantasy. In addition, the narrative devices she employs in Romance of Their Own, such as the use of an incestuous relationship as the ultimate blockage to the union of a couple is borrowed from the recurring tropes and conventions in contemporary Korean tv drama series. In that regard, this teenage fantasy is already contaminated by the conventions and genres of the adult realm. Instead of viewing these two ﬁlms, as Jeong claims, to be merely capitalistic exploitations of teenage female fantasy (certainly they are geared toward proﬁts, piggybacked on the popularity of the original stories), one can view them as aesthetic bribes, which are better ﬁtted into generic formats than the originals and thus enable or facilitate the adult audiences to enter into this familiar orchestration of desires. One can follow a reverse order in becoming exposed to and experiencing the Guiyeoni syndrome: starting from the ﬁlms, buying the novels, and reading the original stories posted on the net. Certainly there exist unbridgeable gaps among these forms, and one can relish such differences. However, the reason one can enjoy all these forms may be found in the presence of fantasy that can be shared and experienced by diverging sets of audiences regardless of gender or age. Korean adolescents’ high school experience is transformed into various forms in youth-oriented ﬁlms: high school ﬁlms, delinquent ﬁlms, horror, and romance. Some focus on the recurring issues that have a crossgenera142

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tional appeal—such as conﬂicts between teachers and students—while others cater to the interests and sensibilities of a speciﬁc audience group, such as female teenage audiences. Despite the generic variants, rigid hierarchy in high school—which can be viewed as a microcosm of Korean society—and use of physical punishment as a means to discipline students help ﬁlmmakers render high school as a site of unfulﬁlled desires and wishes, rather than a place of dreams and ambitions.

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6

Not Just Metteurs-en-Scène? ‘‘High-Quality’’ Films

In the early 2000s the term ‘‘well-made’’ started to circulate within the Korean ﬁlm industry, as well as in critical discourse, to designate a production trend. Bong Joon-ho’s sophomore feature, Memories of Murder (2003), signals the beginning of this trend, followed by E J-yong’s Untold Scandal and Kim Ji-woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters, both of which were also released in 2003. This slightly awkward term expresses both ﬁlmmakers’ dissatisfaction with the heavily commercialized Korean ﬁlm industry and their effort to bridge the gap between the economics and aesthetics of a commercially driven industry. The success of lowbrow gangster comedy— such as My Wife is a Gangster (Jo Jin-gyu, 2001), Hi! Dharma! (Park Cheolkwan, 2001) and Marrying the Maﬁa (Jeong Heung-sun, 2002)—and the box-ofﬁce failure of many blockbuster ﬁlms, such as Jang Sun-woo’s The Resurrection of the Match Girl (2002), Yesterday (Jeon Yun-su, 2002), Tube (Baek Wun-hak, 2003), and Natural City (Min Byeong-cheon, 2003), gave rise to an anxiety in the Korean ﬁlm industry: a middle ground needed to be found between high-budget blockbusters and low-budget comedy. The term ‘‘well made,’’ however, carries unwanted connotations that some of the previous commercially successful ﬁlms did not deserve such warm receptions. The industry’s attempt to reconcile commercial sensibility and aesthetic quality of a ﬁlm—though it fosters a mistaken equation between aesthetic value and popularity of a ﬁlm—manifests an attempt to defy the old conception about commercial cinema: that it exists primarily for entertainment value. With this vague term, the Korean ﬁlm industry and the critical discourse surrounding it promote mid-budget, less spectacle-driven ﬁlms with original subject matter and artistic value, urging the audience to appreciate aesthetic achievements of Korean cinema. This trend paid off with the commercial success of such ﬁlms as Welcome to Dongmakgol ($49.2 million, Park Kwang-hyun, 2005)∞ and the costume drama King and the Clown ($83 million, Lee Jun-ik, 2005).≤ This chapter examines the discourse of ‘‘well-made’’ commercial ﬁlms in 144

the Korean ﬁlm industry. What constitutes so-called well-made commercial ﬁlms? What are the evaluative criteria for well-made ﬁlms? How do these ﬁlms achieve aesthetic reﬁnement? What are some of the reasons to foreground the mise-en-scène in well-made commercial cinema? How is miseen-scène conﬁgured in the ﬁlms considered to be well made? English-language trade journals such as The Hollywood Reporter translate this trend of well-made cinema to ‘‘high-quality’’ commercial ﬁlms, which do not have much currency in Hollywood as an explicit production trend.≥ ‘‘High quality’’ may be a better term in delineating what well-made ﬁlms attempt to differentiate themselves from: ‘‘high-concept’’ ﬁlms. Highconcept ﬁlm is a production/marketing strategy that was initiated in Hollywood in the 1970s. According to Justin Wyatt, a high-concept ﬁlm is easily graspable by a concept or an image; it revolves around a simple plot that can be summed up in one or two sentences, features stars with identiﬁable personas, and boasts a high-tech look.∂ Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986), one of the prime examples that Wyatt references, relies on Tom Cruise’s star persona and a generic storyline—a young pilot falls in love with a beautiful blonde instructor—aptly manifested in the movie poster featuring Tom Cruise posing with Kelly McGillis.∑ High-concept ﬁlms are often advertised through other tie-ins—music videos, soundtracks, and merchandising. Montage sequences that resemble music videos are planted within a ﬁlm, which can be easily extracted for promoting the original soundtrack, or there might be a music video released before the ﬁlm to pique the viewer’s curiosity. Gihoek yeonghwa, a Korean term comparable to ‘‘high concept,’’ emerged as a new production/marketing strategy in Korea with the success of The Marriage Story (Kim Ui-seok, 1992) and blossomed with the ‘‘ﬁsh out of water’’ gangster comedy cycle that included My Wife Is a Gangster (Jo Jingyu, 2001), Hi! Dharma! (Park Cheol-kwan, 2001), and Marrying the Maﬁa (Jeong Heung-sun, 2002). Romantic dramas such as The Contact (1997), Romance of Their Own (Kim Tae-gyun, 2004), and A Millionaire’s First Love (Kim Tae-gyun, 2006) are instances of crossfertilization in which soundtrack and music video became an integral part in the ﬁlm’s success. If the category of well-made commercial ﬁlmmaking refers to ﬁlms that earned both critical acclaim and commercial success, many precedents can be found before the release of Memories of Murder, including Christmas in August (Hur Jin-ho, 1998), JSA (Park Chan-wook, 2000), and The Way Home (Lee Jeong-hyang, 2002). The signiﬁcance of Memories of Murder is that it provides a model to follow for midsize production companies. Since ‘‘High-Quality’’ Films 145

the box-ofﬁce success of Memories of Murder, which grossed $31 million in Korea,∏ ‘‘well made’’ has become a term for use both in production and marketing strategy. Within the concept of a well-made ﬁlm, unlike ﬁlms of ‘‘high production value,’’ is embedded an evaluative judgment: if ‘‘high production value’’ signiﬁes the production cost that may or may not affect a ﬁlm’s aesthetic value, the former connotes a certain level of quality— commanding that it is ‘‘worth seeing.’’ Perhaps well-made commercial cinema models itself after so-called independent production companies such as New Line Cinema, Miramax, and Focus, which target a segment of audiences whose tastes lie somewhere between art-house and mainstream fare. Both Korean well-made cinema and Hollywood independent ﬁlms focus on themes, character relationships, and social relevance: themes that had long been associated with European art cinema.π Both the Korean ﬁlm industry and local critics further appealed to the viewer’s ‘‘sophisticated’’ taste in commending the public’s appreciation of well-made ﬁlms. FILM 2.0, a weekly South Korean ﬁlm magazine, claims that ‘‘Oldboy follows the footstep of Memories of Murder, and once again proves that well-made cinema also succeeds in attracting audiences at the box ofﬁce.’’∫ Here it is assumed that the aesthetic merits of the ﬁlm earned the audiences’ approval. The headline of a forum that appears in another ﬁlm magazine, Cine 21, also reads, ‘‘Audiences started to become more selective. ‘Well-made’ hit the bull’s eye.’’Ω Such a discourse indicates the Korean ﬁlm industry’s aspiration toward creating a ﬁlm culture in which a wide range of ﬁlms can reach and be appreciated by a general audience. The industry request for the Korean government to implement a screen quota (or ‘‘minority quota’’) for art-house cinema was only partially granted, with government subsidies allotted for ‘‘art theaters’’—theaters that dedicate at least 219 days to presenting art-house ﬁlms.∞≠ By 2003 ten art-house theaters had emerged nationwide, forming an association called Artplus Cinema Network. However, some exhibitors were concerned about the difﬁculty in screening Korean art cinema. There were conﬂicts inherent in abiding by double-quota standards—one screen quota allotted for Korean cinema and one for ‘‘art cinema’’—and there was the ambiguous question of what exactly constituted art cinema.∞∞ Well-made cinema is, then, the Korean ﬁlm industry’s attempts to diversify the products within the mainstream venues. However, there appear to be closer afﬁnities between the distribution and marketing strategies of well-made ﬁlms and those of high-concept ﬁlms—at 146

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least within the Korean context. ‘‘High-quality’’ ﬁlms produced by Hollywood independents receive limited theatrical releases compared to mainstream movies. Well-made ﬁlms, on the contrary, enjoy saturated booking, comparable to that of Korean blockbusters, and sometimes rely on more moderate distribution. As the commercial viability of well-made ﬁlms has increased, Welcome to Dongmakgol—another well-made ﬁlm praised by local critics—opened on 450 screens in its ﬁrst week.∞≤ Korean blockbusters such as Silmido and Taegukgi were released on 450 and 512 screens, respectively.∞≥ On the other hand, King and the Clown, which held the all-time boxofﬁce record ($12.3 million in admissions) before Bong’s blockbuster The Host (2006) came along, is an example of a word-of-mouth hit.∞∂ It was shown on 250 screens during the opening week; as the ﬁlm created a buzz, its screens then increased to between 350 and 390.∞∑ Similar to high-concept ﬁlms, the majority of well-made ﬁlms are based on presold property. Memories of Murder, Welcome to Dongmakgol, and King and the Clown are adaptations of plays. Untold Scandal moves the classic French novel Dangerous Liaisons to eighteenth-century Joseon (Chosun) Dynasty Korea. The audiences’ appreciation of the ﬁlm is predicated in part upon their familiarity with the original novel or previous cinematic adaptations—e.g., Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears, 1988) or Valmont (Milos Forman, 1989). Well-made ﬁlms are marketed with a simple catchphrase or one-line concept that can encapsulate the plot structure, star, genre, and ﬁlm style. Memories of Murder was marketed as ‘‘Se7en [David Fincher, 1995] set in a rural town in South Korea.’’∞∏ Untold Scandal beckons viewer curiosity by casting Bae Yong-joon against his popular image. In his debut ﬁlm, Bae plays Jo-won, a scholar who promises to seduce Lady Suk in exchange for his love for Lady Jo. Janghwa Hongryeon, the Korean title of A Tale of Two Sisters, references a Korean folktale about two sisters mistreated by a domineering stepmother, a story with which most Korean audiences are familiar. Kim Jiwoon’s next ﬁlm, A Bittersweet Life (2005), is described as ‘‘Melville meets Kill Bill,’’ which encapsulates the mood and style of Melville’s cinema as well as the level of violence depicted in the Tarantino ﬁlm. The marketing strategy of the ﬁlms mentioned above reinforces the localglobal (and East-West) rhetoric employed in promoting Korean blockbusters as a brand. Korean blockbusters concerned with depicting national history and Korean experience do so by appropriating the conventions and marketing strategies of Hollywood cinema. Hollywood or other national ‘‘High-Quality’’ Films 147

cinema’s inﬂuence in marketing Korean well-made ﬁlms not only provides a point of reference to help convey a sense of the ﬁlm’s content but also becomes the point of departure for its cultural speciﬁcity. Memories of Murder’s appeal is its 1980s cultural references, using nostalgia and irony to appeal to viewers—a common motif in ﬁlms of the 386 Generation directors. The ﬁlm is based on real-life events in which ten women were raped and murdered in a small town, south of Seoul, between 1986 and 1991. Set in the mid-1980s, local cop Park and his sidekick Jo accuse the wrong suspects. Detective Seo from Seoul is assigned to assist in the case. In the ﬁrst half of the ﬁlm, tension between the local cops and the Seoul detective escalates, with the former relying on ‘‘keen’’ eyes (and even shamanism) while the latter focuses on ‘‘facts.’’ The incompetence of the local cops makes for a comic tone in the beginning. However, as the ﬁlm progresses, both the local cops and the big-city detective grow attached to the case as it becomes increasingly personal for them. The ﬁlm indirectly references the political situation and atmosphere of the 1980s, hinting at the incompetence of the Korean military government then in power. In one scene, a local police chief requests supplemental police to track down a suspect on a rainy day; but he is unable to recruit anyone, since other forces are assigned to suppress student demonstrations in the city nearby. In addition, the local cops constantly mistreat the suspects, forcing them to give false testimony. When the sidekick Jo, who is warned by his chief after beating up one of the suspects, drinks at a restaurant, the television news reports the actual case of a cop accused of sexually harassing a female activist in 1986. Some of the customers at the restaurant, most of whom seem to be college students, yell: ‘‘Cut off the dick of such a bastard.’’ Jo, enraged, destroys the tv set. The conventions of Hollywood crime/detective ﬁlms are adopted in Memories of Murder only to transform the conventions. Bong’s decision to work on an unsolved mystery provides him with room to experiment. As David Bordwell points out, crime/detective ﬁlms often consist of two storylines: crime fabula and investigation fabula.∞π As the investigation unfolds, the viewer is able to construct a coherent story of ‘‘whodunit.’’ Crime/ detective ﬁlms often create a gap between knowledge of the crime and the investigation process, which then stimulates the viewer’s curiosity and creates suspense. This gap between the crime and investigation is closed as the investigation comes to an end. However, in Memories of Murder, narrative enigma goes unsolved, unlike in the majority of Hollywood crime/ 148

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detective ﬁlms. As Derek Elley aptly observes, the ﬁlm ‘‘has focused on the investigators rather than the crimes, and on the effect of the crimes rather than their inherent thrills.’’∞∫ Gwang-ho, who is the ﬁrst suspect and was present at one of the crime scenes, is unable to testify, as he is killed accidentally by an oncoming train. To make things worse, the dna test result from the fbi —the only hope the cops have to convict the suspect—turns out to be inconclusive. Classic Hollywood ﬁlms such as The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946), much like Memories of Murder, foregrounds the investigation fabula over crime fabula, but the construction of a coherent story is not impossible.∞Ω Consider contemporary Hollywood crime ﬁlms, such as Se7en or Memento. In the former, the crime fabula is dissolved, rather than resolved, as John Doe turns himself in; while in the latter, although the story unfolds backward, the viewer is able to comprehend the story by the end. The lack of narrative closure is partly due to the fact that the actual crime the ﬁlm is based on was never solved. But this lack of closure does not stem from the same narrative ambiguity or indeterminacy as in The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer, 1995) or Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001).≤≠ Rather, it is attributed to the utter lack of evidence within the diegetic world. Not to mention that the killer’s motivation is never disclosed; most of the scanty evidence that exists is ultimately insigniﬁcant. Halfway through the ﬁlm, one of the original clues—that all the victims were wearing red clothes and were murdered on a rainy day—is undermined. A woman who was attacked while bringing an umbrella to her husband swaps her red raincoat for a black one, right before she leaves the house. In addition, during the ﬁlm’s ﬁnal crime, when a middle-school girl is murdered, we don’t see raindrops. It is raining the next morning when the body is found. Likewise, the reliability of other evidence—the song ‘‘Uulhan pyeonji’’ (A Gloomy Letter) playing on the radio each time a crime occurs and the distinguishing characteristic of the killer’s hand—is tenuous. As Bong claims, the entire ﬁlm can be seen as a search for faces, except that the viewer never gets to see the killer’s face.≤∞ The ﬁlm starts and ends with a close-up of a boy and of Park, respectively, with the local cops including Park and the viewer painstakingly looking for the killer. The killer’s face remains off screen except when the viewer has a glimpse of his face during one of the crime scenes. In the three onscreen crime scenes—one of which is the ﬂashback shown when testimony of a victim is being recorded—we see only the killer’s gaze and a shot of his truncated body such as his hand, which is described by one victim ‘‘delicate just like a woman’s hand.’’ The ﬁnal ‘‘High-Quality’’ Films 149

crime scene starts with a panning shot showing the killer with his back to the camera and then a clear view of his hand. The moment of the killer’s hesitation is rendered via panning between two women: a middle-school girl, and Gwak, who is on her way to visit a patient. The ﬁlm ends with Park staring into the camera. Now a middle-aged businessman, Park returns to the crime scene from an earlier sequence and looks inside the sewer. A girl passing by informs Park about the visit by another man, who claims he was reminiscing about things he had done in his past. Park blankly stares at the camera, as if he’s still searching for the face of the killer in the audience.≤≤ One of the achievements of Memories of Murder can be found in the fact that the killer is left unspeciﬁed. As Washitani Hana points out, the killer’s anonymity makes the memories of the killings ‘‘collective’’ rather than ‘‘individual.’’≤≥ This is well contrasted with Lee Chang-dong’s Peppermint Candy (1999), in which an individualized antihero, Yeong-ho, embodies the entire modern history from 1980 until 1997 (from the Gwang-ju uprising to imf). Memories of Murder also diverges from Hollywood crime/detective ﬁlms such as The Silence of the Lambs (1990) in which antihero Dr. Hannibal Lecter is charismatic and intelligent despite being a murderous cannibal.≤∂ In Memories of Murder, neither the detectives nor the killer is heroicized, with only helpless townspeople in fear. E J-yong’s Untold Scandal effortlessly adapts the classic French novel Dangerous Liaisons to eighteenth-century Korea. The ﬁlm garnered 2.2 million admissions (earning roughly $11 million, twice its negative cost within the ﬁrst ten days after its release). Untold Scandal is faithful to the French original in terms of narrative structure with slight changes necessary to adhere to the eighteenth-century Korean setting. Jo-won is an accomplished scholar and martial artist who rejects the restrictions of public ofﬁce for a life of sensuous pleasure. The love of Jo-won’s life, however, has been his cousin Lady Jo, who is on the surface a model Confucian wife well versed in the classics; but underneath she is a ruthless manipulator with a string of lovers. Jo-won bargains with Lady Jo that in exchange for her love, he would not only deﬂower a soon-to-be-concubine of Lady Jo’s husband but also sleep with Lady Suk—a widow incapable of being seduced. An interesting twist is added to Untold Scandal by having Jo-won paint chunhwado as a hobby. Chunhwado is a euphemism for obscene painting, the literal translation of which is the painting of ‘‘spring’’ and ‘‘ﬂower.’’ Chunhwado depicts undressed women or a couple making love, representing a folk/counterculture that makes a satire of the strictness and pretension 150

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of Confucian heritage in Joseon society. The irony manifested in the nobility’s lifestyle both in the Joseon Dynasty and France may not be as great as it appears. Lady Suk’s Catholicism also adds an interesting complexity to the ﬁlm. Roman Catholicism, which came to Korea in the seventeenth century, was banned during the Joseon Dynasty, and more than eight thousand Catholics were executed up until the mid-nineteenth century. Jo-won donates money for and later participates in the secret gatherings of the Catholics in order to be able to approach Lady Suk. In Dangerous Liaisons, Madame de Tourvel’s religious beliefs lead her to believe in the Vicomte de Valmont’s apparent reformation, however superﬁcial it is. It is also principally her religious beliefs that work to restrain her from consummating her love with de Valmont, despite their mutual attraction. In contrast to this, Lady Suk’s motivation to ﬁnd virtue in Jo-won may come from her religious egalitarian belief— Jo-won, after all, points out Lady Suk’s inconsistency in not making any effort to see good in him, even though she is so open and generous to laypeople at church gatherings. However, her wish to cherish chastity comes from the Confucian morals imposed upon her. It is worth pointing out that in the ﬁlm Lady Suk is accused of committing adultery, a rumor spread by Lady Jo out of jealousy. Such an accusation underscores the self-denial of the Joseon Dynasty: adultery/promiscuity and Catholicism are considered ‘‘Western’’ and ‘‘immoral,’’ despite the fact that adultery and promiscuity result from the social contradictions within the Joseon Dynasty itself. Subsequent costume dramas such as Blood Rain allegorically cast ambivalence on rationality, while Forbidden Quest, directed by Kim Dae-woo (screenwriter of Untold Scandal) cleverly alludes to contemporary consumer culture and the sex industry by focusing on an aristocrat’s curiosity for forbidden sexual practices. In these ﬁlms, beautiful costumes and elaborate use of mise-en-scène provide a backdrop against which contemporary anxiety and desires are detected and orchestrated. In this regard, these ﬁlms diverge from heritage ﬁlms directed by Im Kwon-taek, which lament the fading traditional art forms and urge the viewer to appreciate and preserve cultural heritage and traditions. Loosely based on a Korean folktale, A Tale of Two Sisters appropriates the elements and iconography of horror cinema of differing national origins: the gothic horror ﬁlms of classical and contemporary Hollywood—Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan, 1999), and The Others (Alejandro Amenabar, 2001)—and Japanese ﬁlms such as Ringu ‘‘High-Quality’’ Films 151

Figure 6.1 The cramped mise-en-scène of a local restaurant. (Memories of Murder, Bong Joon-ho, 2003)

(Nakata Hideo, 1998), and Audition (Miike Takashi, 1999). Picked up by ukbased distributor Tartan, A Tale of Two Sisters is labeled as ‘‘Asia Extreme’’ along with Oldboy and other extreme cinema from Asia. Some of the narrative elements and mise-en-scène of gothic horror appear in A Tale of Two Sisters: doubling of characters, haunted houses, windows, stairways, and a forbidden/locked place the protagonist has no direct access to (displaced as a locked closet in A Tale of Two Sisters). The ending of the ﬁlm is reminiscent of a twist ending found in many contemporary Hollywood horror ﬁlms, but it offers many more plot twists before the narrative closure: the revelation of Su-yeon’s identity, Su-mi’s split identity, and the stepmother’s discovery of a ghost in the house—while Su-mi’s suppressed trauma unfolds within a ﬂashback. Local critics underscore aesthetic reﬁnement as the major denominator of well-made commercial ﬁlms. With increasing production value, the Korean ﬁlm industry became more conscious of ﬁlm style, especially production design. By foregrounding mise-en-scène, the Korean ﬁlm industry seeks an alternate aesthetic to replace the spectacle-driven blockbuster style. With less than half the budget of blockbusters, well-made ﬁlms fore152

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Figure 6.2 Gang-ho tumbles out of small attic. (Memories of Murder, Bong Joon-ho, 2003)

ground artistic merit rather than explosions, physicality, and chases. Known in the industry as making innovative use of mise-en-scène are production designers such as Ryu Seong-hee, who worked on No Blood No Tears (Ryu Seung-wan, 2002), Memories of Murder, Oldboy (Park Chan-wook, 2003) and A Bittersweet Life; Jo Geun-hyeon, the production designer of A Tale of Two Sisters; and Min Eon-ok, who worked on such ﬁlms as Blood Rain and television dramas such as Goong (a.k.a. Princess Hours aired on mbc Jan. 11–Mar. 30, 2006).≤∑ Production companies such as B.O.M. branded their products with carefully conceived, elaborate use of mise-en-scène. To what extent can we think of Bong, Lee, and Kim as metteurs-en-scène? On what grounds can we categorize Memories of Murder, Untold Scandal, and A Tale of Two Sisters as mise-en-scène-oriented ﬁlms? How does mise-enscène in each ﬁlm function differently? Bong paces his ﬁlm slowly—with an average shot length of ten seconds— and painstakingly captures the tactility of poverty-stricken neighborhoods in a rural area of South Korea in the 1980s: the inn, in which Park and Gwak passionlessly make love, the attic of Baek’s restaurant (ﬁgure 6.1), from which Kwong-ho tumbles (ﬁgure 6.2), and the shabby house behind the ‘‘High-Quality’’ Films 153

Figure 6.3 A small room in which an entire family lives. (Memories of Murder, Bong Joon-ho, 2003)

school, where the female victim reluctantly gives her testimony. In addition to Bong’s meticulous details, what is of aesthetic interest is the way mise-enscène prompts a shift in tone within a scene or even within a shot. What appears to be the principal action instantly becomes subsidiary, turning itself into a pre-text for the revelation of an unexpected event. In one scene, Detective Jo visits the house of Jo Byeong-sun, the second suspect. The scene opens with close-ups of some vacation photos and of a family photo with insects crawling on it. They are followed by a shot of a claustrophobic room covered with discolored, stained wallpaper with a roll of toilet paper hanging nearby and a cross is seen in the upper right-hand corner in the background. Near the cross, Jo’s wife is seen coughing. And two kids are playing with toys on a gaudy blanket (ﬁgure 6.3). However, Bong does not let the viewer probe the mise-en-scène as art-house ﬁlms usually do. Jo ﬁnds paper cards—a kind of origami that Korean children make and play with—made of magazine paper, the back of which show the torso of a naked woman (ﬁgure 6.4). As Jo asks the boy where he found such a piece of paper, the camera cuts to show a square container in which magazines are stored, the shape of which mirrors that of the folded paper just seen (ﬁgure 6.5).

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Figure 6.4 Jo ﬁnds a paper card the children play with.

(Memories of Murder, Bong Joon-ho, 2003)

Figure 6.5 A container in which porn magazines are stored. (Memories of Murder, Bong Joon-ho, 2003)

The little family melodrama unfolding within the scene—from the happy moments captured in the photos to the current miserable living conditions with the mother suffering from an illness—is abruptly undercut by such a revelation. Mise-en-scène is carefully orchestrated for tonal shifts in longer sequences as well. A ﬁne example of this can be found in the chase scene involving Jo. After the opening sequence, in which the screen is ﬁlled with golden rice stalks, the ﬁlm shifts to a monochromatic palette in which shots are often accented by small patches of primary colors: a blue plastic trash can, the blue shirt of a Chinese-food deliveryman at the police station, the red clothes of the female victim, and the red shirt on a scarecrow. The color red also becomes an essential clue to capturing the second suspect. Park and Jo return to one of the crime scenes and follow the instructions given by a female shaman on how to catch the killer. The two are startled by the sight of a man walking toward them: it is Detective Seo, so they hide behind a tomb. Detective Seo himself also hides when he sees Jo, the second suspect. When the suspect pulls down his pants to masturbate, he’s seen in a red, lacy woman’s undergarment. The chase begins as the suspect ﬂees at the sound of Jo approaching. After a long chase, the three cops lose the suspect and arrive at a quarry. The banner at the entrance of the quarry reads, ‘‘Let’s speed up the work process to build a strong nation.’’ Against the humongous, abstract shape of grayish-white limestone, a large crowd is working the nightshift, and most of these men wear black uniforms. As the percussive music continues to signal both the end of the scene nearing and the increasing exigency of the chase, the camera frames Park to show him in close-up against excessive backlighting. When the camera cuts to a man bending to lift a rock from a carriage, his red underwear boldly sticks out of his pants. Against this monochromatic industrial landscape, the suspect is visually marked by the color of his undergarment: red. Park orders Jo to line up ﬁve or six workers, and from these he picks out the suspect, pretending that he relied on his intuition—as he calls it, his ‘‘keen’’ eyes. The spectacle of this sequence—comparable to a scene in Stray Dog (Kurosawa Akira, 1949) in which Detective Murakami (Mifune Toshiro) searches for a suspect at the train station by the color of the suspect’s linen suit—is undercut by an anticlimatic revelation of the red undergarment. The signiﬁcance of the chase has shifted, since the viewer is now aligned with Park. The range of viewer’s knowledge exceeds that of both Jo and Seo. The scene is no longer

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about the struggle to apprehend a ﬂeeing suspect, but rather about the continuing rivalry between Park and Seo. In a long two-minute take, Bong cues the viewer to what appears to be the most urgent event, which is soon deﬂated by the clumsy local police. Park arrives at the crime scene. He circles the killer’s footprint left in the mud as evidence and then walks over to have a chat with his boss; the two then walk toward the female body found in the ﬁeld. The camera movement is motivated by Park, framed in a medium-long shot. Bong directs the viewer’s attention either by ﬁgure movements or characters’ glances within the scene. When Park begins shouting to his chief, who is seen within a crowd in the far background, the chief tumbles down the hill (so does a forensic specialist when he arrives later in the scene), which helps the viewer identify him among the crowd. The exact location of the body is hinted at by the glances of a few bystanders at screen right, but as Park and his boss walk toward screen right, the body is revealed, and the camera arcs around the boy to reframe both Park and the Chief. Park starts to wave his right hand to stop a tractor on the hill, with his eyes still on the dead body, which is now off-screen. He runs up the hill in vain and ﬁnds that the tractor has erased the footprint that he had circled. The scene’s focal point changes from the second victim’s body to the local police, who cannot even preserve the crucial footprint found at the murder scene; consider the stark presentation of the body here compared to the state other victims are found in. A similar long take occurs inside the local police station. In the scene, the camera follows multiple characters, starting from a local cop dressed as a victim, to Park, and then to Seo, who is convinced that Kwang-ho is not the real murderer. Unlike Bong’s ﬁlm in which mise-en-scène prepares the way for an unexpected course of action to happen, in Untold Scandal beautiful decor grabs the viewer’s attention ﬁrst. Intrigues unfold within conﬁned spaces—each character’s room, the boat, the carriage with a red interior, and the small space behind the screen—that accentuate each character’s repressed sexual desire and even lust. Character traits and the character development are reﬂected not only in decor but also in the changing colors of costumes. Lady Suk, for instance, is ﬁrst seen in a black costume attending a secret Catholic mass. As her love interest with Jo-won develops, her costume takes more of warm hue, such as with pinkish lavender she is seen wearing when she takes a stroll with Jo-won by the beach. Chunhwado also serves as an important motif. Jo-won works on a paint-

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ing either before or after a sexual encounter with a woman. The camera zooms out of the painting to show Jo-won drawing a lady in the nude, while a family ritual takes place in another part of the house. Jo-won, as an artist, lacks aesthetic distance from his subject, which is an approach associated with bourgeois art. His art collapses the distinction between the subject and the object, with himself being both the subject and the object of the painting. However, his love affair with Lady Suk does not inspire the same style of art. Instead, he draws a portrait of her and sends it to her as a present. The ﬁlm fails to provide an alternate ideological framework to think of ‘‘pure’’ love, or any kind of love, thus succumbing to the generic convention of a tragic love affair. The deﬁning characteristic of E’s artistic accomplishment is his staging of characters within a conﬁned space. Traditional Korean culture and architectural design constrain Lee from staging characters more freely: once characters are seated, they become almost immobile. Such constraints probably motivated E to make more frequent cuts during dialogue-driven scenes, in order to build visual rhythm. This is in part why the average shot length of Untold Scandal (8.4 seconds) is shorter than Memories of Murder. More importantly, the spatial relationship between the two primary characters—Lady Jo and Jo-won—can be seen in different permutations throughout the ﬁlm, even at the expense of the traditional Korean seating arrangement between men and women. For example, when Jo-won is summoned to Lady Jo’s room after his meal with Lady Jo’s husband, the two are ﬁrst seen from outside the house, framed within a set of sliding doors. Lady Jo’s room is shaped like a rectangle and boasts a few sets of sliding doors that lead to the main section of the room. There are two additional sets of sliding doors within the main section: one set faces the garden outside, while the other leads to an adjacent room. When the camera cuts to an interior shot of the room, Lady Jo is seen in the center against the screen divider, while Jo-won is seated to her right with his back to a second set of sliding doors. The color of her jacket perfectly matches the color of the screen—a combination of dark purple and lavender. Lady Jo suggests they help each other to pursue their goal: seduction and revenge. During Jo-won’s second visit to Lady Jo’s room, the master shot frames the two within an aperture, this time ﬁlming them through the main sliding doors that lead to the main section of the room. Lady Jo and Jo-won are seated next to each another, both facing the camera; Lady Jo’s orange costume reﬂects the color of pomegranate embroi-

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dered on the screen. This unusual seating arrangement lets the characters inconspicuously slide in and out in the same frame, pivoted on a close-up of green grapes. As the confrontation between Lady Jo and Jo-won increases, the spatial relationship between the two characters changes accordingly. After months of carrying on his love affair with Lady Suk, Jo-won ﬁnally visits Lady Jo to claim his prize. She refuses to meet him, because she believes he loves Lady Suk. Jo-won hears the rumor about Lady Suk’s adultery and becomes infuriated. He sneaks into Lady Jo’s room only to ﬁnd it empty. He opens the sliding door, which surprisingly leads to Lady Jo’s bedroom, and again he ﬁnds an empty room. When he is about to leave, Jo-won catches sight of Lady Jo making love with In-ho behind the screen. The next day, Jo-won pays another visit to Lady Jo. Now the two sit facing each other across a little tea table, while the camera is placed at a 90-degree angle from the axis of action. This establishing shot continues the stylistic permutations while violating the 180-degree rule. The camera crosses the 180-degree line when showing Lady Jo, as she urges Jo-won to leave Lady Suk, in shot/reverse shot. (The camera could have been placed on the other side of the table, but the 180-degree rule would have still been violated as Lady Jo exits to the adjacent room.) After their brief conversation, Lady Jo leaves the room, and Jo-won remains seated facing the purplish screen. During the last encounter between Lady Jo and Jo-won, Lady Jo is shown in the foreground arranging ﬂowers in a vase, with Jo-won seated in the middle-ground left. Lady Jo rises to put the vase on a dresser and sits next to Jo-won. As the animosity becomes more palpable, the two face opposite directions—with Jo-won facing the screen and Lady Jo looking toward the main entrance to her room. As Jo-won announces the end of their agreement and rises from his seat, Lady Jo’s body tilts slightly left as she loses her balance. However, she does not move—mirroring the last shot of Jo-won during their last meeting, except that she faces the camera this time. Other stylistic techniques used here are shot/reverse shot and camera distance to reveal character relationships and convey subtle changes in facial expressions. However, different staging in each encounter between Lady Jo and Jowon not only tracks the trajectory of their relationship—from being friends, to ﬂirtation, betrayal, and ultimately confrontation—but also allows for different stylistic permutations, despite the violations of traditional Korean rules on proper conduct.

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The eighteenth-century Korean custom that prohibited men and women from facing one another or from exchanging glances, on the other hand, works in E’s favor when he creates a discrepancy between the viewer’s and characters’ knowledge of what is happening in the ﬁlm. Jo-won’s heart is often worn on his sleeve, but his intentions are revealed only to the viewer (or to everyone except Lady Suk). When Jo-won sneaks into Lady Suk’s room one night, he laments that Lady Suk prefers to return to her hometown and risk death from a deadly disease that’s spreading, rather than stay near him and correspond via letters. As he turns away from her, the smirk on his face is visible only to the viewer. A mood-driven horror ﬁlm, A Tale of Two Sisters ampliﬁes its ‘‘sad’’ mood through mise-en-scène and music. A Tale of Two Sisters replaces adolescents’ decorative impulses, manifested through the secret diary in Memento Mori, with the externalized character interiority. Su-mi’s neuroses and psychoses are conveyed through domestic interiors: wallpapers, antique furniture, and the tone of each space. Many critics acknowledge the stylish miseen-scène of this ﬁlm, but they do not fully elaborate how mise-en-scène functions other than to create conﬂicting mood cues and evoke emotions: horror and sadness. Home, the site of inerasable, painful memories, is not rendered as homogenous space throughout A Tale of Two Sisters. Each room is visually marked by different patterns of wallpaper and differing color tones. Although some of the long takes and establishing shots in each room allow the viewer to become familiar with the general layout of the house, space is still fragmented and sometimes confusing due to spatial information being withheld from the viewer. For instance, in Su-yeon’s room a new space is disclosed in accordance with the occupant of the space. In the beginning of the ﬁlm, only space in the vicinity of Su-yeon’s bed and the closet are activated, and there is no full view of the room. The same portion of the space is used when the stepmother locks Su-yeon in the closet, accusing Su-yeon of killing her bird. It is only when the father comes upstairs to confront Su-mi for her neurotic behavior that Su-yeon’s room is fully revealed. The two sisters are seated side by side on a bench by the window, a space which had not been established earlier in the ﬁlm. Consider also the scene in which Su-mi starts to panic one morning. Su-mi ﬁnds her father’s note saying that he has gone out to run errands. She ﬁnds a white bag smudged with blood. Thinking that Su-yeon is near, Su-mi runs frantically around the house. The space now

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turns from the familiar to the unfamiliar, appearing like a maze. The bag is dislocated a few times while Su-mi is looking for a pair of scissors. The room with a medicine cabinet is a space that has yet to be fully established, with its spatial relation to the rest of the house unclear. This spatial unfamiliarity underscores the psychological confusion of Su-mi and renders spatial confusion in the viewer. One of the aesthetic strategies in A Tale of Two Sisters is to blend characters into mise-en-scène. Shallow space, created via the camera position perpendicular to the axis of action, and the lack of strong backlight that often separates ﬁgure from background, renders the image ﬂat. Consider the ﬁrst dining sequence in the beginning of the ﬁlm. After the establishing shot of the family at the dining room table with the father’s back to the camera, the camera cuts between the stepmother and the two sisters, Su-mi and Suyeon, both of whom appear to blend into the background—speciﬁcally, the cupboard and the back wall. When characters are staged in depth, they often walk in and out of the light, which has the effect of absorbing them into the space rather than setting them apart from mise-en-scène. When the stepmother ﬁrst greets Su-mi and Su-yeon, for instance, she walks from the far background toward the foreground, coming in and out of the light. A similar shot is used when Su-mi comes downstairs in the middle of the night to ﬁnd the tv set on in the library. Moreover, in some of the most impressive shots, mise-en-scène awaits the entrance of a character. It is not mise-en-scène that coheres around the character, but rather characters that complete mise-en-scène. After the stepmother’s brother and his wife leave, the stepmother suspects there must be someone in the house. After the father leaves the bedroom to inspect the house, the stepmother is seen facing the red closet doors—which seem to cover the entire wall—with her back to the camera. Her shiny blue nightgown creates a stark contrast to the red background and renders the space ﬂat. After a cutaway to the father in the kitchen, which has more depth, we see the stepmother walk from screen left to right, relocating against the wall of a different color: magenta (ﬁgure 6.6). It is interesting that both before and after she enters the frame, the camera brieﬂy shows only the abstract patterns on the wall, as if it awaits the character’s action: stasis charged with repressed energy (ﬁgure 6.7). Now, the camera cuts to the red closet again, waiting for the stepmother to move into the frame. She paces left and right, punctuated by an empty moment. A similar shot occurs when the father

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Figure 6.6 The stepmother paces back and forth, shot against the

decorative wall. (A Tale of Two Sisters, Kim Ji-woon, 2003)

Figure 6.7 An empty moment awaits the entrance of a character.

(A Tale of Two Sisters, Kim Ji-woon, 2003)

comes back home to ﬁnd Su-mi collapsed in the hallway. He brings medicine for Su-mi, and before he enters the library where he left her, there is a shot of a bare wall, from which he slowly enters the frame. Bong, Lee, and Kim explore mise-en-scène within the generic norms or constraints—sometimes excessively so. However, their aesthetics appear to be too diverse to suggest they all share a style. This may be partly due to the fact that mise-en-scène is such a vast category to deﬁne. The emphasis on mise-en-scène or production design in well-made ﬁlms, however, should be elaborated on in order to appreciate its distinct merits within each ﬁlm, rather than as a term merely suggesting a ﬁlm’s polished look. Furthermore, as the ﬁlm culture in Korea matures, ﬁlm style should be appreciated not only for its visuality but also for its craftsmanship. It is absurd to draw a sharp divide between mise-en-scène-based cinema and spectacle-oriented cinema, since mise-en-scène provides as much spectacle as an explosion or a ﬁstﬁght; a well-edited ﬁght scene can and should be appreciated as much as a meticulously drawn mise-en-scène.

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7

Riding the New Wave

After the commercial and critical success of his ﬁlm JSA (2000), to the surprise of many, Park Chan-wook launched the Vengeance trilogy, which is imbued with excessive violence and gory images. Oldboy, its second installment, however, earned Park the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002. Park is one of the few Korean directors, along with Bong Joon-ho and Kim Ji-woon, whose ﬁlms appeal to audiences both at home and abroad. Associated with ‘‘Asia Extreme,’’ a marketing term created by uk distributor Metro Tartan that refers to a group of Asian ﬁlms with slick visual style and excessive violence, Park’s ﬁlms attracted a cult following at ﬁlm festivals. Fans attending a midnight screening of Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005) were thrilled as Park approached the podium to introduce his ﬁlm; and U.S. independent ﬁlmmaker Eli Roth claims that his ﬁlm Hostel (2005) was indebted to Park’s work. Festival-driven ﬁlms by Park Chan-wook, Kim Ki-duk, Hong Sang-soo, and Im Sang-soo provide necessary counterpoint to ﬁlms produced by the heavily commercialized Korean ﬁlm industry. It is interesting to observe, however, that the nationalistic undercurrents in commercially successful Korean cinema have become attenuated as Korean cinema reaches international art-house audiences. The strategy adopted by these directors departs from both that of veteran director Im Kwon-taek and those of the Korean New Wave directors of the 1980s and ’90s. Im, after working for over two decades as a commercial director, dedicated himself to bringing audiences’ attention to Korea’s cultural and religious heritage as manifested in ﬁlms such as The Surrogate Mother (1987) and Aje Aje Bara Aje (a.k.a. Come, Come, Upward, Come, 1989). He brieﬂy ﬂirted with commercial ﬁlmmaking in the early 1990s, with The General’s Son series (1990–1992). But with Sopyonje (1993) Im continues to create heritage ﬁlms, lamenting the degradation of Korean traditional performance art pansori by telling a heartfelt story about a blind pansori singer Songhwa. His subsequent pieces—Chunhyang, an adaptation of pansori Chunhyang, and Chihwason, 164

a ﬁlm about nineteenth-century painter Jang Seung-eop—were warmly received at Cannes. In critical literature, the Korean New Wave—not to be confused with Korean Wave (hallyu), a term referring to the increasing popularity of Korean pop-culture products such as tv drama series and music in the East Asian region—is associated with the ﬁlms of directors such as Jang Sun-woo, Park Kwang-su, and Lee Myung-se. These directors debuted in the late 1980s, prior to the Korean ﬁlm industry fully transforming itself in response to the direct distribution of Hollywood major studios. The Korean New Wave emerged and bridged two diverging ﬁlm practices: one epitomized by Im’s heritage/cultural ﬁlms and the 386 Generation directors’ pursuit of commercially viable cinema. Kim Kyung-hyun characterizes the Korean New Wave oeuvre as a ‘‘cinema of post-trauma,’’ which concerns the crisis of masculinity resulting from enduring three decades of military dictatorship.∞ In the latter half of the 1990s, a ‘‘second new wave’’ of directors emerged: Lee Chang-dong (b. 1954), Kim Ki-duk (b. 1960), Hong Sang-soo (b. 1960), and Im Sang-soo (b. 1962), among others. Except for Lee, all of these directors were born in the 1960s. That they are less prone to make genre ﬁlms brings these directors closer to the New Wave directors of the 1980s such as Park Kwang-su and Jang Sun-woo rather than the directors of their generation such as Kang Je-gyu, Kim Sung-su, and Kwak Kyeong-taek. A novelistturned-ﬁlmmaker, Lee Chang-dong started his ﬁlm career as an assistant director to Park Kwang-su. Lee explored the consequences of rapid modernization and suburbanization in Korea in his directorial debut Green Fish (1997), the historical traumas of the 1980s in Peppermint Candy (1999), the lack of social consciousness about the disabled in Oasis (2002)—which earned him the best director award at the Venice Film Festival—and religious hypocrisy and the idea of ‘‘forgiveness’’ in Secret Sunshine (2007). With his 1996 debut, Crocodile, Kim Ki-duk’s thematic interests range from sexual perversion in The Isle (2000) and Bad Guy (2002) to the division of the country as found in Address Unknown (2001) and The Coast Guard (2002). He also looks at the relationship between spirituality and sexuality in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring (2003) and Samaritan (2004). One common thematic thread in Im Sang-soo’s ﬁlms is the exploration of sexuality: female sexuality in Girls Night Out (1998), adolescent sexuality in Tears (2000), and the combination of the two in A Good Lawyer’s Wife (2003). Im’s The President’s Last Bang (2005), on the other hand, depicts the last day of President Park Chung-hee, leading up to his assassination. Among this secRiding the New Wave 165

ond generation of New Wave directors, Hong Sang-soo has demonstrated the most rigor and consistency in ﬁlm style. Hong has directed nine ﬁlms so far: The Day the Pig Fell into the Well (1996; The Pig hereafter), The Power of Kang-won Province (1998), Oh Soo-jung! Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2000), A Turning Gate (2002), Woman is the Future of Man (2004), Tale of Cinema (2005), Woman on the Beach (2006), Night and Day (2008), and Like You Know It All (2009). This chapter investigates the dynamic between the local and the global conﬁgured in the First and Second New Wave directors’ oeuvre. Is there any thematic and/or stylistic continuity between these two factions? To what extent does the Second New Wave diverge from the First New Wave at the level of theme and style? What are some of the intellectual and cultural milieus that generated a shift in their aesthetic proclivity? How did the Second Wave directors adapt to changing aesthetic norms and trends on the ﬁlm-festival circuit?

Riding the New Wave

For many critics and ﬁlm scholars in South Korea, the commercial ﬂop of Jang Sun-woo’s The Resurrection of the Little Match Girl (2002, The Match Girl hereafter) marked an important turning point within the Korean ﬁlm industry. Jang was an internationally acclaimed Korean New Wave auteur with ﬁlms such as From Me to You (1994); A Petal (1996); Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie (1997, Bad Movie hereafter); and, Lies (1999), but his turn to commercial ﬁlmmaking lead to box-ofﬁce disaster. Despite its then-record high production costs ($9.2 million) and its incorporation of videogame aesthetics that supposedly appeal to a younger audience, Jang’s The Match Girl neither carried the sensibility necessary for a commercial success nor did it manifest the provocation of Jang’s previous ﬁlms.≤ The Match Girl’s disappointing box-ofﬁce draw not only generated anxiety among industry personnel regarding the prospect of Korean blockbuster ﬁlms but also reﬂected the relationship between the Korean New Wave and industrial demands from the mid-1990s onward. According to Kim Kyunghyun, there is no longer room for the New Wave directors to explore acute social issues in their ﬁlms given that the industry is controlled by a few media conglomerates and that box-ofﬁce returns are the only measurement driving investment decisions. Kim further declares the year 2002 as marking the end of the Korean New Wave. However, this apparent divide between New Wave ﬁlmmaking and industry demands needs to be reexamined in 166

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order to make a thorough assessment of the relationship between the First and Second New Wave, the latter of which emerged after commercial genre ﬁlmmaking became the industry norm. The New Wave directors born in the 1950s—Jang (b. 1952), Park (b. 1955) and Lee (b. 1957)—are slightly older than 386 Generation directors. Jang studied anthropology at Seoul National University in the late 1970s and became a political activist in the 1980s. After serving a six-month sentence for distributing leaﬂets reporting on the massacre in Gwang-ju, Jang began writing tv scripts. His ﬁrst ﬁlm, Seoul Jesus (1986), spent two years in the censor’s ofﬁce before its eventual and heavily reconﬁgured release.≥ Park majored in ﬁne arts at Seoul National University, later joining the ﬁlm club Yallasheong of Seoul National University. Park also founded Seoul Film Group, which provides a network for independent ﬁlmmakers with interest in representing student protests and labor movements. After studying ﬁlm at the esec ﬁlm school in Paris, Park returned to Korea and served as an assistant director to Lee Chang-ho. He debuted in 1988 with Chil-su and Man-su. Lee completed a two-year course in ﬁlmmaking at Seoul Arts College. He joined the ﬁlm industry as a scriptwriter and then later worked as an assistant director to Bae Chang-ho. Lee debuted the same year as Park with Gagman. The emergence of the Korean New Wave is often discussed in reference to the mellowing political atmosphere in South Korea in 1987. Both Park and Lee debuted a year after the so-called Spring of 1987 and, although Jang co-directed Seoul Jesus with Seon-wu Hwan two years earlier in 1986, Jang’s second feature, The Age of Success, was also released in 1988. The 1980s began with one of the most traumatic experiences in the history of Korea: the Gwang-ju uprising. On May 17, 1980, months after president Park Chung-hee was assassinated, Chun declared martial law, closing universities, dissolving the legislature, banning all political activity, and arresting thousands of political leaders and dissidents. The most drastic resistance to this military regime was found in Gwang-ju. Students and civilians rose up, demanding the repeal of martial law and the release of Kim Dae-jung, who was accused of mobilizing citizens against the military government. It is hard to estimate the exact number of civilians injured and killed during the Gwang-ju uprising, but allegedly more than two thousand people were killed.∂ In 1987 Chun Doo-hwan attempted to prolong the military regime by nominating Roh Tae-woo as his successor, but Chun’s decision gave rise to Riding the New Wave 167

public political dissent. Furthermore, in June of the same year, catalyzed by the death of college student Yi Han-yeol during a police investigation, there were massive protests led by college students. College students demanded a more democratic form of government, and were soon joined by workers as well as average civilians. Roh announced a set of reformations, and although Roh won the presidential election that year—mainly due to the split of the votes between two presidential candidates from the other opposing parties, Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam—1987 marked a breakthrough in South Korea. New Wave directors’ debuts coincided with the changing political atmosphere in the late 1980s. After his military coup in 1980, Chun had quickly moved to assume control over the media by instituting the Media Consolidation Measure, eliminating one national television network, three national radio stations, four local newspapers, and more than 150 periodicals.∑ Under Chun’s regime, ﬁlm censorship was severe; ﬁlms with explicit political content were discouraged for fear of undermining the legitimacy and authority of Chun’s military regime. Although ﬁlm censorship was still in place when Roh came to power in 1987, toward the end of the year he eliminated censorship at the preproduction phase as a gesture of democratization.∏ The breakthrough ﬁlms by New Wave directors—Age of Success, Chil-su and Man-su and Gagman—were all released the following year. In his book The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema, Kim Kyung-hyun emphasizes the Korean New Wave’s preoccupation with a postmilitary-era gender crisis—especially the crisis of masculinity. The New Wave directors’ ﬁlms often feature male characters—either intellectual or working class— who are incapable of asserting their masculinity. For example, in Chil-su and Man-su, Park Kwang-su’s debut ﬁlm, the two male protagonists, both billboard painters, never achieve their desired masculinity because of their class and family history. In Jang’s To You, From Me (1994), a strange relationship develops between a factory worker, Ba-ji, and a writer. Ba-ji arrives at the writer’s home and offers to help him to overcome writer’s block. However, when Ba-ji becomes a successful model, the writer becomes a chauffeur for Ba-ji instead of pursuing his writing career. According to Kim, the tension between the ‘‘masculine agencies and social problems (class contradiction, compressed modernization, and military rules) of the post-military era,’’ propels the narratives of the Korean New Wave ﬁlms.π The sexual frustrations and sometimes the socioeconomic incompetence of male characters are symptomatic of the terror and trauma 168

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triggered by the military regimes. What is unique about the Korean New Wave cinema, Kim claims, is that the protagonists are unable to achieve agency by either voluntary submission to authority (be it female sexuality or ideology) or via an ironic downfall of the protagonist. For example, the writer in Jang’s To You, From Me is unable to gain respect and notoriety. After Ba-ji becomes a famous model, she offers to support the writer so he can continue his work. But the writer turns down the offer, expressing his disillusionment. Chil-su and Man-su, the protagonists in Park’s ﬁlm with the same title, are also unable to achieve their goals. Chil-su is from a dysfunctional family: his father is an alcoholic and a houseboy in Dongducheon, an area near a U.S. military camp. Chil-su, however, wants to date a college girl, Ji-na, and fantasizes about going to the United States. Man-su, unable to ﬁnd a stable job because of his Communist father, is disillusioned by the unlikely prospects of getting a respectable job. Chil-su and Man-su, intoxicated, ﬁnally voice their complaints from the top of the billboard they have been painting. Because of their brief public outcry, the two are mistaken as protestors by the police. Man-su commits suicide by jumping off the billboard, while Chil-su is arrested by the police and leaves the scene handcuffed in a police car. The male protagonists in both Jang’s and Park’s ﬁlms are neither able to assert their masculinity nor successfully integrate into society. ‘‘A cinema of post-trauma’’ may adequately describe the Korean New Wave. However, this description limits the scope of the New Wave phenomenon to social-problem ﬁlms, especially ﬁlms about the consequences of military dictatorship. Although some New Wave ﬁlms deal explicitly with the historical experiences of workers and of intellectuals under the military regime—including Park’s A Single Spark, Jang’s A Petal, and Lee Changdong’s Peppermint Candy (1999)—some do not neatly fall under such a banner. There appears to be a growing change even within the New Wave oeuvre. In Jang’s Bad Movie, the adolescent misdemeanors are hardly symptomatic of the political disillusionment of either workers or intellectuals. Furthermore, Hong Sang-soo’s ﬁlms, although they deal with male sexuality, do not ﬁt the suggested political framework. The Day a Pig Fell in the Well (1996), Hong’s directorial debut, features a relationship between Hyo-seob, a writer/intellectual, and Min-je, who collects movie tickets at a third-run movie theater, comparable to the relationship between Yeong-su and a female factory worker in A Single Spark. However, unlike the latter, the former relationship is not based upon shared political ideals or beliefs. Rather, their Riding the New Wave 169

relationship can be described, at best, as parasitic or one of unfair exchange. Min-je aspires to become the wife of an intellectual, while Hyo-seob’s pettiness is the only reason for him to stay with Min-je. The sexual frustrations of the male protagonists and the instability of heterosexual union in Hong’s ﬁlms, including Oh! Soo-jung: The Virgin Stripped Bare by Bachelors (2000) and Turning Gate (2002), cannot be attributed to or originate from political trauma. Hong’s deemphasizing of politics in favor of showing how empty, absurd, and mundane everyday life is, in fact, what sets him apart from other New Wave directors. Critics further associate the Korean New Wave with ‘‘realism,’’ which is an umbrella term often referring to a ﬁlm’s style as well as its subject matter—a term that is both too inclusive and too exclusive. ‘‘Realism’’ is deﬁned rather negatively as a mode of storytelling opposite to the approach of Hollywood mainstream cinema. On the one hand, the term ‘‘realism’’ refers to more than just the dissolution of Cold War ideology, which can be found in many ﬁlms released after the civilian government was established in 1993. Such ﬁlms include Taebaek Mountains (Im Kwon-taek, 1994) and Spring in My Home Town (Lee Kwang-mo, 1998). Taebaek Mountains depicts the Korean War from the perspective of North Korea, and in Spring In My Home Town events are seen from a child’s point of view.∫ But the term ‘‘realism’’ also encompasses narrative structure in Korean New Wave ﬁlms, including a lack of goal-oriented protagonists and sometimes a tragic or ironic ending that prohibits protagonists from being reintegrated into society.Ω Stylistically, realism is associated with speciﬁc cinematic devices, such as long takes and sometimes distant framing, as a conscious refusal to adopt Hollywood continuity editing. Some critics boldly suggest that Korean New Wave directors explore a ‘‘Korean’’ ﬁlm language.∞≠ Realism as construed above, however, not only blurs the distinction between New Wave Cinema and more commercially driven ﬁlms but also excludes ﬁlms that employ styles alternative to that of realism. The dissolution of cold-war ideology is not a theme exclusive to the Korean New Wave. Such a tendency is also found in commercially successful ﬁlms such as JSA (Park Chan-wook, 2000) and Welcome to Dongmakgol (Park Kwang-hyeon, 2005). The spatial isolation of Dongmakgol provides space devoid of conﬂicting ideologies between North and South, as Panmunjom in JSA fosters the friendship between North and South Korean soldiers. Bad Movie, directed by Jang, borrows some of the stylistic devices associated with so-called Direct Cinema, a documentary movement that emerged 170

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in the United States in the 1960s. Yet Jang’s ﬁlm deviates greatly from the sense of realism that Direct Cinema displays. The camera in Bad Movie is not a ﬂy on the wall passively observing proﬁlmic events, but it anticipates what is about to occur. For example, we see awkward interviews of a mother and a daughter who complain about Yippeuni (a.k.a. Pretty): the mother accuses Yippeuni of having a bad inﬂuence on her daughter. Yippeuni and the rest of her gang decide to rob their house as revenge. We see Ddongjaru (a.k.a. Shortie) waiting on the street for the mother and the daughter to leave their house. However, when Yippeuni and Sae (a.k.a. Bird) break into the house by tearing down the window screen, the camera has already been set up inside the house waiting for them to enter. Jang stages the most dramatic event toward the end of the ﬁlm: the death of a child. In the segment entitled ‘‘Death,’’ we witness the death of Doyeong, a cute girl that the audience grows attached to. Jang carefully orchestrates this overt drama. We ﬁrst see a medium shot of a homeless person (played by actor Gi Ju-bong) in the foreground center and Do-yeong sleeping on the ﬂoor, lying from middle-ground center toward middle-ground left. The camera cuts to show another homeless person sitting on a stair, seen through shutters. In the next shot, the camera is moved farther back to show the same man in the second shot. In this extreme long shot, we see one shutter stretching from foreground right to background left, separating the space diagonally. Another shutter is located from background left toward middle-ground right in the shot, dividing the space more or less horizontally. As the shutter in the middle ground slowly rolls up, the man seen in the second shot is seen through a cell of the shutter in the foreground. As the name of ‘‘Do-yeong’’ echoes throughout the station, the homeless people in the vicinity turn to see what is happening. As the shutter in the foreground slowly rolls up, the music starts. As soon as the shutter is completely up, the camera quickly zooms in to show a man holding Do-yeong, as if the shutters block the view of this dramatic event. The careful staging and aestheticization of the scene work against conventional notions of realism, emphasizing its artiﬁce. The beautiful shot composition, electronic music, and trained voice-actor calling ‘‘Do-yeong,’’ makes the viewer feel as if he or she is watching a well-staged drama. However, Jang soon reverts to a realistic style by following a boy at the Seoul Station while shooting him in grainier images with a shaky camera. The boy is wandering around during rush hour, as if to indicate that the death of a little girl does not affect the homeless’ routine at the Seoul Station. Riding the New Wave 171

Films directed by Lee Myung-se, a New Wave stylist working within genre conventions, are omitted in the discussion of the Korean New Wave. Yet, Lee is one of the most commercially successful ﬁlmmakers among the Korean New Wave directors and represents the New Wave’s attempt to renovate narrative structure and style within commercial norms. Lee’s Nowhere to Hide (1999) and Duelist (2005), for example, cannot be adequately assessed without a careful examination of his stylistic experiments. In the mesmerizing train-chase sequence in Nowhere to Hide, Lee’s style reaches its zenith. Lee ingeniously stages a clash between Seong-min and his henchmen on the one hand and detective Wu and the cops on the other. The train’s narrow aisle creates problems in staging an extravagant ﬁght. By blocking and revealing characters one by one, Lee creates a sense of duration as well as chaos. We see the henchman with the knife in the middle ground while the rest of the cops wrestle with other henchmen in the background. Suddenly, a female passenger stands up, entering the frame from screen left. The camera cuts back to show her from behind and then cuts back to show her face, followed by a close-up of Kim screaming. In the next shot, we see the young woman in shock, with Kim pushing her toward screen left to protect her from being stabbed. As Kim and the woman exit the frame, we see the henchman falling after attempting in vain to stab her. As the henchman falls to the ﬂoor, Seongmin, who was behind the henchman, is revealed. Seong-min gets up and tries to escape. We see a close-up of a cop pointing his gun at Seong-min. In the next shot, we see a gas gun in close-up emitting gas that blurs Seong-min’s view. The camera cuts back to show Seong-min hit the cop in the head, jump over his body, and move to the next train car. As Kim chases Seong-min to the next train car, a new course of action begins. This sequence ends with detective Wu losing Seong-min. However, the suspense of this chase and the conﬂicting interests of the two parties are aptly rendered by visual conﬂict and disarray, as ﬁgures function like sliding doors, blocking and revealing characters and props within this claustrophobic space. Both attempts to assess the thematic/stylistic consistency of the Korean New Wave seem to be limiting. Perhaps a better way to approach the relationship between the Korean New Wave and the conglomeration of the Korean ﬁlm industry is to examine how shared political experiences and collective memory are registered and appropriated in accordance with differing aims and conventions. Certain themes, such as problems between North and South Korea and the preoccupation of the military regime with its legitimacy, are crossbred in both festival-driven ﬁlms and commercially oriented ﬁlms. 172

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The Korean New Wave is a multifaceted phenomenon in which various paths have been taken. An active exchange and negotiation between New Wave directors and commercial cinema can be found in their selective adoption of the genre conventions of black comedy—e.g. Gagman, Age of Success, and Out to the World (Yeo Kyun-dong, 1994). In addition, it should not be ignored that some New Wave ﬁlms materialized due to the emergence of new investors and ﬁnanciers in the Korean ﬁlm industry. With high production costs due to corporate conglomerate and venture capitalist involvement in the ﬁlm industry and the rise of major distributors such as cj Entertainment and Showbox, the Korean ﬁlm industry has relied heavily on commercial ﬁlmmaking, adapting its products to the audience’s constantly changing tastes. Nevertheless, conglomerates and venture capitalists ﬁnanced a wide range of ﬁlms especially in the beginning stage of the ﬁlm industry’s conglomeration, including social problem ﬁlms, and historical/ heritage ﬁlms. For instance, Daewoo partially invested in ﬁlms such as Jang’s To You, From Me (1994), and Park’s To the Starry Island (1993) in exchange for the video rights to these ﬁlms. Daewoo fully ﬁnanced Park’s next ﬁlm A Single Spark (1996).∞∞ Mirae Asset, a venture capital ﬁrm, partially ﬁnanced ﬁlms such as Jang’s Lies (1999) and Im Kwon-taek’s Chunhyang (2001).∞≤ Saneun Capital—an investment ﬁrm established with government subsidies —was one of the investors of Park’s Uprising (1999).∞≥ One of the major production/distribution companies, Cinema Service, ﬁnanced and distributed Lee’s Nowhere to Hide (1999). Korean New Wave directors’ ﬁlms are both thematically and stylistically diffuse, with diverging adaptability to the industry-wide changes of the 1990s. Park’s consistency, Jang’s versatility, and Lee’s commercial viability not only show the multiple routes taken by New Wave directors since the mid-1990s but also illuminate the interaction between a cinema critical of dominant ideology and a commercial cinema appealing to the popular imagination. How then does the Second Wave distinguish itself from the First Wave?

Aesthetics of Cruelty Park Chan-wook, Kim Ki-duk

The years 2002 and 2003 mark a turning point in many ﬁlmmakers’ careers: Jang produced the blockbuster The Match Girl (although it failed at the box ofﬁce). Park Chan-wook declares to explore ‘‘B-ﬁlm aesthetics’’ in the ﬁrst installment of his Vengeance trilogy Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance Riding the New Wave 173

(2002). Kim Ki-duk’s Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring (2003), which was partially funded by German production company Pandora Film Produktion, made a sharp contrast to his more visceral ﬁlms such as The Isle (2000), Bad Guy (2001), and The Coast Guard (2002). In Turning Gate (2002), Hong abandoned the ﬁxed-camera technique that had been his signature in earlier ﬁlms. In addition, Lee Chang-dong was elected minister of culture in 2003. These changes occurred not only because of further restructuring of the Korean ﬁlm industry and politics but also because of the changing festival milieu. A quick look at the line-up of Asian cinema for screening at Cannes in 2004 exempliﬁes a few emerging trends. There could be found everything from martial arts ﬁlms such as Sword in the Moon (Lee Gwang-hun) and House of Flying Daggers (Zhang Yimou) to the Japanese anime feature Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, to festival favorite Wong Kar-wai’s 2046 and Park’s vengeance ﬁlm, Oldboy; and with the exception of returning veteran Wong, East Asian popular cinema attracted the most attention.∞∂ In the past, the ﬁlm festival had functioned as the site for internationally acclaimed auteurs to showcase their ﬁlms for art-house audiences around the world. But the situation had reversed of late. As David Chute from Variety notes, Asia’s popular culture—which was once thought to be too esoterically local in its subject matter and style—travels well beyond the originating country or the region. Such a change was in part triggered by the changing patterns of media consumptions facilitated via the technological advancement of vhs, dvd, and the Internet. In the 1980s Japanese anime and Hong Kong heroic bloodshed action cinema began to appeal to audiences outside the diasporic communities in the United States. Since the late 1990s numerous Asian horror ﬁlms and comedies have been sold to Hollywood for remakes. Hollywood remakes of Japanese horror ﬁlms The Ring (2002) and The Ring Two (2005) earned $15 million and $36 million, respectively, on the opening weekend alone.∞∑ Another trend emerges: the ‘‘aesthetics of cruelty and violence’’ is manifested in many Asian cinemas such as Miike Takashi’s Audition (1999), Fukasaku Kinji’s classic Battle Royale (2000), Kim Ki-duk’s The Isle (2000), which are branded as ‘‘Asia Extreme’’ cinema by Metro Tartan. Young audiences once reluctant to watch foreign ﬁlms with subtitles are now drawn to the surreal renderings of hyperviolent imagery and gore. What, then, is the signiﬁcance of such ﬁlms that travel across national boundaries and embody a form of youth culture? In Park’s Vengeance Trilogy, references to the political situation of the Korean peninsula are few and far between. Interestingly, when such political 174

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content appears, its aim seems not to be in the service of thematic emphasis, but instead it foregrounds Park’s own visual style and authorial marks. A comparison between the ﬁrst two installments of the trilogy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy, will illustrate the gradual effacement of national history within the similar narrative tropes shared by these two ﬁlms. Both ﬁlms revolve around conﬂicting relationships, pitting a brother-sister relationship against a father-daughter relationship, and both ﬁlms depict a web of revenge that is spun from the female deaths. The ﬁrst ﬁlm of the trilogy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, features the protagonist Ryu—a deaf-mute factory worker, whose sister is in need of a kidney transplant. Ryu is laid off from work and then loses his savings to conniving organ trafﬁckers. Ryu and his girlfriend kidnap the daughter of his former employer Park in order to pay for Ryu’s sister’s operation. Ryu’s sister commits suicide after she discovers that her brother has kidnapped his former boss’s daughter to cover her surgery expenses. As if that isn’t bad enough, while Ryu is burying his sister, the daughter of his employer accidentally drowns. And so Ryu and Park each seek revenge: Ryu for the death of the sister and Park for the death of his daughter. Although Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is about personal revenge, the ﬁlm indirectly references the economic conditions of South Korea at the time. At the beginning of the ﬁlm, we see a group of people including Ryu leave a factory in daylight, presumably after working the night shift. We also witness another employee laid off by Park attempting hara-kiri outside of Park’s house. Later in the ﬁlm, we learn that this character has committed suicide along with his entire family. Ryu’s girlfriend critiques capitalism throughout the ﬁlm and insists that Ryu’s kidnapping of his former boss’s daughter is justiﬁed behavior resulting from the country’s lack of proper health care. The girlfriend also distributes ﬂyers on the street that read ‘‘dismantle conglomerates’’ and ‘‘Drive out the U.S. troops.’’ Overtones of anticapitalism and anti-Americanism are present, although the rendering of such criticisms is oblique and rather comical. The ﬁlm’s surreal ending adds to the dark humor embedded in the oblique critique of capitalism. In the ﬁnal scene, the factory owner Park is stabbed numerous times by members of a group called the Revolutionary Anarchists Association (raa), the head of which is Ryu’s girlfriend. We hear her threatening Park from an earlier scene in which he is actually torturing her. Park’s efforts to read the ﬂyer attached to a knife stuck in his chest renders the scene rather ironic. He is not totally aware of why he is executed Riding the New Wave 175

by the raa. This anarchistic ending underscores the fact that there is no clear distinction between good and evil when it comes to personal revenge for the sake of loved ones. The factory owner Park, for example, acknowledges that Ryu is not a vicious person but asserts that he must kill him to avenge his daughter’s death. This may point to the absence of any ideology to ﬁght for or against anything, as witnessed in Park’s previous ﬁlm JSA. Instead, there only exist basic human needs and desires, which contemporary Korean society appears to be violating. Oldboy, the second ﬁlm of the Vengeance series, is an adaptation of a Japanese manga by Tsuchiya Garon and Minegishi Nobuaki. Oldboy features the character Oh Dae-su, who is locked in a room for ﬁfteen years. He has no clue why he has been imprisoned and does not know who is responsible for his imprisonment. When he is released after ﬁfteen years, he seeks revenge; but he ultimately learns that the callous remarks he made during his high school days led a female fellow student to ﬁnd him and discover his past ‘‘sin.’’ Park’s Oldboy, like the ﬁlms of Kim Ki-duk, depicts a prevalence of violence and cruelty, along with primal sexual politics, all notable for being devoid of historical speciﬁcity concerning Korean society. Dae-su, either conveniently or inconveniently, is locked up for ﬁfteen years, and thus the period when Korea underwent drastic changes in both its politics and economy is skipped completely. In a split-screen scene, Dae-su is seen digging a hole to escape, while a brief summary of recent Korean history unfolds on tv (ﬁgure 7.1): the montage covers the 1996 conviction of former president Chun Doo-hwan for the crimes committed during his 1979–1980 military coup to the 1997 election of Kim Dae-jung; from the 1997 Asian economic crisis to the year 2000 summit conference between South Korean president Kim Dae-jung and North Korean President Kim Jung-il; and from the World Cup frenzy of 2002 to, ﬁnally, the election of the latest president, Roh Moohyun, in 2002. This is just a cherry picking of landmark historical events presented outside their historical context. Moreover, viewers don’t really need to know about these events because they are presented as a montage sequence—we need only know that a substantial period of time has passed. The theme of incest pervades the ﬁlm: there is incest between the imprisoned Dae-su and his daughter and between the student who kills herself and her vengeful brother. Interestingly, incest is not dealt with as a social or anthropological issue: the origins of these incestuous relationships or the consequences of committing to such a relationship are not questioned:

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Figure 7.1 Dae-su digs a hole, while a decade and a half of recent

Korean history passes by. (Oldboy, Park Chang-wook, 2003)

incest merely becomes an epistemic issue as witnessed by Dae-su’s request to the hypnotherapist. Oldboy is more about Dae-su’s transformation from an irresponsible womanizer, to a tortured prisoner, to a mad avenger, and ﬁnally to a sacriﬁcial father; it is also about Park’s transformation as a director—from a commercial director to a more art-house, festival-oriented director. The priority of Oldboy is more toward aesthetic reﬁnement and experiment, rather than the portrayal of the ‘‘Korean’’ experience. In Oldboy, Park further elaborates on experiments with a style he debuted in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Park adopts modernist aesthetics that foreground ﬂat space instead of depth, and there is an overt use of symmetric shot compositions and of the unmotivated camera movements. Although Park is not an action director, he experiments with action scenes. In a long take that lasts two minutes and forty seconds, Park stages a ﬁght scene that underscores the grueling duration of the ﬁght itself and the protagonist Dae-su’s fatigue. The tableau-style staging—in conjunction with the rather whimsical movement of characters—renders this gruesome ﬁght rather humorous. The primal sexuality and cruelty in Oldboy are recurring tropes, a convention typical of art-house cinema—especially of Asia Extreme cinema, initiated with directors such as Miike. Kim Ki-duk explores similar tropes in the service of his aesthetic preoccupations. Kim is one of the more controversial

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Korean directors, and his ﬁlms have had widely varying receptions both at home and abroad. Kim Ki-duk, a self-taught artist and screenwriter, started as an independent ﬁlmmaker and amassed a cult following in Korea with such ﬁlms as Crocodile (1996) and Wild Animals (1996). With his breakthrough ﬁlm The Isle (2000), which competed at the Venice Film Festival in 2001, Kim stirred the international ﬁlm-festival circuit. Featuring prostitution and sadomasochism, Kim’s ﬁlms both attract and appall audiences, as Tony Rayns notes, with sensationalism interspersed with sporadic visual beauty.∞∏ The Isle is infused with gory images of torture and self-mutilation. In Address Unknown (2001), we see the male protagonist attempting to slice an offensive tattoo off the breast of his prostitute mother. In Bad Guy (2002), a female college student is brutalized and forced into prostitution. But there is quite a departure from the Asia Extreme trend in Kim’s 2003 ﬁlm Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring (Spring, Summer hereafter), Korea’s biggest theatrical box-ofﬁce hit in the United States.∞π In this ﬁlm, Kim’s Asia Extreme aesthetics have been replaced by subdued meditation. Critics often pair Kim’s more recent ﬁlms with earlier ﬁlms of similar subject matter and mise-en-scène in order to highlight a turning point in his career. Spring, Summer is often compared with The Isle due to the similar use of mise-en-scène and tone, while Kim’s 2004 follow-up to Spring, Summer, the ﬁlm Samaritan Girl, is linked to Bad Guy. In his review of Samaritan Girl, which won Kim Best Director at Venice, Derek Elley from Variety captures the tonal shift found in ﬁlms subsequent to Spring, Summer. He writes, ‘‘[Samaritan Girl] contains many thematic elements of Kim’s earlier, angrier pics, especially Bad Guy (2001) but the potent material is handled in a cooler, more transcendental way.’’∞∫ If Kim’s previous ﬁlms are ﬁlled with primal passions and perversions, his later ﬁlms are subliminal, foregrounding mood over overt emotions. Kim’s aesthetic transformation can be traced by looking at his two previously discussed ﬁlms—The Isle and Spring, Summer. The Isle features a former police ofﬁcer who murders his unfaithful girlfriend out of jealousy. He then rents a small ﬁshing cabin situated on a small island in the middle of a river. A young woman who lives in a cottage on the shore works by ferrying the ﬁshermen to their cabins with her boat and supplies them with food and prostitutes including herself. This young woman intervenes in the man’s ﬁrst and second attempts to commit suicide. As the ﬁlm unfolds, the two develop a sadomasochistic relationship that can’t be broken apart. 178

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Spring, Summer depicts the secluded life of an old monk and his disciple, while for each season in the ﬁlm’s full title there is a corresponding sketch about each stage of human development: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, maturity, and back to childhood. Despite the differing dramatic tone between The Isle and this ﬁlm, both ﬁlms render space abstractly, effacing any speciﬁcity of the location. The opening sequences of both The Isle and Spring, Summer accentuate the spatial isolation and the mystic nature of the location. Stephen Holden of the New York Times was impressed by the scenic beauty of The Isle: ‘‘As gory as the scenes of torture and selfmutilation may be, they are pitted against shimmering cinematography that lends the setting the ethereal beauty of an Asian landscape painting.’’∞Ω One should note, however, that this mystic space functions rather differently in the two ﬁlms. The scenic beauty in Spring, Summer is space for recuperation and repentance, whereas such tranquility in The Isle is mere stasis that is soon to be disrupted by brutal acts: rape, suicide, torture, and gunﬁre. Both ﬁlms include and allude to similar actions and deeds, including cruelty toward animals and murder. In the ﬁrst act of Spring, Summer, we see a mischievous boy tie rocks to a ﬁsh, a frog, and a snake. He chuckles while observing how much they suffer. Throughout The Isle, we see unkind acts toward ﬁsh, a frog, a dog, and a canary. And in both ﬁlms, the male protagonists murder their respective female lovers. What sets The Isle apart from Spring, Summer is not necessarily the kinds of character actions, but rather the explicit portrayal of those actions. In The Isle, we see Asia Extreme par excellence when the protagonist Hyun-sik attempts to kill himself for fear of being arrested by the policemen. After Hyun-sik sees two policemen use a ﬁshing rod to drag out a dead crime suspect ﬂoating in the water, he attempts suicide by swallowing several ﬁshhooks. This masochistic action is mirrored later in the ﬁlm, when a young woman inserts ﬁshhooks into her vagina. How should we then assess the aesthetics of cruelty manifested in The Isle? To what extent is this ﬁlm political? Overt cruelty and sexuality have often been aesthetically justiﬁed because they are seen as a critique of bourgeois gentility or capitalism. Stephen Holden suggests, ‘‘On the social plane, the movie is a surreal evocation of the Darwinian struggle from dominance within Korea’s lower class. These characters lack any social graces that could be described as ordinary manners and are perpetually at one another’s throats.’’≤≠ However, the usual association of overt cruelty/violence with social critique must be carefully reexamined. If there is any critique in the ﬁlm, it must be found in the changing gender dynamic in which the Riding the New Wave 179

aggressor becomes the victim of aggression. Earlier in the ﬁlm, we see the protagonist try to rape the young woman, but the young woman soon becomes the aggressor in their relationship. To a certain extent, this ﬁlm alludes to the primal sexual politics manifested in such ﬁlms as Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses. Both ﬁlms portray sexual politics outside of any reference to social culture, be it Japanese or Korean. The primal sexuality in both ﬁlms is depicted within a surreal atmosphere that precludes historical speciﬁcity. However, there is an important distinction to be made between these two ﬁlms. At the end of Oshima’s ﬁlm, it is revealed that the ﬁlm was, in fact, based on actual historical events. This ‘‘reality check’’ of sorts shakes the viewer’s impression of primal sexuality’s surreal nature. But in Kim’s ﬁlms, this surreal effect is perpetuated throughout the entire ﬁlm. What, then, can we make of the palpable shift in aesthetics that took place between The Isle and Spring, Summer? Is Kim responding to criticisms by feminists and critics, domestic and abroad, of his tendency toward sensationalism? Do his new international sources of funding have any impact on his aesthetic decisions? It should be further noted that the notions of ‘‘primitivism’’ and ‘‘transcendentalism,’’ as manifested in these two ﬁlms, are in fact two sides of the same coin, and both satisfy the Western desire for ‘‘otherness.’’ The primitivism manifested in The Isle lacks an acute criticism of bourgeois society or capitalism, and it could be further argued that the apparent Asian-ness in Spring, Summer is merely generic. The cyclical nature of life and death (or growth and decay) as indicated in the ﬁlm’s title as well as the thwarted human desire portrayed in the ﬁlm are mere pretext for aesthetic exploration. A scene in the ‘‘Fall’’ section shows the younger monk returning to the old monk after he murders his wife. The old monk starts to write calligraphy on the wooden ﬂoor of the temple/raft with the tail of a cat, and the younger monk is ordered to carve out each Chinese character. Two policemen arrive to arrest the younger monk, but they have the patience to wait for the younger monk to ﬁnish his job. They even collaborate to color each Chinese character. As astonishing as this scene might be, the way in which the young monk repents for his sin is merely a decoy for an aesthetic ﬂourish. The Buddhist canons taught by the old monk in Spring, Summer are generally neither seriously contemplated nor sufﬁciently explored; they are a mere evocation of generic Asian-ness. Certainly the lack of speciﬁcity in The Isle and Spring, Summer—in terms of national history, culture, and religion—should not be the exclusive grounds for any aesthetic judgments of these works. Furthermore, criti180

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Figure 7.2 Doors open up to present the next act, ‘‘Summer.’’

(Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring, Kim Ki-duk, 2003)

cism of these ﬁlms for their lack of speciﬁcity does not presuppose the existence of an authentic culture that these ﬁlms neglect to foreground or faithfully convey. In the ﬁlm festival circuit, the aesthetic merits or demerits of these ﬁlms are ‘‘politically’’ justiﬁed by underscoring the ‘‘otherness’’ of these ﬁlms, when there seems to exist only one undifferentiated, abstract ‘‘other.’’ Derek Elley, in his review of Oldboy, also writes that the ‘‘sex underpinnings of this sometimes David Lynch–like movie look almost untranslatable in Hollywood’s increasingly conservative environment.’’≤∞ National cinemas, especially on the festival circuit, are construed as alternative or counter to dominant ﬁlm practices usually associated with Hollywood. However, the ﬁlm festival itself becomes both the site for ﬁlmmakers to compete for a speciﬁc audience and the site in which a national history can be reimagined and reconﬁgured. What should be added to this observation is another aspect of the ﬁlm festival: its ‘‘performative’’ aspect. The ﬁlm festival is an opportunity for ﬁlmmakers to cater to the demands of a speciﬁc audience. Each season in Spring, Summer begins with a shot showing a gate near the shore opening like a curtain to signal the beginning of each act in a play (ﬁgure 7.2). Such a gesture toward ‘‘play,’’ in fact, foregrounds the perRiding the New Wave 181

formative aspect of festival-driven ﬁlms. Both commercially driven and festival ﬁlms in contemporary South Korean cinema respond and react to global industrial or aesthetic demands. Interestingly, Park’s and Kim’s ﬁlms are proof that it is usually global aesthetic demands in the ﬁlm festival circuits that efface the speciﬁcity of Korean cinema as a national cinema.

Multiple Paths, One Destiny Hong Sang-soo

If Park and Kim create ﬁlms in response to emerging Asia Extreme trends, the work of ﬁlm-festival regular Hong Sang-soo can be assessed in light of a different aesthetic thread: Asian Minimalism. Asian Minimalism has become a deﬁning characteristic of Taiwanese cinema of the 1980s and 1990s, epitomized by Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Golden Lion Award–winning A City of Sadness (1989).≤≤ Hou’s slowly paced, distanced observation of a personal story, unfolding against the background of historical turmoil and trauma, became a signiﬁcant aesthetic trope shared by many East Asian ﬁlmmakers in the region: Kitano Takeshi and Koreeda Hirokazu in Japan, Tsai Ming-liang in Taiwan, and Hong and Lee Kwang-mo in Korea. Like Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance series and Kim Ki-duk’s later ﬁlms, Hong’s ﬁlms lack explicit historical references; instead, they foreground the absurdity in mundane everyday activities. Kim Kyung-hyun questions whether the lack of political commitment in Hong’s ﬁlms should itself be viewed as political.≤≥ That is, can the importation of deconstructionist aesthetics—a product of the West, according to Kim—within Korean ﬁlm be thought of as political? Kim argues that appropriation of Western aesthetics and an indifference to politics in Hong’s ﬁlms are in and of themselves a political gesture. My interest in this section is to locate Hong’s ﬁlms within an art-cinema tradition that has developed in the festival milieu over the last two decades—an area that Kim never fully explores. This approach, however, is not predicated on a Fredric Jameson–type historiography that correlates aesthetic modes with modes of production: situating realism as the dominant aesthetic mode of the preindustrial era, aligning modernism with industrialization, and associating postmodernism with late capitalism. As many have pointed out, it is problematic to apply such a teleological model to third-world nations (and third-world cinema for that matter), where the industrialization process has been (or is being) compressed within a narrower historical period. For such an application includes a possible erasure 182

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of complexities bearing on the historical contexts in which a national cinema and an individual ﬁlmmaker’s oeuvre have developed.≤∂ Filmmakers do adopt and borrow other ﬁlmmakers’ styles or narrative structures but often with different aims and intentions. By examining Hong’s narrative strategy and style, I will attempt to historicize his ﬁlms and examine nuances and implications in his use of art-cinema conventions. Hong’s style aligns itself with Asian Minimalist style comparable to that of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang, particularly through Hong’s use of long takes, which he increasingly employs in his later ﬁlms. The average shot length of Virgin Stripped Bare (57 seconds) and of Turning Gate (63 seconds) more than doubles the average take in his ﬁrst two features (The Pig, 25 sec.; Kangwan Province, 34 sec.). In Hou’s ﬁlms, the average shot length (asl) ranges between 17 and 83 seconds, with The Sandwich Man (1983) having the shortest and The Puppet Master (1993) having the longest asl.≤∑ However, Hou’s shots are more distanced and contemplative than Hong’s. Extreme long shots of landscapes—Hou’s trademark—in The City of Sadness or The Puppet Master render an idyllic, organic view of the nation, deemphasizing people’s emotions and feelings caught in historical turmoil. Despite the fact that his slowly paced narratives are similar to Hou’s, Hong’s subjects are more tightly framed than Hou’s. Hong’s characters are often shot in medium to medium-long shots, and he relies more on editing than elaborate staging for the narrative events to unfold. Unlike Hou, Hong does not shy away from using povs or close-ups. In Kangwon Province, we constantly see pov shots of main characters. We see a close-up of Sanggwon’s photo for his job application, as he stares at it with dissatisfaction. Even the scenic views of Seolak Mountain are framed from Sang-gwon’s or Jae-hun’s povs. Throughout the ﬁlm, Hong anthropomorphizes animals and inanimate objects to mirror the changing relationship between Sang-gwon and Ji-suk and do so via pov or close-ups. As people in the ofﬁce next to his move out, Sang-gwon receives two ﬁsh in a plastic container. As he places the container near the window and uses a folded piece of paper to block the ﬁsh from direct exposure to the sun, the container is seen in a medium close-up. The ﬁlm ends with a close-up revealing only one ﬁsh left in the container. During her trip to the Naksan Temple, while her friends visit a hot spring, we see Ji-suk’s pov shots of two turtles swimming. The pair is seen in a medium shot in which one turtle swims away from the other, which suggests Ji-suk’s projection of her own break up with Sang-gown onto this peaceful scene. In the motel scene involving Sang-gwon and Ji-suk, the camera cuts away to a Riding the New Wave 183

close-up of Sang-gwon’s bag; Sang-gwon’s lonely bag foreshadows the outcome of this one last desperate meeting between the two. Hong’s ﬁlms are slowly paced via long takes and a static camera, but his style does not call attention to itself as much as Hou’s or Tsai Ming-liang’s. Unlike Tsai Ming-liang, who employs minimal dialogue and a minimalist use of mise-en-scène, Hong constantly draws the viewer’s attention to characters via dialogue. In Tsai Ming-liang’s ﬁlm What Time Is It There? (2001), the viewer is invited to observe a giant gourami in an aquarium located in the living room. Hsiao-kang, the protagonist of the ﬁlm, suffers from insomnia following the death of his father, and one night he throws a large bug into the aquarium. The camera is ﬁxed, and the viewer observes the entire process of the ﬁsh eating the bug—surely the best performance in the ﬁlm! In comparison to the characters in Tsai’s ﬁlm, Hong’s characters are quite loquacious, which adds a dry sense of humor to his ﬁlms. In Hong’s ﬁlms, conversations among characters are trivial or ﬁlled with non sequiturs, including Sang-gwon’s discussion with Jae-un, in Kangwon Province, regarding how many people one can ﬁt in a mountain, how many mountains are needed to contain the entire population of Korea, and how one can treat dry skin. The argument between Ji-suk and the policeman about the difference between ‘‘scary looking people’’ and ‘‘scared of people’’ is not only a miscommunication—an indication of the incompatibility between the two—but also invites the viewer to appreciate the wordplay taking place. Despite his use of long takes and a ﬁxed camera, Hong’s preoccupation with characters and language often will not allow for the kind of lassitude or languor found in ﬁlms by Hou or Tsai. Local critics praise Hong’s ﬁlms for their realistic depiction of life’s banality as well as their unﬂattering portrayal of heterosexual relationships (as evidenced by his sex scenes). However, Hong’s use of sound complicates such classiﬁcation. Throughout The Pig, the repetition of atonal music constantly evokes a surreal atmosphere with its unsettling and rootless tone. In Virgin Stripped Bare and Turning Gate, the quite unnatural or semiformal delivery of dialogue—such as that of Jae-hun and Myeong-suk—extracts any sense of realism from the ﬁlm. Moreover, Hong constantly ignores sound perspective in his ﬁlms, which underscores the presence of characters at the expense of ﬁdelity. Hong stages characters so that they walk away with their backs to the camera, while the volume of their dialogue or singing remains constant. For example, as Seong-wu picks up Gyeong-su at the bus station in Chuncheon, the two walk into the background of the frame with their backs 184

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to the camera. While they continue their everyday conversation, concerning matters such as weather and weight, we can clearly hear them. The consistent volume of their dialogue underscores Hong’s preoccupation with auditory details in his characters. While characters visually disappear into the scenery or background, sonically they are still close to us. Although Hong’s style shares some of the characteristics of Asian Minimalism in terms of pace and staging, one of his peculiar aesthetic proclivities can be found in his experiments with narrative structure. Hong’s ﬁlms feature anywhere from one to four or ﬁve protagonists, each of whom carries one or more plotlines. Multiple plotlines are intertwined through space and chance encounter, and the storyline is partially repeated and remembered by multiple characters with diverging perspectives. In his directorial debut, The Pig, Hong portrays the failed romantic relationships among ﬁve characters. Hyo-seob, a not-so-successful writer, is having an affair with Bo-gyeong, who is married to businessman Dong-wu. Hyo-seob also maintains another romantic relationship with Min-je, who works at a third-run movie theater and is pined for by her co-worker, Min-su. The ﬁlm is structured via four segments featuring four main characters: Hyo-seob (37 min.), Dong-wu (20 min.), Min-je (25 min.) and Bo-gyeong (33 min.). This rather unusual presence of multiple characters compared to Hong’s other ﬁlms, which feature one or two protagonists, can be attributed to the fact that the ﬁlm script was devised by four writers, each given one major character to develop.≤∏ As the ﬁlm’s title suggests, the idea of chance and coincidence is prevalent throughout: What are the chances of a pig falling into the well? Some of the characters never meet or are linked only by space. Although the narrative structure of The Pig revolves around ﬁve characters, some of them— especially the males—never directly interact. However, they are connected spatially early on. In Hyo-seob’s segment, we see him encounter both Dongwu and Min-su by accident. After Hyo-seob sleeps with Bo-gyeong in a motel room, he visits his publisher and tries in vain to obtain some advance money. Hyo-seob takes the same elevator as Bo-gyeong’s husband, Dongwu, unbeknownst to either. Their awkwardness is emphasized as the camera cuts to show their facial expressions. Shortly after, Hyo-seob makes a big scene at a restaurant with a restaurant employee. He’s taken to the police station and talks nonsense in front of a judge while defending himself in court. On his way out, Hyo-seob loans some bail money to a stranger while Min-su passes by. Both of these cases, however, occur at narrative points where the relationships among these three male characters have not Riding the New Wave 185

been established for the audience. One can assess the signiﬁcance (or lack thereof) of these encounters only retrospectively and probably only during a repeated viewing. Hong connects his characters once more in Bo-gyeong’s dream sequence. After Bo-gyeong follows her husband to a clinic, she visits a friend who runs a pharmacy. There is an abrupt transition to the funeral of Bo-gyeong, where we see Hyo-seob and Min-je. Hyo-seob cynically tells Bo-gyeong’s husband that now they ﬁnally have met. Hyo-seob goes to Bo-gyeong’s room, lies next to her and then caresses her. Shortly after, Bo-gyeong, who has only pretended to be dead, exits the room and greets everyone. The funeral is not clearly framed as a dream sequence until later, when there is a scene of Bogyeong waking up. Or perhaps the funeral foreshadows the deaths of Hyoseob and Min-je. Nevertheless, this scene functions as an effective narrative device by linking the characters both spatially and temporally. Hong’s later ﬁlms often revolve around one or two protagonists, whose conﬂicting attitudes, memories, and knowledge of themselves or past events underscore their pettiness and insecurity. In his second feature, The Power of Kangwon Province, we see the paths of two characters—Sang-gwon and Ji-suk—intertwine during their respective trips to Gangwon Province. Sanggwon, a college instructor, and Ji-suk, a college student, just ended their extramarital affair and have decided to go their separate ways. Unbeknownst to them, Sang-gwon and Ji-suk are on the same train to Gangwon Province. Sang-gwon and Ji-suk never connect during their trip, other than through an encounter with a female tourist. As Ji-suk ﬁnally meets Sang-gwon at the park, followed by a passionless love scene at a motel room, their paths ﬁnally converge. After a brief affair with a policeman during her trip, Ji-suk has an abortion. Ji-suk informs Sang-gwon about her abortion, but Sang-gwon, drunk from a gathering with his future colleagues, bluntly requests Ji-suk to engage in oral sex. In Turning Gate, Gyeong-su has love affairs with two different women in two different cities: one with Myeong-suk in Chuncheon; the other with Seon-yeong in Gyeongju. Gyeong-su ﬁnds himself in two completely different romantic situations. In the ﬁrst half of the ﬁlm, Gyeong-su is romantically pursued by a dancer, Myeong-suk; while in the second, he himself pursues a married woman, Seon-yeong. As with Hyo-seob in The Pig, who treats Bo-gyeong and Min-je differently, the viewer witnesses Gyeong-su’s contrasting relationship with these two women: his frivolous treatment of Myeong-suk and obsession with Seon-yeong. In the ﬁrst story, although 186

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Gyeong-su spends the night with Myeong-suk, when asked whether he loves her, he refuses to say yes. In the second story, Gyeong-su becomes more assertive and aggressive. On his way to Busan to visit his parents, Gyeong-su encounters Seon-yeong on the train. Gyeong-su exits the train in Gyeongju to follow Seon-yeong to her home, stalks her, and ﬁnally sleeps with her. Furthermore, Gyeong-su confesses that he loves Seon-yeong. But unlike Hyo-seob, who never comes to terms with his inconsistency and hypocrisy, Gyeong-su realizes his when Seon-yeong’s attitude changes after seeing a fortuneteller. The fortuneteller predicts that Seon-yeong’s husband will be very successful, while Gyeong-su will have three years’ bad luck. The fortuneteller’s prediction makes Seon-yeong change her mind, and she decides to remain married to her husband, giving a Gyeong-su a bogus reason to make him wait outside her home. But then Seon-yeong never returns Remembering the folktale about the turning gate, Gyeong-su leaves Seonyeong. The two plots within Turning Gate converge momentarily with a chance encounter. While Gyeong-su, Seong-wu, and Myeong-suk ride a paddleboat on the lake, they are approached by another boat carrying a middle-aged man and a young woman. The middle-aged man asks Gyeong-su and Seongwu for a light. Later in the ﬁlm, Gyeong-su informs Seon-yeong that he thinks he saw her husband with another woman on the lake. But the connection made via this episode is not as intricate as those made in Hong’s other ﬁlms. Seon-yeong denies such a possibility and leaves the viewer puzzled. Unlike the female tourist that Sang-gwon and Ji-suk encounter in Gangwon Province, who is repeatedly referred to or seen throughout the ﬁlm, the moment when Gyeong-su meets the husband of Seon-yeong is so brief that it is hard to conﬁrm it on ﬁrst viewing. Upon second viewing, however, the man in the paddle boat does appear to be Seon-yeong’s husband. Both Oh! Soo-jung: A Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (referred to as Virgin Stripped Bare hereafter) and Woman Is the Future of Man feature Hong’s typical love triangle. Jae-hun, a wealthy businessman falls for Soojung (Su-jeong), who is an assistant to Yeong-su. In Virgin Stripped Bare, the courtship between Jae-hun and Soo-jung is presented alternately from both Jae-hun and Soo-jung’s point of view. Woman Is the Future of Man similarly features two male protagonists—Mun-ho and Hyeon-gon—who have conﬂicting memories of Seon-hwa, a woman they had both been romantically involved with. Virgin Stripped Bare consists of two major ﬂashbacks—‘‘Perhaps Accident’’ and ‘‘Perhaps Intention’’—which contain seven chapters Riding the New Wave 187

each, interspersed with three segments in the narrative present: ‘‘Day’s Wait,’’ ‘‘Suspended Cable Car,’’ and the coda of the ﬁlm, ‘‘Naught Shall Go Ill When You Find Your Mate.’’ As the titles of ﬂashbacks suggest, the romantic union between Jae-hun and Soo-jung was meant to be or intentional. However, the true version of the story is left undetermined, or the actual cause is irrelevant to the ﬁnal outcome of the narrative—i.e., the consummation of their love. Two ﬂashbacks of Jae-hun and of Soo-jung overlap. However, by adding or omitting scenes, each ﬂashback further establishes each character and their class differences. For example, in ‘‘Perhaps Accident’’ Jae-hun does not know how to read the subway map. This episode shows Jae-hun’s effort to convince Soo-jung that he adores her; he even takes a subway to see her when she is visiting her friend in Gojan. But at the same time, the episode reveals that he is from a rich family and rarely uses public transportation. Furthermore, Jae-hun is portrayed as more romantic and respectable in his own rendition of the scene within his ﬂashback. Jae-hun tells his friends that he believes in fate, which is one of the main reasons he’s still single. On the contrary, Jae-hun appears to be more of a womanizer in Soo-jung’s ﬂashback. For example, we see Jae-hun kiss another woman during a gathering at his friend’s house. Most notably, in a romantically charged scene in a motel room in Kojan, Jae-hun calls out someone else’s name! In Soo-jung’s ﬂashback, the economic differences between her and Jae-hun are foregrounded early on. At the beginning of Soo-jung’s ﬂashback, the fact that Jae-hun has a chauffer is underscored: Jae-hun tips his chauffer in front of the art gallery Jae-hun owns. Later, the viewer sees Soo-jung’s poverty-stricken household and learns of her incestuous relationship with her brother. Minute discrepancies between two ﬂashbacks, if not affecting the overall narrative trajectory, constantly test the viewer’s memory. For example, in the second part of each ﬂashback, Jae-hun, Soo-jung, and Yeong-su have a drink in a shabby restaurant. After Yeong-su leaves to go to the bathroom in the ﬁrst version, Jae-hun asks for chopsticks; in the second, he asks for more napkins. Similarly, when Jae-hun and Soo-jung are showing affection for each other in another restaurant, something drops from the table. In the ﬁrst version Jae-hun tells Soo-jung it’s a fork, but in the second version he says it’s a spoon. Once the viewer begins to detect minor changes, more details will be noticed that set the two versions apart, including stylistic differences. For example, after Yeong-su arrives with Soo-jung at a party hosted by Jae-hun’s friend, the camera cuts to an exterior shot of the apart188

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ment building before returning to the other side of the table. In the ﬁrst version, we see a shot of two people playing a badminton game in the courtyard of the apartment complex; but in the second version, the camera merely cuts to show a lamp. In the coda of the ﬁlm, Jae-hun and Soo-jung ﬁnally consummate their love. However, the viewer is left uncertain about the prospect of this relationship because the story is presented from different perspectives. Jae-hun says he’s ﬁnally met his soul mate. But does he mean it? Or was it part of Jaehun’s effort to lure Soo-jung into bed? (The latter is more likely.) The purpose of utilizing multiple ﬂashbacks in Virgin Stripped Bare is not to determine which version of the story is veridical. Each ﬂashback underscores and foregrounds a different aspect of Jae-hun and Soo-jung’s romantic relationship, tainted with one’s own wish, memory, and perception. Take an example of contemporary Korean cinema, JSA, which employs a similar narrative strategy. In watching JSA, the viewer is given the correct explanation of the shootout, while in Virgin Stripped Bare, the truth of each ﬂashback is uncertain. Unlike JSA, which follows the generic conventions of investigationthriller genre (in which all the questions posed in the beginning of the ﬁlm must be answered by the end) Virgin Stripped Bare manifests a common arthouse cinema characteristic: ambiguity. Hong also relies on parallelism in linking multiple plots: similar situations, lines, and behaviors.≤π For instance, in Turning Gate, although Gyeong-su’s role is reversed in the ﬁrst and the second story, both stories have similar themes: love and obsession. In one scene, while Gyeong-su and Seong-wu enjoy the scenery of Soyang Lake, Gyeong-su experiences déjà-vu with a young college girl who appears to be traveling alone. Seon-yeong later tells Gyeong-su that she traveled to Soyang Lake by herself when she was a freshman in college. Although the college girl Gyeong-su ran into is not Seon-yeong, she is a surrogate for Seon-yeong ten years before. Seon-yeong was also followed by two men, one of whom, she says, she liked. The girl is in a situation that mirrors Seon-yeong’s at one time. In Woman on the Beach, Hong kindly reminds the viewer that ﬁlm director Jung-rae is drawn to both Mun-suk and Seon-hui because of their physical resemblances. This kind of parallelism contributes thematically, although not causally, to linking disjointed parts of a ﬁlm. Characters in Hong’s ﬁlms repeat each others’ lines. Disappointed about not getting a part in a ﬁlm, Gyeong-su still insists on receiving pay from the production company. In front of the elevator, the director tells Gyeong-su, Riding the New Wave 189

‘‘Although it is hard to be a human being, let’s not become a monster.’’ Gyeong-su repeats the same line twice during his stay in Chuncheon: once to Seong-wu and another to Myeong-suk. When Gyeong-su is about to leave, Myeong-suk gives him a photo of herself with a note on the back. She wishes him a good trip and ends the note with: ‘‘You inside of Me, Me inside You. ‘‘After spending a night together, Seon-yeong leaves a note for Gyeongsu that contains a similar line. Such repetitions—repetitions of situations, dialogues, and behaviors—used throughout the ﬁlm underscore the cyclical nature of these doomed romantic and interpersonal relationships. The moral here is that being selﬁsh and inconsiderate on behalf of one’s own best interests is human nature, and trying to defy such nature leads us to become better human beings—although we often fail to do so. Moreover, characters mimic one another in behavior and mannerisms throughout the ﬁlm. In Kangwon Province, Ji-suk rotates her glass while she drinks; and later in the ﬁlm we see Sang-gwon do the same. Similar repetitions can be found in Turning Gate. While Seong-wu and Gyeong-su play a strip-drinking game with two prostitutes in a club room, one of the girls is annoyed by Seong-wu, who is constantly swaying back and forth. Later in the ﬁlm, we ﬁnd Gyeongsu himself swaying back and forth in restaurants. Hong’s narrative strategy—his use of multiple plotlines linked by chance and spatial relations among characters—can be comparable to contemporary art-cinema directors such as the late Kieslowski as well as Wong Karwai and the Korean romance ﬁlms examined in Chapter Four. In Blind Chance (1987) Krzysztof Kieslowski presents three possible scenarios for Witek, a Polish medical student caught in the political fervor of the late 1970s. In the ﬁrst, Witek catches a train, and through a chance meeting with a dedicated Communist, joins the Communist Party; in the second, he misses the train, ﬁghts with a guard, and ends up in the political underground; in the third, again missing the train, he returns to his quiet, apolitical life as a doctor and husband. In The Decalogue (1988–1989), Kieslowski portrays the daily lives of the residents of an apartment complex. Each episode revolves around different characters and themes, but characters from one episode sometimes reappear in other episodes. For example, the couple from episode two—Dorota and her ill husband—reappear in episode ﬁve. On a cold day, the couple asks a taxicab driver whether the taxi is occupied. They wait for him to wash his taxi, but he drives off without them. Similarly, in episode three, as the protagonist enters a building dressed as Santa, we see the fa-

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ther from episode one leaving. Kieslowski employs a similar strategy in his ‘‘Three Colors’’ Trilogy: Blue, White, and Red. Wong Kar-wai also relies on chance and converging paths in Chungking Express and Fallen Angels. Both of ﬁlms consist of two stories. In the ﬁrst half of Chungking Express, while heartbroken Cop 223 tries to get over his breakup, he runs into a mysterious woman with a blond wig. In the second half, Police Ofﬁcer 633 (Tony Leung) also tries to get over his breakup with his ﬂight-attendant girlfriend: meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, his apartment is being slowly transformed by Faye (Faye Wong) who works at a snack shop where the police ofﬁcer often visits. These two stories are linked by a moment when Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) has a brief encounter with Faye, in which he predicts that she will fall in love in six hours. Fallen Angels also consists of two (failed) love stories: one between the Agent (Michelle Reis) and the Killer (Leon Lai), the other between He Zhiwu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and Charlie (Charlie Young). The two stories are linked by space. The Agent and He are both tenants in the Chungking Mansion (run by He’s father) and are part of an independent storyline. The stories sometimes intersect when the Killer drops by the Japanese restaurant where He works as a chef; yet neither relationship works out, and the ﬁlm ends with He giving the Agent a ride home after a chance meeting at a small restaurant. Their ride together accentuates the parallel narrative outcome, in which both feel forlorn. Although narrative devices employed by these three directors appear similar, they fulﬁll different functions within each director’s ﬁlms. The three versions of the future that await Witek in Kieslowski’s Blind Chance offer three distinct possibilities that lead to a single so-called ‘‘spatial destiny,’’ not fate. In all three scenarios Witek ends up at the airport for one reason or another: but a different future awaits him each time. In other words, he will be at the airport no matter which version of the future becomes his life. Blind Chance is about determinism, philosophically speaking, not about fatalism. On the contrary, in Virgin Stripped Bare, there is only one story with two versions of tainted memories. The story itself is indeterminate or incomplete, although we witness different versions of the past constructed by each character. Spatial correlations among characters function foremost to introduce and connect multiple plots or storylines in the oeuvres of Kieslowski, Wong, and Hong. However, some bear more emotional resonance than others. For example, the spatial mediation between Sang-gwon and Ji-suk via the female

Riding the New Wave 191

tourist in Kangwon Province not only bridges the two storylines but also carries an emotional overtone. Sang-gwon and Ji-suk, although traveling separately, try to relive their memories via their brief encounter with strangers: Ji-suk with the police ofﬁcer and Sang-gwon with the female tourist who may have been pushed off a mountaintop. But both Sang-gwon and Ji-suk fail miserably, ﬁnding one another’s literal as well as emotional traces left behind. One can make a similar observation of the characters in Fallen Angels. He Zhiwu and the Agent are connected spatially, but at the same time their respective romantic relationships with other characters fall within similar emotional trajectories. Although the romance between He and Charlie is a lighter version of the two, the emotional tone of their romance resembling that of the Agent and the Killer’s, as their relationship nears its end. Such mood is further reinforced by the death of He’s father. Hong is one of the most rigorous and consistent directors around in terms of his narrative strategy and style. Each ﬁlm directed by Hong appears to follow a self-imposed constraint: lack of camera movement (perceivably none) in Kangwon Province, the extraction of color in Virgin Stripped Bare, and a lack of nondiegetic music in Turning Gate (except for the music that accompanies the ending credits). Characterizing Hong’s ﬁlms in terms of familiar categories such as realism, modernism, or postmodernism will disregard the complexity of his ﬁlms discussed above. Hong may or may not be consciously targeting an art-house audience, but he both invokes and revises art-cinema traditions to his own taste.

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Afterword

The South Korean Film Renaissance attempted to show how the South Korean ﬁlm industry modernized itself in response to global demands for direct competition within the domestic market. Producers and 386 Generation directors have pursued commercially viable ﬁlms with nation-speciﬁc content and aesthetic ﬁnesse. Various production trends considered in this book demonstrate the active aesthetic exchange—how Korean cinema has incorporated, reworked, and replaced the generic norms and aesthetic conventions of other national cinematic styles: Hong Kong, Japanese, European, and Hollywood, among others. Tragic endings and sentimentalism in such blockbusters as Shiri, JSA, and Silmido may distinguish themselves from their Hollywood counterparts, but there also exists an undeniable similarity between Hong Kong and Korean cinema: both are imbued with nationalistic undercurrents. In both local cinematic styles, directors explore what is speciﬁc to each culture and history for commercial purposes—including the directors’ own perceptions of the unfortunate destinies of their respective nations. Other production trends have further addressed some of the issues important to Koreans through the conventions of popular form: class hierarchy/immobility, dysfunctional family, gender and conformity, among others. Although the impression may have been given that commercial cinema is being emphasized over festival-oriented cinema in The South Korean Film Renaissance, the book aims to show that the divide between commercial and festival-oriented cinema isn’t so sharp—in fact, there is an overlap between the two, with commercially driven ﬁlms often incorporating art-cinema conventions or narrative strategies (see Chapter Four). The continuing prosperity of the South Korean ﬁlm industry is, however, uncertain. The South Korean ﬁlm industry saw a decline in both market share and exports around 2007. The buzz for ‘‘Korean’’ ﬁlms has quieted down within the domestic market. Yet, the industry still undergoes transformations. For the ﬁrst time in the history of South Korean cinema, the union 193

for ﬁlm crews and staffs—the Federation of Korea Movie Workers’ Union— successfully negotiated with the Korean Film Producers Association (kfpa) regarding working hours and wages as a preliminary step toward remedying the deplorable working conditions.∞ kofic continues to support the local industry by making funds available especially for mid-range and independent ﬁlms—out of $55.5 million allotted, three quarters will be spent on these modes of ﬁlmmaking.≤ Conglomerates search for investment from abroad, especially Asian and Western partners.≥ cj has been courting a partnership with China with minifestivals and invitations of Chinese ofﬁcials to Seoul, hoping to earn a better distribution deal in China. cj Media— a sister company of cj —opened a studio in Vietnam in order to produce Vietnam-themed tv shows, while Lotte, one of the largest exhibition chains in South Korea, also seeks to open an exhibition wing in Vietnam. Further government efforts are made to curb online piracy to protect intellectual property. In 2008, for instance, a warrant was issued for a suspect who allegedly pirated over ten thousand ﬁles and earned $100,000 from the online companies.∂ Expanding their reach within Asia as well as outside the continent appears to be the priority of both the South Korean conglomerates and the independents. Coproduction, seemingly the most feasible way to cross national borders in the regional market, has been less than successful in South Korea. Targeting ‘‘combined’’ Asian audiences, which number more than 250 million (excluding the massive Chinese population), has proved to be very attractive to producers not only in South Korea but also in Hong Kong and Taiwan.∑ However, unlike the countries of greater China, which can facilitate with relative ease intra-Asian coproductions for pan-Chinese audiences, the South Korean ﬁlm industry got involved with coproductions that were largely unsuccessful. Three, the Asian horror trilogy coproduced by Hong Kong’s Applause, Korea’s B.O.M. and Thailand’s Saha Monkol, attracted only 73,750 admissions in Seoul, in contrast to the earlier reception of the ﬁlms both in Thailand and Hong Kong.∏ Go, a coproduction between Japan’s Toei and Korea’s Starmax (with the latter’s 20 percent stake), did not earn as much attention in Korea as it did in Japan.π Public Toilet followed suit. Later titles such as The Promise (Chen Kaige, 2005) and Seven Swords (Tsui Hark, 2005) followed with a similarly anemic box-ofﬁce performance, attracting less than 220,000 and 100,000 admissions in Seoul, respectively. It is not only local audiences’ linguistic sensibility that intervenes in engaging stories set against an abstract diegesis of legend or myth.∫ It is also the major-driven distribution practices in South Korea that limit the 194

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dissemination of these independent ﬁlms. For example, Showeast, the distributor of The Promise starring Korean actor Jang Dong-gun, wanted the ﬁlm to be released simultaneously in both South Korea and China in December 2005; but the release had to be postponed until the following year because of the Korean blockbuster Typhoon, another Jang star vehicle.Ω Such a delay would indeed affect the box-ofﬁce performance of the ﬁlm in question, since audiences would have already been exposed to pirated dvds from China before the ﬁlm reaches local theaters. Coﬁnanced ﬁlms, which preserve an ‘‘apparent’’ nationality or locality, command better box-ofﬁce draws in South Korea. A precedent can be found in One Fine Spring Day (Hur Jin-ho, 2001)—coﬁnanced by South Korea’s Sidus, Japan’s Shochiku, and Hong Kong’s Applause—and a recent title such as Red Cliff 2 (John Woo, 2009), coﬁnanced by China Film Group, Japan’s Avex, Taiwan’s cmc, and South Korea’s Showbox.∞≠ South Korean distributor Showbox, with its 10.5 percent stake in production, released Red Cliff 2 on over four hundred screens nationwide and is expected to be the decade’s highest-grossing ﬁlm among Hong Kong releases in South Korea.∞∞ Both the Korean industry and Korean audiences are keen on expanding possibilities for the industry’s creative partnership with Hollywood.∞≤ Although the deal ultimately fell through, Kang Woo-suk’s Silmido was to be the ﬁrst Korean ﬁlm fully ﬁnanced by an American major, Columbia Tristar.∞≥ Korean-made, English-language sci-ﬁ picture D-War and the martial-arts ﬁlm The Shadowless Sword, coﬁnanced by Korea’s Taeheung and New Line Cinema, seemed to signal the beginning of a new era of Korean-Hollywood ventures.∞∂ However, the result was ultimately disappointing. With a budget of $70 million, D-War became the highest-grossing ﬁlm of 2007 in Korea, with $57.7 million earned at home. Yet the ﬁlm took in only $9.3 million from its theatrical release in the United States.∞∑ And The Shadowless Sword was a commercial ﬂop, with less than 610,000 admissions nationwide in South Korea.∞∏ Underneath the South Korean audiences’ indifference to some of the coproductions mentioned above, changing consumer patterns are evident: light entertainment and instant gratiﬁcation are what audiences want. Some journalists view such an attitude as a characteristic of ‘‘post-386 Generation.’’∞π If the 386 Generation is concerned with collectivity and nationalism in political and cultural arenas—an example being consumer nationalism— post-386 Generation is immune to such a command or indifferent to the previous generation’s authority. Although the controversy surrounding the Afterword 195

ﬁlm certainly contributed to audience interest, the craze for D-War suggests the opposite of such assumed audience tastes. While acknowledging the ﬁlm’s aesthetic shortcomings at the level of narrative, the ﬁlm’s fans praised the special effects and saw the ﬁlm as a ﬁrst (albeit meager) step toward reaching a global market.∞∫ Such a desire to attain both cultural visibility as well as global aesthetic standards underlines an ambivalent aspect of the post-386 Generation—a generation still imbued with nationalism. Will the South Korean ﬁlm industry recover from this stagnation? Or will Chinese cinema become the next big wave? Michael Curtin, in his book Playing to the World’s Biggest Audience, convincingly demonstrates how two different forces—centripetal and centrifugal—operate within the media industry: the centripetal nature of capital and the centrifugal distribution of commodities.∞Ω That is, while capital tends to concentrate on a single location (or few locations) for cost-effectiveness and the acceleration of production, the goods need to be circulated across spaces to maximize revenues; with the development of various communication devices and transportation, the radar of the latter seems to increasingly expand. Yet, as Curtain claims, one must consider why a speciﬁc location becomes a prominent center of such forces. He lists three conditions: accumulation of capital, migration of creative labor, and the forces behind social structure.≤≠ One of the reasons that location becomes attractive for investors is the agglomeration of creative talents and business practices available. For example, in order for Seoul or Busan to be the kind of location capable of initiating regional and global ﬁlm projects, the creativity and effort to share talents and technical skills with regional ﬁlmmakers and producers must be present. Busan’s ppp (Pusan Promotion Plan; Pusan is an alternate spelling of Busan), for instance, allows both local and regional ﬁlmmakers to cooperate with mutual trust and shared expertise.≤∞ ppp facilitates production as well as ﬁlm sales, by both ﬁnancially supporting the selected projects and making a fruitful liaison between ﬁlmmakers and potential investors. It also provides spaces (both metaphorically and literally) for sales agents and buyers to scope out. Films such as Beijing Bicycle (Wang Xiaoshuai, 2001), Address Unknown (Kim Ki-duk, 2001), Oasis (Lee Chang-dong, 2002), and Woman Is the Future of Man (Hong Sang-soo, 2004) are all beneﬁciaries of ppp. Certainly, the Korean governments and institutional support for the industry boom—deregulations for crossfertilization within the regional market— must also be in order; but as many critics in South Korea argue, it is competence and creativity in Korean media that the industry should strive for. 196

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The South Korean ﬁlm industry blossomed after I left the country to pursue my degrees in the United States. Though I am Korean, maybe I am a ‘‘migrant intellectual’’ as Ien Ang calls it—I grew up in South Korea and then lived in the United States and Canada for a time, and now I reside in the U.K. Thus, I currently occupy a cultural middle ground between South Korea and the West: and I now watch South Korean cinema with nostalgia and, at times, even a sense of exoticism.

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Appendix 1 Box Ofﬁce Top Ten (1986–2006) (Country, admissions in Seoul) 1986 1. The Mission (U.K., 525,630) 2. White Nights (U.S.A., 363,905) 3. Out of Africa (U.S.A., 348,967) 4. The Goonies (U.S.A., 337,866) 5. F/X (U.S.A., 320,957) 6. Alien 2 (U.S.A, 292,436) 7. Lee Jang-hoeui Oeingudan (South Korea, 287,712) 8. 9 ∞⁄≤ Weeks (U.S.A., 234,998) 9. The Coolangatta Gold (Australia, 231,586) 10. Gyeoul Nageune (South Korea, 217,798) 1987 1. Platoon (U.K./U.S.A., 576,924) 2. RoboCop (U.S.A., 459,359) 3. The Natural (U.S.A., 445,921) 4. Back to the Future (U.S.A., 343,292) 5. Predator (U.S.A., 317,754) 6. Top Gun (U.S.A., 278,975) 7. Crocodile Dundee (Australia, 261,693) 8. Cheongchun Sketch (South Korea, 260,916) 9. Cobra (U.S.A., 257,283) 10. No Mercy (U.S.A., 221,518) 1988 1. Die Hard (U.S.A., 459,413) 2. Maechun (South Korea, 432,609) 3. Young Sherlock Holmes (U.S.A., 374,680) 4. Apocalypse Now (U.S.A., 305,029) 5. Two Moon Junction (U.S.A., 269,108) 6. Modern Times (starring Charlie Chaplin, U.S.A., 265,509) 7. A Better Tomorrow 2 (Hong Kong, 260,486) 8. Dancers (a.k.a. Giselle, U.S.A., 241,353) 199

9. Jeobsikkot Dangsin (South Korea, 237,744) 10. Eoreundeuleun Molrayo (South Korea, 220,591) 1989 1. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (U.S.A., 491,010) 2. Rain Man (U.S.A., 333,571) 3. Gandhi (U.K./India, 265,236) 4. Seoul Mujigae (South Korea, 261,220) 5. The Killer (Hong Kong, 250,486) 6. Casino Raiders (Hong Kong, 247,450) 7. Romero (234,001) 8. Miracle (Hong Kong, 232,963) 9. Big (U.S.A., 225,999) 10. When Harry Met Sally (U.S.A., 222,736) 1990 1. The General’s Son (South Korea, 678,946) 2. Dead Poets Society (381,925) 3. Maruta 2: Laboratory of the Devil (U.S.A., 339,087) 4. Nambugun (a.k.a. The South Korean Army, South Korea, 324,169) 5. All That Falls Has Wings (South Korea, 312,684) 6. No Risk, No Gain: Casino Raiders—The Sequel (Hong Kong, 303,439) 7. Cinema Paradiso (Italy/France, 275,239) 8. RoboCop 2 (U.S.A., 273,151) 9. The Bear (France/U.S.A., 264,782) 10. Wild Orchid (U.S.A., 210,623) 1991 1. Ghost (U.S.A., 1,683,265) 2. Dances with Wolves (U.S.A., 984,978) 3. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (U.S.A., 919,444) 4. Home Alone (U.S.A., 869,820) 5. Die Hard 2 (U.S.A., 772,536) 6. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (U.S.A., 475,528) 7. Total Recall (U.S.A., 410,076) 8. Armor of God II (a.k.a. Operation Condor, Hong Kong, 403,802) 9. The General’s Son 2 (South Korea, 357,697) 10. Once Upon a Time in China (Hong Kong, 343,512) 1992 1. Basic Instinct (U.S.A., 970,180) 2. Beauty and the Beast (U.S.A., 590,904) 200 Appendix 1

3. The Last Boy Scout (U.S.A., 547,281) 4. The Marriage Story (South Korea, 526,052) 5. Once Upon a Time in China (Hong Kong, 434,739) 6. The Little Mermaid (U.S.A., 433,309) 7. East is Red (Hong Kong, 359,463) 8. Alien 3 (U.S.A., 349,150) 9. The Lover (France/U.K./Vietnam, 337,233) 10. Universal Soldier (U.S.A., 308,429) 1993 1. Cliffhanger (U.S.A., 1,118,583) 2. Jurassic Park (U.S.A., 1,063,352) 3. Sopyonje (South Korea, 1,035,741) 4. The Bodyguard (U.S.A., 747,238) 5. Aladdin (U.S.A., 647,266) 6. The Fugitive (U.S.A., 477,814) 7. The Piano (Australia/New Zealand/France, 461,783) 8. Home Alone 2 (U.S.A., 395,444) 9. Demolition Man (U.S.A., 317,577) 10. The Last of the Mohicans (U.S.A., 315,404) 1994 1. The Lion King (U.S.A., 920,948) 2. True Lies (U.S.A., 874,664) 3. Speed (U.S.A., 874,225) 4. Two Cops (South Korea, 860,433) 5. Schindler’s List (U.S.A., 847,259) 6. Forrest Gump (U.S.A., 561,091) 7. The Piano (Australia/New Zealand/France, 475,870) 8. Mrs. Doubtﬁre (U.S.A., 468,229) 9. Color of Night (U.S.A., 439,391) 10. Demolition Man (U.S.A., 387,460) 1995 1. Die Hard 3 (U.S.A., 979,666) 2. Forrest Gump (U.S.A., 705,143) 3. Léon (France, 606,875) 4. Braveheart (U.S.A., 500,798) 5. Stargate (France/U.S.A., 461,093) 6. French Kiss (U.K./U.S.A., 398,027) 7. Seven (U.S.A., 394,034) 8. Interview with the Vampire (U.S.A., 354,718) Appendix 1 201

9. Dr. Bong (South Korea, 346,443) 10. To Top My Wife (South Korea, 344,900) 1996 1. Independence Day (U.S.A., 923,223) 2. The Rock (U.S.A., 906,676) 3. Two Cops 2 (U.S.A., 636,047) 4. Mission: Impossible (U.S.A., 622,237) 5. Jumanji (U.S.A., 540,402) 6. Gingko Bed (South Korea, 452,580) 7. Twister (U.S.A., 442,048) 8. Heat (U.S.A., 412,819) 9. Ransom (U.S.A., 410,657) 10. 007 GoldenEye (U.K./U.S.A., 355,498) 1997 1. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (U.S.A., 1,001,279) 2. The Fifth Element (France, 857,752) 3. Face/Off (U.S.A., 716,107) 4. The Contact (South Korea, 674,933) 5. Air Force One (U.S.A./Germany, 663,415) 6. Men in Black (U.S.A., 662,106) 7. The Letter (South Korea, 603,701) 8. Ransom (U.S.A., 508,244) 9. Romeo + Juliet (U.S.A., 491,435) 10. Jerry Maguire (U.S.A., 448,393) 1998 1. Titanic (U.S.A., 1,971,780) 2. Armageddon (U.S.A., 1,170,252) 3. Mulan (U.S.A., 771,194) 4. The Letter (South Korea, 724,747) 5. A Promise (South Korea, 661,174) 6. Deep Impact (U.S.A., 637,387) 7. Whispering Corridors (South Korea, 621,032) 8. Saving Private Ryan (U.S.A., 593,681) 9. Alien 4 (U.S.A., 571,751) 10. 007 Tomorrow Never Dies (U.K./U.S.A., 479,621) 1999 1. Shiri (South Korea, 2,448,399) 2. The Mummy (U.S.A., 1,114,916) 202 Appendix 1

3. Attack the Gas Station (South Korea, 905,500) 4. The Matrix (U.S.A., 897,882) 5. The Sixth Sense (U.S.A., 797,761) 6. Star Wars: Episode 1—The Phantom Menace (U.S.A., 746,654) 7. Tarzan (U.S.A., 726,542) 8. Tell Me Something (South Korea, 685,935) 9. Nowhere to Hide (South Korea, 664,861) 10. Love Letter (Japan, 599,350) 2000 1. JSA (South Korea, 2,447,133) 2. Gladiator (U.S.A., 1,239,955) 3. Mission: Impossible 2 (U.S.A., 1,230,633) 4 The Foul King (South Korea, 787,423) 5. Bicheonmu (South Korea, 717,659) 6. Dinosaur (U.S.A., 654,446) 7. Danjeokbiyeonsu (a.k.a. Gingko Bed 2, South Korea, 616,349) 8. The Perfect Storm (U.S.A., 592,768) 9. Libera me (South Korea, 530,768) 10. Charlie’s Angels (U.S.A., 489,979) 2001 1. Friend (South Korea, 2,678,846) 2. My Sassy Girl (South Korea, 1,735,692) 3. Kick the Moon (South Korea, 1,608,211) 4. My Wife Is a Gangster (South Korea, 1,419,972) 5. Hi! Dharma! (South Korea, 1,250,875) 6. Shrek (U.S.A., 1,078,886) 7. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (U.K., 1,078,519) 8. Pearl Harbor (U.S.A., 1,061,151) 9. The Mummy Returns (U.S.A., 948,179) 10. Vertical Limit (U.S.A./Germany, 890,785) 2002 1. Marrying the Maﬁa (South Korea, 1,605,775) 2. The Way Home (South Korea, 1,576,943) 3. Minority Report (U.S.A., 1,401,000) 4. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (New Zealand/U.S.A., 1,360,174) 5. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (U.K./U.S.A./Germany, 1,199,616) 6. Public Enemy (South Korea, 1,161,500) 7. Spider-Man (U.S.A., 1,125,568) Appendix 1 203

8. Jail Breakers (South Korea, 1,056,211) 9. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (U.S.A./New Zealand/Germany, 951,459) 10. Spirited Away (Japan, 937,459) 2003 1. Memories of Murder (South Korea, 1,912,725) 2. The Matrix Reloaded (U.S.A., 1,596,000) 3. My Tutor Friend (South Korea, 1,587,975) 4. Untold Scandal (South Korea, 1,292,951) 5. Oldboy (South Korea, 1,140,000) 6. A Tale of Two Sisters (South Korea, 1,017,027) 7. Hwangsanbeol (South Korea, 960,394) 8. Oh! Brothers (South Korea, 952,010) 9. The Matrix Revolutions (U.S.A., 930,031) 10. Singles (South Korea, 859,575) 2004 1. Taegukgi: the Brotherhoood of War (South Korea, 3,059,563) 2. Silmido (South Korea, 2,569,826) 3. Troy (U.S.A., 1,513,408) 4. Shrek 2 (U.S.A., 1,285,594) 5. Spirit of Jeet Kune Do (a.k.a. Once Upon a Time in High School, South Korea, 1,023,601) 6. The Day After Tomorrow (U.S.A., 959,101) 7. The Passion of the Christ (U.S.A., 940,230) 8. Harry Potter and the Prison of Azkaban (U.K./U.S.A., 892,900) 9. Little Bride (South Korea, 876,600) 10. A Moment to Remember (South Korea, 797,593) 2005 1. Welcome to Dongmakgol (South Korea, 2,435,088) 2. Marathon (South Korea, 1,552,548) 3. Marrying the Maﬁa 2 (South Korea, 1,451,468) 4. Lady Vengeance (South Korea, 1,357,194) 5. Island (U.S.A., 1,285,400) 6. Mr. & Ms. Smith (U.S.A., 1,206,126) 7. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (U.K./U.S.A., 1,189,723) 8. Public Enemy 2 (South Korea, 1,167,828) 9. Typhoon (South Korea, 1,007,709) 10. You Are My Sunshine (South Korea, 1,063,480)

204 Appendix 1

2006 1. The Host (South Korea, 3,571,254) 2. Tazza: The High Roller (South Korea, 2,091,058) 3. 200 Pounds Beauty (South Korea, 1,934,910) 4. Mission: Impossible 3 (U.S.A., 1,584,202) 5. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (U.S.A., 1,525,853) 6. My Boss, My Teacher (South Korea, 1,502,821) 7. Night at the Museum (U.S.A./U.K., 1,226,404) 8. The Da Vinci Code (U.S.A., 1,114,795) 9. Hanbando (South Korea, 1,077,033) 10. Maundy Thursday (South Korea, 980,722) Statistics based on Korean Film Annals 1987–2007 (Seoul: KOFIC)

Appendix 1 205

Appendix 2 Korean Film Market Share (Nationwide, 1986–2006)

Korean cinema

Foreign cinema

Admissions Market share Admissions Market share Year (millions) (percent) (millions) (percent) Total 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

15.61 13.10 12.16 11.15 10.81 11.06 8.72 7.69 9.93 9.44 9.76 12.12 12.59 21.72 22.71 44.81 50.82 63.91 80.18 85.44 97.91

33.00 27.00 23.30 20.20 20.20 21.20 18.50 15.90 20.50 20.90 23.10 25.50 25.10 39.70 35.10 50.10 48.30 53.49 59.33 58.71 63.83

31.66 35.48 40.06 44.15 42.64 41.14 38.39 40.54 38.42 35.69 32.44 35.40 37.59 33.00 41.91 44.55 54.31 55.56 54.97 60.08 55.49

67.00 73.00 76.70 79.80 79.80 78.80 81.50 84.10 79.50 79.10 76.90 74.50 74.90 60.30 64.90 49.90 51.70 46.51 40.67 41.29 36.17

Statistics based on Korean Film Annals 1987–2007 (Seoul: KOFIC)

206

47.27 48.58 52.22 55.30 53.45 52.20 47.11 48.23 48.35 45.13 42.00 47.52 50.18 54.72 64.62 89.36 105.13 119.47 135.15 145.52 153.40

Average admissions per capita 1.13 1.15 1.22 1.26 1.22 1.20 1.10 1.10 1.10 1.10 1.00 0.90 1.00 1.10 1.20 1.30 2.20 2.47 2.78 2.98 3.13

Appendix 3 Number of Films Produced/Released (1986–2006)

Korean ﬁlms

Imports

Year

Produced

Released

Imports (Hollywood direct distribution)

1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

73 89 87 110 111 121 96 63 65 64 65 59 43 49 59 65 78 80 82 87 110

— — — — — 86 68 51 52 62 55 60 43 42 62 52 82 65 74 83 108

50 (0) 100 (0) 248 (1) 321 (15) 309 (47) 309 (45) 360 (57) 420 (64) 381 (68) 378 (65) 483 (53) 431 (58) 296 (67) 348 (74) 404 (79) 339 (60) 262 (74) 271 (68) 285 (72) 253 (63) 289 (68)

Released

Total released

— — — — — 176 201 215 238 307 320 271 244 233 277 228 192 175 194 215 237

— — — — — 262 269 266 290 369 375 331 287 275 339 280 274 240 268 298 345

There is a discrepancy found in the statistics provided by Korean Film Annals and by KOFIC website. 1986–2001 based on Korean Film Annals (Seoul: KOFIC, 2001), 49.

207

Appendix 4 Number of Theaters/Screens (1986–2006)

Year

Population (millions)

Admission (millions)

Theaters with capacity of 300 and higher

Theaters with capacity of less than 300

1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

41.8 42.1 42.6 43.8 43.5 43.9 43.8 44.0 45.0 45.5 45.6 46.8 46.9 47.2 47.2 47.3 48.0 48.3 48.5 48.7 48.9

47.3 48.6 52.2 55.3 53.5 52.2 47.1 48.2 48.3 45.1 42.2 47.5 50.1 54.7 61.6 89.3 105.1 119.4 135.1 143.0 153.4

305 280 262 259 245 240 242 242 250 244 228 235 236 — — — — — — — —

335 393 434 513 544 522 470 427 379 333 283 262 271 — — — — — — — —

Total/number of screens 640 673 696 772 789 762 712 669 629 577 511 497 507 373/588 373/720 344/818 309/977 280/1,132 302/1,451 301/1,846 321/1,880

Statistics based on Korean Film Annals and The Korean Film Observatory 1987–2007 (Seoul: KOFIC).

208

Appendix 5 International Film Festivals: Award-Winning Films (1986–2006)

Year

Film Festival

Title

1987

Asia-Paciﬁc

The Surrogate Mother

1988 1989

Venice Montreal World Moscow International Locarno International

Our Sweet Days of Youth The Surrogate Mother Adada Aje aje bara aje Why did Bohdi-Dharma Leave for the East?

1990

Asia-Paciﬁc Nantes of Three Continents

Michin Sarangeui Norae Black Republic

1991

Asia-Paciﬁc

My Love, My Bride

Gaebyeok Blood and Fire

1992

Montreal World

Silver Stallion

Singapore International

Black Republic

Asia-Paciﬁc

Saeui Chanmi Berlin Report Walking to Heaven

Awards Best Picture Best Director (Im Kwon-taek) Best Actor (Ahn Seong-gi) Best Actress (Kang Su-yeon) Best Actress (Shin Hye-su) Best Actress (Kang Su-yeon) Golden Leopard (Bae Yong-gyun) Prize of the Ecumenical Jury (Bae Yong-gyun) Best Picture (Kim Ho-seon) Special Jury Award Best Actress (Shim Hye-jin) Best Actor (Park Joong-hoon) Best New Director (Lee Myung-se) Best Editing (Kim Hyeon) Art Design (Do Yong-u) Best Screen Play (Hong Guktae, Seonu hwan) Best Actress (Lee Hye-suk) Best Screenplay (Jang Gil-su, Jo Jae-hong) Silver Screen Award/Best Asian Feature Film Best Actress (Jang Mi-hui) Best Cinematography (Jeong Kwang-seok) Best New Director (Jang Hyeon-su) 209

Year

Film Festival

Title

1992 1992

Hawaii International Tokyo International

Our Twisted Hero White Badge

1993

Asia-Paciﬁc

Our Twisted Hero

First Love

1994

1996

Shanghai International

Saleoriratda (I Will Survive) Sopyonje

Singapore International Berlin International Nantes of Three Continents

Our Twisted Hero Haumkyeong La Vie en rose

San Sabastián International

Life and Death of the Hollywood Kid Haksaengbugunshinwi

Montreal World Vancouver International

1997

Vancouver International Busan International

The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well Motel Cactus The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well Green Fish Spring in My Hometown

Entrevues Film Festival Hawaii International Rotterdam International

Spring in My Hometown Spring in My Hometown Motel Cactus

Thessaloniki Tokyo International Kerala International Fantasporto Tokyo International

Spring in My Hometown Spring in My Hometown Spring in My Hometown The Quiet Family Rainbow Trout

Asia-Paciﬁc Busan International Rotterdam International

1998

1999

210 Appendix 5

Awards Best Feature Film Best Director (Jeong Ji-yeong) Grand Prix Best Supporting Actor (Choi Min-sik) Best Actor (Ahn Seong-gi) Special Jury Award (Lee Myung-se) Best Actor (Lee Deok-hwa) Best Director (Im Kwon-taek) Best Actress (Oh Jeong-hye) International Critics’ Award Alfred Bauer Award Best Actress (Choe Myeong-gil) International Critics’ Award Best Artistic Contribution (Park Cheol-su) Dragons and Tigers Award Best New Director (Hong Sang-soo) New Currents Award Tiger Award Tiger Award FIPRESCI Prize—Special Mention Grand Prix (Foreign Film) Best Feature FIPRESCI Prize—Special Mention Special Artistic Achievement Gold Award Special Jury Award Fantasia Section Award Special Jury Prize

Year 2000

2001

2002

Film Festival

Title

Asia-Paciﬁc Bratislava International

Oh! Soo-jung Peppermint Candy

Deauville Asian

Nowhere to Hide

Karlovy Vary International

Peppermint Candy

Málaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema Tokyo International

The Quiet Family

Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film Busan International Deauville Asian

The Isle

Oh! Soo-jung

Fantasporto Locarno International

One Fine Spring Day Failan JSA The Isle The Butterﬂy

Seattle International

JSA

Tokyo International

One Fine Spring Day

Annecy International Animated Asia-Paciﬁc

My Beautiful Girl, Mari

Bergen International

Oasis

A Little Monk

Awards Best Screenplay Best Actor (Seol Gyeong-gu) Special Jury Prize (Lee Chang-dong) Grand Prix Best Actor (Park Joong-hoon) Best Director (Lee Myung-se) Don Quijote Award Netpac Award—Special Mention Special Prize of the Jury Best Director (Kim Ji-woon) Best Film Special Jury Prize Asian Film Award—Special Mention Grand Prix FIPRESCI Prize Lotus/Best Film Lotus Best Actress (Seo Jeong) Bronze Leopard/Best Actress (Kim Ho-jeong) Youth Jury Award: Environment is Quality of Life (Mun Seung-uk) New Director’s Showcase Special Jury Prize (Park Chan-wook) Best Artistic Contribution Award Grand Prix/Best Animated Feature Best Cinematography (Choe Chang-gyu) Best Film Jury Award—Honorable Mention Appendix 5 211

Year

2003

Film Festival

Title

Cannes Fantasporto

Chihwaseon Sorum

Fribourg International

Camel(s)

Locarno International

After War

Málaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema Vancouver International

Sorum

Venice

Oasis

Bucheon International Fantastic Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema

Save the Green Planet

Busan International Castellinaria International Festival of Young Cinema Flanders International

A Tale of Two Sisters Oasis

Moscow International

Save the Green Planet

San Sebastián International

Memories of Murder

Seattle International Tokyo International

Oasis Memories of Murder

212 Appendix 5

Oasis

Save the Green Planet

A Good Lawyer’s Wife

Awards Best Director Best Actress (Jang Jin-yeong) Best Director (Yun Jongchan) Grand Prix SSA Script Award Golden Leopard/Video (Suwa Nobuhiro, Mun Seung-uk, Wong Xiaoshuai) Best Actress (Jang Jin-yeong) Chief Dan George Humanitarian Award Special Director’s Award (Lee Chang-dong) Marcello Mastroianni Award (Moon So-ri) FIPRESCI Prize SIGNIS Award Best of Bucheon ADF Cinematography Award (Hong Gyeong-pyo) Best Actress (Hwang Jeong-min) New Currents Award Three Castles Best Director (Im Sang-soo) Silver St. George/Best Director (Jang Joon-hwan) Best New Director (Bong Joon-ho) FIPRESCI Prize Silver Seashell Golden Space Needle Award Asian Film Award

Year 2004

Film Festival

Title

Awards

Annecy International Animated Film Festival Asia-Paciﬁc

Oseam

Berlin International British Independent Film Award Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film

Samaritan Girl Oldboy

Grand Prix/Best Animated Feature Film Best Animated Film Best Actor (Choi Min-sik) Best Director (Park Chan-wook) Silver Bear Best Foreign

Save the Green Planet

Golden Raven

A Tale of Two Sisters This Charming Girl Oldboy A Good Lawyer’s Wife

Silver Raven (Yeom Jeong-a) New Currents Award Grand Prize of the Jury Lotus/Best Picture

A Tale of Two Sisters

International Fantasy Film Award/Best Director (Kim Ji-woon) Best Actress (Im Su-jeong) Best Film Documentary Grand Prix Prix 13ème Rue Youth Jury Grand Prize Golden Goblet/Best Director (E J-yong) Golden Goblet/Best Musical (Lee Byeong-woo) Press Prize/Best Visual Effect Best Film José Luis Guarner Critic’s Award Best Director Golden Spike

Busan International Cannes Deauville Asian Film Festival Fantasporto

Oseam Oldboy

Fribourg International Gérardmer

Nodongjada Anida A Tale of Two Sisters

Shanghai International

Untold Scandal

Sitges-Catalonian International

Oldboy

Tokyo International Valladolid International

The President’s Barber 3-Iron

Appendix 5 213

Year

2005

2006

Film Festival

Title

Venice

3-Iron

Yubari Fantastic Bangkok International

Mokpo the Harbor Oldboy

Berlin International Fantasporto

This Charming Girl Lady Vengeance

Hong Kong Film Awards New Montreal

Oldboy Hello Brother

Philadelphia San Sebastián International

Road 3-Iron Sagwa

Sundance

Repatriation

Toronto International

Sagwa

Venice

Lady Vengeance

Yubari Fantastic Bangkok International

My Mother the Mermaid Lady Vengeance

Berlin International

In Between Days

Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema Cape Town World Cinema Festival

In Between Days

214 Appendix 5

The King and the Clown

Awards Special Director’s Award (Kim Ki-duk) SIGNIS Award—Honorable Mention Little Golden Lion FIPRESCI Prize Grand Prix Golden Kinnaree Award/Best Director (Park Chan-wook) Netpac Award Orient Express Section Grand Prize/Best Film Best Asian Film Best Actor (Park Ji-bin) Best Picture FIPRESCI Film of the Year Best New Screenwriter (Kang Yi-kwan) Freedom of Expression Award International Critics’ Award (FIPRESCI) ‘‘CinemAvvenire’’ Award Little Golden Lion Grand Prix Golden Kinnaree Award/Best Director (Park Chang-wook) Golden Kinnaree Award/Best Film FIPRESCI Prize/Forum of New Cinema Best Film

Best Picture Best Screenplay

Year

Film Festival

Title

Cognac Festival du Film Policier

Memories of Murder

Deauville Asian Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards Sundance Thessaloniki

The Peter Pan Formula In Between Days

Yubari Fantastic

Blood Rain

In Between Days Family Ties

Awards Grand Prix Prix Médiathèques Special Prize of the Police Jury Prize Independent/Experimental Film and Video Award Special Jury Prize Golden Alexander (Kim Tae-yong) Best Screenplay (Kim Taeyong, Seong Gi-yeon) Best Actress (Moon So-ri, Gong Hyo-jin, Ko Du-shim, Kim Hye-ok) Grand Prix

Based on ‘‘Yeokdae Gukje Yeonghwaje Susang Yeonhyeok,’’ Hangyeore (May 28, 2007), http:// www.hani.co.kr/arti/culture/movie/212162.html (accessed Jan 24, 2009).

Appendix 5 215

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Notes

Introduction

1 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘The Next Big Things,’’ Variety (Oct. 9–15, 2006): C4. 2 Ibid. 3 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘Making Wave,’’ Variety (Jan. 23–29, 2006): 19; Li Mo, ‘‘Korean Trends Popular in China,’’ China Today (Oct. 2001): 44–47. 4 Mark Russell, The Hollywood Reporter (Feb. 15, 2005). 5 Ji-yeon Park, ‘‘Korean Motion Picture Policy and Industry in the 1960s and 1970s,’’ in A History of Korean Cinema: Liberation Through the 1960s, Hyo-in Yi et al. (Seoul: Korean Film Archive, 2005), 159. 6 Ibid., 175. 7 Ibid. 8 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘Koreans Cut Pic Quotas,’’ Variety (Jan. 29, 2006). http:// www.variety.com/article/VR1117936992.html (accessed Apr. 7, 2008). 9 Sang-hun Choe, ‘‘After a Half-Century, Korea Opens Door to Japanese Pop Culture,’’ The Associated Press (Oct. 31, 1998). 10 Yonhap, Dec. 30, 2003. 11 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 164. 12 Daiwon Hyun, ‘‘Renaissance of Korean Film Industry,’’ Asian Cinema (Fall/Winter, 2001): 11. 13 Soyoung Kim, ‘‘ ‘Cine-Mania’ or Cinephilia: Film Festivals and the Identity Question,’’ in New Korean Cinema, ed. Julian Stringer and Chi-Yun Shin (New York: NYU Press, 2005), 81. 14 Chris Berry, ‘‘Full Service Cinema: the South Korean Cinema Success Story (So Far)’’ http://www.gwu.edu/eall/special/berry-hms02.htm (accessed on Mar. 22, 2007). 15 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘The Korean Film Industry: 1992 to the Present,’’ in New Korean Cinema, ed. Chi-Yun Shin and Julian Stringer (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 43. 16 Hyo-in Yi et al., Korean New Wave: Retrospectives from 1980 to 1995 (Busan: Busan International Film Festival, 1996). 17 Cine 21, 362 (July 23–30, 2002): 63–67. 18 Kathleen McHugh and Nancy Abelmann deﬁne the Golden Age of the Korean 217

19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35

36

cinema as cinema produced between 1955 and 1972, with box-ofﬁce hits such as Story of Chunhyang (1955) and Madame Freedom (1956) signaling the beginning of the era. The Golden Age comes to an end, according to McHugh and Abelmann, with the introduction of Park Chung-hee’s Yushin government. See their South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: Gender, Genre and National Cinema (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005), 2. Hyo-in Yi, ‘‘1960s Korean Cinema,’’ in A History of Korean Cinema (Seoul: KOFA, 2005), 96. Darcy Paquet, ‘‘The Korean Film Industry: 1992 to the Present,’’ 35. Ibid. Darcy Paquet, ‘‘Korea Box Ofﬁce Tumbles,’’ Variety (Jan. 9, 2008). http:// www.variety.com/article/VR1117978752.html (accessed on Mar. 21, 2008). Darrell William Davis, ‘‘Reigniting Japanese Tradition with Hana-Bi,’’ Cinema Journal 40/4 (Summer 2001): 61. Jinhee Choi, ‘‘National Cinema: The Very Idea’’ in Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures, ed. Noël Carroll and Jinhee Choi (Boston: Blackwell, 2005), 310–19. Laura C. Nelson, Measured Excess: Status, Gender and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 25–26. Ibid., 84–85. Paul Willemen, ‘‘Detouring Through Korean Cinema,’’ Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 3/2 (2002): 176. Ibid., 174–77. Ahn Byung Sup, ‘‘Humor in Korean Cinema,’’ East-West Film Journal 2/1 (1987): 95. Ibid., 97–98. Nancy Abelmann, The Melodrama of Mobility: Women, Talk and Class in Contemporary South Korea (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2003), 24–25. Jinhee Choi, ‘‘National Cinema: The Very Idea,’’ in Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures, ed. Noel Carroll and Jinhee Choi (Boston: Blackwell, 2005), 310–19. Andrew Higson, ‘‘Limiting Imagination of National Cinema,’’ in Cinema and Nation, ed. Mette Hjort and Scott Mckenzie (London: Routledge, 2000), 67–68. Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999), 4. David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 4–5. David Desser, ‘‘Hong Kong Film and the New Cinephilia,’’ in Hong Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema, ed. Meaghan Morris, Siu Leung Li, and Stephen Chan Ching-kiu (Hong Kong/Durham: University of Hong Kong Press, 2005), 216. 218 Notes to Pages 6–11

37 Frank Segers, ‘‘S. Korea Privatizes Film Board. New Promotional Outﬁt May Expand Market for U.S. Films,’’ The Hollywood Reporter (June 15, 1999). 38 Peter Stanﬁeld brought to my attention the beneﬁt of classifying ﬁlms in terms of historically bounded notions such as production trends and cycles of a certain period, instead of ‘‘genre’’—which often presupposes a set of norms, although ﬂexible, from which these various cycles emerged. A similar approach can be found in Tino Balio’s discussion of Hollywood production trends in the 1930s. See Tino Balio. ‘‘Production Trends’’ in Grand Design: Hollywood As a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–39, ed. Tino Bailo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 179–312. 39 Mark Russell, The Hollywood Reporter (May 25, 2004). 40 David Bordwell, ‘‘The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice,’’ Film Criticism 4/1 (Fall 1979): 56–64; Steve Neale, ‘‘Art Cinema as Institution,’’ Screen 22/1 (1981): 1–39. Chapter 1: Faces of Globalization

1 Arif Dirlik, ‘‘Global in the Local,’’ in Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary, ed. Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996), 28–29. 2 Darrell William Davis and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, East Asian Screen Industries (London: BFI Publishing, 2008), 10. 3 Yong-jin Choi et al., Hanguk Yeonghwa Jeongchaekeui Heuremgwa Saeroun Jeonmang (Seoul: Jibmundang, 1994), 221–23. 4 Ibid., 44. 5 Ibid. 6 Don Groves, Variety (Nov. 17–23, 1997): 61. 7 Dong-mi Hwang et al., Hanguk Yeonghwa Saneop Gujo Bunseok (Seoul: KOFIC, 2001), 25. 8 Don Groves, Variety (Nov. 17–23, 1997): 60. 9 Dong-mi Hwang et al., Hanguk Yeonghwa Saneop Gujo Bunseok, 29. 10 Don Groves, Variety (Feb. 24–Mar. 3, 1997): 13. 11 Christopher Alford, Variety (Feb. 28–Mar. 5, 2000): 32. 12 Dong-mi Hwang et al., Hanguk Yeonghwa Saneop Gujo Bunseok, 30. 13 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘Korean Films Fail to Exit Export Trough,’’ Reed Business Information (Jan. 30, 2008). 14 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘Higher Risks Don’t Curb Korean Cash Flow,’’ Variety (Mar. 9, 2007). http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117960866.html (accessed Nov. 5, 2008). 15 Hanna Lee, ‘‘Venture Caps Push Film Biz,’’ Variety (Aug. 9–15, 1999): 31. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Dong-mi Hwang et al, Hanguk Yeonghwa Saneop Gujo Bunseok, 31. Notes to Pages 11–19 219

19 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘Higher Risks Don’t Curb Korean Cash Flow.’’ 20 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘The Korean Film Industry: 1992 to the Present,’’ in New Korean Cinema, ed. Chi-Yun Shin and Julian Stinger (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 43. 21 Don Groves, Variety (Feb. 28–Mar. 5, 2000): 32. 22 Hanna Lee, ‘‘Venture Caps Push Film Biz.’’ 23 Dong-mi Hwang et al., Hanguk Yeonghwa Yeongam (2004), 30. Mark Russell, ‘‘Imports Take Lead at Korea B.O. Local Films Losing Grip on Dominance of Previous Years,’’ The Hollywood Reporter (Feb. 11, 2003). 24 James Tillson, ‘‘Special Report: Spotlight: Toronto Film Festival,’’ Variety (Sept. 2–8, 2002). 25 Dong-mi Hwang et al., Hanguk Yeoghwa Saneop Gujo Bunseok, 29. 26 Ibid., 34–35. 27 Variety (Apr. 22, 2002): 6. 28 Dong-mi Hwang et al., Hanguk Yeoghwa Saneop Gujo Bunseok, 63. 29 Hanna Lee, Variety (Nov. 16–22, 1998): 20. 30 Dong-mi Hwang et al., Hanguk Yeoghwa Saneop Gujo Bunseok 63. 31 Tino Balio, ‘‘A Major Presence in All the World’s Important Markets: The Globalization of Hollywood in the 1990s,’’ in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, ed. Steve Neale and Murray Smith (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 59. 32 Dong-mi Hwang et al., Hankuk Younghwa Sanup Kujo Bunseok, 70. 33 Ibid., 72. 34 Blake Murdoch, The Hollywood Reporter (Mar. 13, 2001). 35 Christopher Alford, Variety (Feb. 7–13, 2000): 24. 36 Mi-hui Kim, Variety (May 20–26, 2002): 18. 37 Seung Hee Han, Film 2.0 (Aug. 13, 2005). 38 Mark Russell, The Hollywood Reporter (Apr. 6, 2004). 39 Jin Kim, Variety (Aug. 10, 2004): 13. 40 Mark Russell, The Hollywood Reporter (Jan. 30, 2004). 41 Mark Russell, The Hollywood Reporter (May 20, 2005). 42 ‘‘KT Corp, KTF in Talks with Sidus to Buy Movie Studio,’’ Asia Pulse (June 21, 2005). 43 Lukas Schawzacher, ‘‘Korean Pix Lose Luster in Japan,’’ Variety (Jul. 14, 2002). http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117869653.html (accessed Nov. 11, 2008). 44 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘S. Korean Film Exports, Proﬁts Boffo,’’ Variety (Dec. 19, 2005). http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117934925.html (accessed Nov. 11, 2008). 45 Lukas Schawzacher, ‘‘Korean Pix Lose Luster in Japan,’’ Variety (Jul. 14, 2002). http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117869653.html (accessed Nov. 2008). 46 Frank Segers, ‘‘Korean Film Biz on Way to Big Time,’’ The Hollywood Reporter (May 22, 2002). 47 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘Korean Films Fail to Exit Export Trough.’’ 48 Ibid. 220 Notes to Pages 19–24

49 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘S. Korean Box Ofﬁce Down: Cinema at 47.3% Market Share,’’ Variety (Jul. 5, 2007) http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117968115.html (accessed Mar. 21, 2008). 50 Mark Russell, The Hollywood Reporter (Feb. 11, 2003). 51 Ibid. 52 Nigel D’Sa and Soo-mee Park, ‘‘Korean Film Industry Seeing Declines,’’ The Hollywood Reporter (Oct 5, 2008). http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/con tent — display/asia/korea/e3ic9d5859352b6343995b9b83a8d967bc9 (accessed Nov. 5, 2008). 53 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘Global Box Ofﬁce Report: South Korea,’’ Variety Asia Online (Jan. 2, 2007), http://www.varietyasiaonline.com/content/view/546/53/ (accessed Jan. 11, 2009). 54 Man-gil Kang, ‘‘Contemporary Nationalist Movements and the Minjung,’’ trans. Roger Duncan, in South Korea’s Minjung Movement: The Culture and Politics of Dissidence, ed. Kenneth M. Wells (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), 36. 55 John Lie, Han Unbound (Stanford: Stanford University, 1998), 139. 56 Chungmoo Choi, ‘‘The Minjung Culture Movement and Popular Culture,’’ in South Korea’s Minjung Movement: the Culture and Politics of Dissidence, 108. 57 Sung-Ja Choi, ‘‘Taehakga Aechanggok Eumban Chulban,’’ Hanguk Ilbo (Dec. 13, 1984). 58 Frances Gateward, ‘‘Youth in Crisis: National and Cultural Identity in New South Korean Cinema,’’ in Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia, ed. Jenny Kwok Wah Lau (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 122. 59 Lie, Han Unbound, 129. 60 Laura Nelson, Measured Excess: Status, Gender and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 86. 61 Ibid., 96. 62 Interview conducted in August 2003 63 ‘‘South Korea 2002 Top 10,’’ Variety (Feb. 17, 2003): 28. Kim Jin, Variety (May 10–16, 2004): 42. Chapter 2: Blockbusters, Korean

1 Variety (Apr. 22, 2002): 6. 2 Steve Neale, however, notes how the notion of ‘‘blockbuster’’ has been used in multiple ways since the 1950s, sometimes referring to the large-scale production and sometimes simply big box-ofﬁce receipts. ‘‘Hollywood Blockbusters: Historical Dimensions,’’ in Movie Blockbusters ed. Julian Stringer (New York, London: Routledge, 2003), 47. 3 Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema: an Introduction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 54–66. Notes to Pages 24–31 221

4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13

14

15

16 17 18 19

Lucas Schwarzacher, ‘‘Yen for Pic Exports . . . Big Yen,’’ Variety (May 14, 2005). Steve Neale, ‘‘Hollywood Blockbusters: Historical Dimensions,’’ 48. Christopher Alford, Variety (Dec. 6–12, 1999): A12. Chi-Yun Shin and Julian Stringer, ‘‘Storming the Big Screen: the Shiri Syndrome,’’ in Seoul Searching: Culture and Identity in Contemporary Korean Cinema, ed. Frances Gateward (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007), 55–72. Derek Elley, Variety (Dec. 3–9, 2001): 20. ‘‘Taegukgi Becomes Most Popular Movie in S. Korean History,’’ Asia Pulse (Apr. 5, 2004). Darcy Paquet, ‘‘The Next Big Things,’’ Variety (Oct. 9–15, 2006): C4 Jin Kim, ‘‘Controversial Local Fare Revives Biz,’’ Variety (Mar. 1, 2004): 9. Darcy Paquet and Mark Schilling, ‘‘‘Host’ ﬁnds Japan Distrib,’’ Variety (Mar. 20, 2006): 6. Batman opened on more than two thousand screens in the summer of 1999, and Godzilla on more than seven thousand screens. See Geoff King, New Hollywood: An Introduction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 49. Chris Berry, ‘‘What’s Big about the Big Film? De-Westernizing the blockbuster in Korea and China,’’ in Movie Blockbusters ed. Julian Stringer (New York: Routledge, 2003), 217–229. Gingko Bed is noteworthy for both its genre mixing and special effects. The ﬁlm is a hybrid of ghost fantasy and melodrama, strongly inﬂuenced by Hong Kong ghost fantasies such as the movies of the Chinese Ghost Story series. Signiﬁcantly, Shin-Cine formed a specialized computer graphics ﬁrm, called Computer Graphics, in 1993. It was initially established to provide the special effects used for the sci-ﬁ fantasy Fox with Nine Tails (1993). Although Fox with Nine Tails wasn’t successful at the box ofﬁce, Gingko Bed beneﬁted from Computer Graphics’ facilities. The computer graphics in Gingko Bed were not as advanced as those now available, but the attempt to incorporate new technology in the ﬁlm should be seen as an effort to achieve ‘‘special’’ status as well as to provide ‘‘spectacle’’ for the viewer. Dong-mi Huang et al., Hankuk Younghwa Sanup Kujo Bunseok (Seoul: KOFIC, 2001): 32. Ibid., 37. Derek Elley, ‘‘My Wife is a Gangster,’’ Variety (Dec. 3–9, 2001): 35. Mark Russell, The Hollywood Reporter (May 25, 2004). See Thomas Schatz, ‘‘The New Hollywood,’’ in Movie Blockbusters ed. Julian Stringer (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 1–44. Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema: an Introduction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). Geoff King, Spectacular Narrative: Hollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster (London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 2000). Murray Smith, ‘‘Theses on the Philosophy of Hollywood History,’’ in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema ed. Steve Neale and Murray Smith, (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 3–20.

222 Notes to Pages 31–34

20 Anthony R. Guneratne and Wimal Dissanayake, Rethinking Third Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2003), 3–4. 21 Bruce Wallace, ‘‘Who’s the Monster? In the South Korean Horror Hit, ‘The Host’: The Americans are the Scary Ones,’’ Los Angeles Times (Nov. 1, 2006). 22 David Scott Diffrient, ‘‘Shiri,’’ Film Quarterly 54/3 (2001): 43. 23 Eun-sun Kwon, ‘‘‘Hangukhyeong Blockbuster’ Gongdong Gyeongbi Guyeok JSAaeseoeui minjokjuui,’’ in Gondong Gyeongbi Guyeok JSA ed. Yeonse Mediaart (Seoul: Samin, 2002), 65. 24 Young-il Lee and Young-chol Choe, The History of Korean Cinema (Jimoondang: Seoul, 1998), 170–171. 25 KOFIC, Korean Film Observatory 7 (Winter 2002): 11. Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction, 73. 26 Yonhap, ‘‘Haneun, Babyboom Sedae Teogik Chunggyeok Daebihaeya,’’ Hangyore (Aug. 1, 2005). http://www.hani.co.kr/kisa/section-003001000/2005/08/ 003001000200508011318533.html (accessed on Aug. 2, 2005). 27 Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (BFI Publishing: London, 1997), 169. 28 Bruce Wallace, ‘‘Patriotism Rears Its Fiery Head,’’ Los Angeles Times (Oct. 15, 2007): A3. 29 Chi-Yun Shin and Julian Stringer, ‘‘Storming the Big Screen,’’ 62. 30 David Desser, ‘‘Global Noir: Genre Film in the Age of Transnationalism,’’ in Film Genre Reader III ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 522. 31 Jin-soo An, ‘‘The Killer: Cult Film and Transcultural (Mis)Reading,’’ in At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World, ed. Esther C. M. Yau. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 95–113. 32 David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1985), 57, 157. 33 David Desser, ‘‘Timeless, Bottomless Bad Movies,’’ in Seoul Searching, 89. 34 Jung-kwon Jin, ‘‘Shim Hyeong-raeeui D-Warwa Deus ex machina,’’ Hangukilbo (Aug 13, 2007). http://news.hankooki.com/lpage/culture/200708/h200708 1317214084300.htm (accessed Jan. 15, 2009). 35 David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film, 157–158. 36 David Scott Diffrient, ‘‘Shiri,’’ Film Quarterly 53/3 (2001): 42. 37 Geoff King, ‘‘Spectacle, Narrative and the Blockbuster’’ in Movie Blockbusters, 123. 38 Daivd Bordwell, ‘‘Intensiﬁed Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American Film,’’ Film Quarterly 55/3 (2002): 16–28. 39 Geoff King, ‘‘Spectacle, Narrative and the Blockbuster,’’ 117. 40 Christopher Alford, ‘‘Eun Lee and Jae-myung Shim,’’ Variety (May 7–13, 2001): C22. 41 David Bordwell, ‘‘Intensiﬁed Continuity,’’ 20.

Notes to Pages 35–55 223

Chapter 3: No Blood? No Tears! Gangster Cinema

1 Han-ju Kwak, ‘‘Wae Pokryeokinga? 1990 yeondae Kkangpae Yeonghwa bunseok,’’ Film Culture 2/2 (1999), 25. 2 Soyoung Kim, ‘‘Genre as Contact Zone: Hong Kong Action and Korean Hwalkuk,’’ in Hong Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema, ed. Meaghan Morris et al. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), 97–110. 3 Sang-guk Nam, Hanguk Action Yeonghwa Yeongu (Gyeong-sung University, 1997), 37. 4 Jin-young Choi et al. Appendix, in Hanguk Yeonghwa Jeongchaeckeui Heureumgwa Saeroun Jeonmang (Seoul: Jibmundang, 1995), 337. 5 Jung-dong Noh, ‘‘Hong Kong Younghwaeui Sobihyeonhwang mit Heunghaeng Siltae Bunseok,’’ in Hanguk Younghwa Chungcheckeui Heurmgua Saeroun Cheonmang, Choi Jin-young et al. 278. 6 Hanguk Yeonghwa Yeongam (Seoul: KOFIC, 1999), 105–06. 7 Mi-hui Kim, ‘‘Pic Fuels Nostalgia Binge,’’ Variety (May 21–27, 2001): 62. 8 Yong Cheol Kim and Chung-in Moon, ‘‘Globalization and Workers in South Korea,’’ in Korea’s Globalization, ed. Samuel S. Kim (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 61. 9 Barry K. Gills and Dongsook S. Gills, ‘‘Globalization and Strategic Choice in South Korea: Economic Reform and Labor,’’ in Korea’s Globalization, 44. 10 Chi-Yun Shin, ‘‘Two of a Kind: Gender and Friendship in Friend and Take Care of My Cat,’’ in New Korean Cinema, ed. Shin Chi-Yun and Julian Stringer (New York: NYU Press, 2005), 123. 11 Ibid. 12 Han-ju Kwak, ‘‘Wae Pokryeokinga? 1990 yeondae Kkangpae Yeonghwa bunseok,’’ 26–27. 13 David Desser, ‘‘Timeless, Bottomless Bad Movies,’’ in Seoul Searching, ed. Frances Gateward (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007), 81–82. 14 Interview conducted with director Kim Sung-su by the author. 15 Dong-cheol Nam, ‘‘Baegeubsijang Pokpungjeonya,’’ Cine 21 (Jan. 30, 2002). http://www.cine21.com/Index/magazine.php?mag — id=7167 (accessed on Apr. 1, 2002). 16 David Desser, ‘‘Timeless, Bottomless Bad Movies,’’ 80. 17 Su-gyeong Kim, ‘‘Hanguk Yeonghwa Sijangeui Ilbon Yeonghwa Jungganjeomgeom,’’ Cine 21 (Apr. 6, 2006). http://www.cine21.com/Index/ magazine.php?mag-id=37638 (accessed on May 15, 2006). 18 Dong-ju Kim, ‘‘Sipineui Jejak, Tujajaga Malhaneun 2001nyeon [20] – Kim Dong-ju, Kim Mi-hee,’’ Cine 21 (Dec. 27, 2001). http://www.cine21.com/ Index/magazine.php?mag — id=6362 (accessed on Apr. 1, 2002). 19 Anthony C.Y. Leong, Korean Cinema: The New Hong Kong (Victoria, Canada: Trafford Publishing Co., 2002) 224 Notes to Pages 60–66

20 Ka-fai Ma, ‘‘Hero, Hong Kong Style—A Structural Study of Hero Films in Hong Kong,’’ MA Thesis (University of Chicago, 1990), 23. 21 Stephen Teo, Hong Kong Cinema: An Extra Dimension (London: BFI Publishing, 1997), 176. 22 Julian Stringer, ‘‘‘Your Tender Smiles Give Me Strength’: Paradigms of Masculinity in John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow and The Killer,’’ Screen 38:1 (1997): 25–41. 23 Ben Singer, ‘‘Female Power in the Serial Queen Melodrama: The Etiology of an Anomaly,’’ Camera Obscura 22 (1990): 91–129. 24 Robert Warshow, ‘‘The Gangster as Tragic Hero,’’ Partisan Review (Feb. 1948), reprinted in The Immediate Experience (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1962), 131; Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking and the Studio System (New York: Random House, 1981). 25 Fran Mason, American Gangster Cinema: From Little Caesar to Pulp Fiction (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 22. 26 Laurie H. Hutzler, ‘‘Creating a Successful Coming of Age Story: Why Bend It Like Beckham and Billy Elliot Hit with International Audiences’’ (2004). http:// www.emotionaltoolbox.com/Newsletters/Newsletter — 4.htm (accessed on Aug. 2, 2004). 27 Jong-heub Jo et al., Genre Honhaphyeonsange natanan Saneopgwa Gwangaekeui Sanghotextjeok Gwangye (Seoul: KOFIC, 2004), 57–58. 28 Frances Gateward, ‘‘Waiting to Exhale: the Colonial Experience and the Trouble of My Own Breathing,’’ in Seoul Searching, 203. 29 Ji-mi Kim, ‘‘Pokryeok Neomchineun Namseongyeonghwa sok Gajja Nunmeuleui Gongpo, Geu Giwonkwa Munjejeom,’’ Cine 21 (Dec. 7, 2006). http://www.cine21 .com/Index/magazine.php?mag — id=43107 (accessed on Dec. 7, 2006). 30 Lea Jacobs, ‘‘The Women’s Picture and the Poetics of Melodrama,’’ Camera Obscura 31 (1993): 140. 31 A comedic variant can be found in such ﬁlms as My Wife is a Gangster II, Hi! Dharma!, and Mapado (Chu Chang-min, 2005). 32 Jin-mi Huang, ‘‘Noir-reul neomeoseon Noir’’ Cine 21 (Feb. 8, 2006) http:// www.cine21.com/Index/magazine.php?mag — id=36386; Jeong-yeon Oh, ‘‘Geochimeubsi Tarakhaneun Noir-eui Jeongsin,’’ Cine 21 (Jan. 10, 2006). http:// www.cine21.com/Index/magazine.php?mag — id=35873 33 Derek Elley, ‘‘My Wife Is a Gangster,’’ Variety (Dec. 3–9, 2001): 35. 34 ‘‘South Korea Enters the Sequel Age,’’ The Hollywood Reporter (July 15, 2003). 35 Henry Jenkins, What Makes Pistachio Nuts? Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 219–20.

Notes to Pages 66–79 225

Chapter 4: I’m Not a Girl, Yet Not a Woman

1 Mi-hui Kim, ‘‘Femme Antiheros Stroke Korean B.O.,’’ Variety (Nov. 26–Dec. 1, 2001): 12. 2 Derek Elley, ‘‘My Tutor Friend,’’ Variety (May 5–11, 2003): 32. 3 Hanguk Yeonghwa Yeongam, (Seoul: KOFIC, 1999), 99. 4 ‘‘Kwak Traks to Japan for Sci-ﬁ,’’ Daily Variety (Dec. 29, 2006): 11. 5 Lukas Schwarzacher, ‘‘Pusan Promo Plan Gets Deals Done,’’ Variety (Oct. 10, 2004). http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117911749.html (accessed on Apr. 16, 2008). Mark Schilling, ‘‘Japanese B.O. Down 6%,’’ Variety (Jan. 31, 2006). http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117937151.html (accessed on Apr. 16, 2008). 6 Patrick Frater, ‘‘Korean ‘Snow’ Falls to Click Stars in U.S.,’’ Variety (Oct. 12, 2005): 9. 7 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘Christmas in August and Korean Melodrama,’’ in Seoul Searching: Culture and Identity in Contemporary Korean Cinema, ed. Frances Gateward (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007), 39. 8 Louis Hau, ‘‘Int’l Trio ‘Spring’ for Project; S. Korea’s Sidus Finds Partners in Japan, H.K. for Hur Film,’’ The Hollywood Reporter (June 12, 2001). 9 Hye Seung Chung, ‘‘Toward a Strategic Korean Cinephilia: A Transnational Détournement of Hollywood Melodrama,’’ in South Korean Golden Age Melodrama, 123. 10 Romance-mul in Korean can be found in both popular and industry discourse; mul is a sufﬁx attached to various genres and cycles across media, including ﬁlms, novels, and comics: hakwon-mul (high schooler), cheongchun-mul (youth ﬁlms) or susa-mul (thriller) or hybrid genres like romance-hakwon-mul. With a quick search of romance-mul in leading Korean weekly ﬁlm magazine Cine 21, one can ﬁnd within the category such Korean ﬁlms as Daddy Long Legs (Kong Jeong-sik, 2005) Love So Divine (Heo In-mu, 2004) as well as Hollywood romance/romantic comedies such as The Weddding Planner (Adam Shankman, 2001), A Walk to Remember (Adam Shankman, 2002), The Princess Diaries (Garry Marshall, 2001) and Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998). http://www .cine21.com (accessed in Jan 2009). 11 Ji-na Yu, ‘‘1990 nyeondae Hanguk Yeonghwa,’’ in Hanguk Yonghwasa Kongbu: 1980–1997, ed. KOFA (Seoul: Ichae, 2005), 102. 12 David Desser, ‘‘Timeless, Bottomless Bad Movies,’’ in Seoul Searching ed. Frances Gateward (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007), 77. 13 Derek Elley, ‘‘My Sassy Girl,’’ Variety (Dec. 3–9, 2001): 34. 14 Hideko Takayama, ‘‘Celebrity: A Hunk o’ Love,’’ Newsweek, (May 3, 2004, Paciﬁc edition). 15 Patrick Frater, ‘‘Korea ‘Snow’ falls to Click Stars in U.S.’’ 16 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘Korean Titles Prosper Throughout Asia,’’ Variety (Dec. 26 2005– Jan. 1, 2006): 11. 226 Notes to Pages 85–89

17 Paul Wiseman, ‘‘Korean Romantic Hero Holds Japan in Thrall,’’ USA Today, (Dec. 10, 2004): 13A. 18 Korean costume drama series Jewel in the Palace was sold in more than twenty countries worldwide, and the romantic comedy series My Lovely Sam-Soon and the high school romance/costume drama Princess Hours found a market in Brazil. See Don Groves, ‘‘Korean Drama Makes Waves,’’ Television Asia 14/8 (Oct. 2007): 52. 19 ‘‘The Lake House: Synopsis,’’ Variety, http://www.variety.com/proﬁles/Film/ synopsis/161638/The+Lake+House.html?dataSet=1 (accessed in Jan. 2009). 20 Soyoung Kim, ‘‘The Maid, Madame Freedom, and Women,’’ in South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: Gender, Genre, and National Cinema, eds. Kathleen McHugh and Nancy Abelmann (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005), 188. 21 Yu-shin Joo et al., Hangukyeonghwa-wa Geundaeseong (Seoul: Sodo, 2001). 22 Soyoung Kim, ‘‘The Maid, Madame Freedom, and Women,’’ in South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: Gender, Genre and National Cinema, 195–98. 23 Steve Neale, ‘‘The Big Romance or Something Wild?: Romantic Comedy Today,’’ Screen 33/3 (Autumn, 1992): 293. 24 Ibid. 25 Frank Krutnik, ‘‘Love Lies: Romantic Fabrication in Contemporary Romantic Comedy,’’ in Terms of Endearment: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1980s and 1990s, ed. Peter William Evans and Celestino Deleyto (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 29–30. 26 Ibid., 28. 27 Although the ﬁlm constantly refers to the Korean predilection for melodrama and sentimentality, such self-reﬂexivity does not prevent this ﬁlm from following in that tradition. 28 Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik, Popular Film and Television Comedy (London: Routledge, 1990), 151. 29 Katherine Rowe, The Unruly Woman: Gender and Genres of Laughter (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 124. 30 Ibid., 133. 31 Derek Elley, ‘‘Asako in Ruby Shoes,’’ Variety (July 9–15, 2001): 24. 32 Ibid. 33 David Martin-Jones, ‘‘Decompressing Modernity: South Korean Time Travel Narrative and the IMF Crisis,’’ Cinema Journal 46/4 (Summer 2007): 45. 34 Ibid., 46. 35 Hanguk Yeonghwa Yeongam (Seoul: KOFIC, 2000), 79. 36 Daiwon Hyun, ‘‘Renaissance of Korean Film Industry,’’ Asian Cinema 12/2 (Fall/Winter, 2001): 11. 37 ‘‘Top Ten Films of 1999,’’ Variety (April 23–30, 2000). 38 Darrell Davis and Emily Yueh-yu Yeh, East Asian Screen Industries (London: BFI Publishing, 2008), 74. Notes to Pages 89–104 227

39 David Bordwell, ‘‘Romance on Your Menu: Chungking Express,’’ in Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 282–90. 40 Hye Seung Chung and David Scott Diffrient, ‘‘Interethnic Romance and Political Reconciliations in Asako in Ruby Shoes,’’ in New Korean Cinema, ed. Chi-yun Shin and Julian Stringer (New York: NYU Press, 2005), 199. Chapter 5: Once Upon a Time in High School

1 Linsu Kim, Imitation to Innovation: The Dynamics of Korea’s Technological Learning (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997), 61. 2 Ibid., 60. 3 Ibid. 4 Haejong Cho, ‘‘Living with Conﬂicting Subjectivities: Mother, Motherly Wife, and Sexy Woman in the Transition from Colonial Modern to Postmodern Korea,’’ in Under Construction: The Gendering of Modernity, Class, and Consumption in the Republic of Korea, ed. Laurel Kendall (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), 173. 5 Han-seok Ryu, ‘‘Gyobokeui Romang,’’ Sportshanguk (Feb. 22, 2004). 6 Timothy Shary, Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in Contemporary American Cinema (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 8. 7 Ibid., 30. 8 Ibid., 27. 9 Derek Elley, ‘‘Dasepo Naughty Girls,’’ Variety (Oct. 15, 2006). http://www.variety .com/index.asp?layout=print — review&reviewid=VE1117931876&categoryid =-1 (accessed on Nov. 20, 2006). 10 Shary distinguishes two types of delinquency, one against other students and the other against teachers, each of which was a dominant type in the late 1980s and early 1990s, respectively. Shary, Generation Multiplex, 42. 11 Shary, Generation Multiplex, 82–83. 12 Derek Elley, ‘‘The Aggressives,’’ Variety (June 15, 2005). http://www.variety.com/ review/VE1117927382 (accessed on Nov. 20, 2006). 13 Korean Cinema Annuals (Seoul: KOFIC, 1998), 99. 14 DVD interview included in Wishing Stairs. 15 Dong-cheul Nam, ‘‘[Yeogo Goedam]euseo [Janghwa, Hongryeon]kkaji, Oh Gi-min PDeui Yeonghwa Sesang [2],’’ Cine 21 (July 4, 2003). 16 Hanna Lee, ‘‘Plex Success Boosts S. Korea Multi Mania,’’ Variety (June 29–July 12, 1998): 10. 17 The number of theatres decreased from 507 to 344, while the number of screens rose from 507 to 720. 18 Derek Elley, ‘‘Voice,’’ Variety (Aug. 28, 2005): 62. 19 KOFIC, Korean Cinema Database 1999. 20 Yeong-kwon Jeong, Nkino (June 17, 2004). 228 Notes to Pages 106–126

21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28

29

30 31

32

33 34 35

‘‘Top Ten Films of 1999,’’ Variety (April 24–30, 2000): 53. So-min Kim, Hangyeore (May 20, 2007). Ibid. Cuncun Wu, Homoerotic Sensibilities in Late Imperial China (Abingdon: Rutledge Curzon, 2004), 7. There have been challenges to such a tradition. See Carol J. Clover, ‘‘Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film,’’ Representations 20 (1987): 187–228. Excerpts Reprinted in Horror: The Film Reader, ed. Mark Jancovich (Routledge, 2002), 77–89. In her essay, Clover attempts to explore crossgender identiﬁcation taking place in slasher ﬁlms. Dong-cheul Nam, ‘‘[Yeogo Goedam]euseo [Janghwa, Hongryeon]kkaji, Oh Gi-min PDeui Yeonghwa Sesang [1],’’ Cine 21 (July 4, 2003). Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart (New York and London: Routledge, 1990). Andrew Grossman and Jooran Lee, ‘‘Memento Mori and Other Ghostly Sexualities,’’ in New Korean Cinema, ed. Chi-yun Shin and Julian Stringer (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 183. Noël Carroll, ‘‘Film, Emotion, and Genre,’’ in Passionate Views: Film, Cognition and Emotion, ed. Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 38–39. Shary, Generation Multiplex, 2. Cheol-yeon Kim, ‘‘Neukdaeeui Yuhok, Jeonguk Kwangaek 200man Dolpa!’’ http://www.koreaﬁlm.co.kr/news/news2004-8-13.html (accessed on Aug. 13, 2004). Interview with Guiyeoni, ‘‘21segi Sonyeogyobon Wanjeonjeongbok,’’ Cine 21, 463 (July 27, 2004). http://www.cine21.com/Article/article — view.php?mm= 005001001&article — id=25459 (accessed on Aug. 3, 2004). Seong-il Jeong, ‘‘Geunomeun Meotiteotda; Neukdaeeui Yuhok,’’ Hangyore (Aug. 3, 2004). http://php.chol.com/dorati/web/etc/hani040803.htm Elizabeth Cowie, Representing the Woman: Cinema and Psychoanalysis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 133. Interview with Guiyeoni, ‘‘21segi Sonyeogyobon Wanjeonjeongbok,’’ Cine 21, 463 (July 27, 2004). http://www.cine21.com/Article/article — view.php?mm= 005001001&article — id=25459 (accessed on Aug. 3, 2004). Chapter 6: Not Just Metteurs-en-Scène?

1 2 3 4

Darcy Paquet, ‘‘Korean B.O. tops Germany’s,’’ Variety (Jan. 30–Feb. 5, 2006): 19. Darcy Paquet, ‘‘Local Pix Eye Boffo B.O.,’’ Variety (Oct. 9–15, 2006): C4. Mark Russell, The Hollywood Reporter (May 25, 2004). Justin Wyatt, High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 24. 5 Ibid., 106. Notes to Pages 126–145 229

6 Mark Russell, The Hollywood Reporter (May 25, 2004). 7 Justin Wyatt, High Concept, 96. 8 Seon-hui Han, ‘‘Oldboy 300man club gaib,’’ FILM 2.0 (Dec. 26, 2003). http:// ﬁlm2.co.kr/news/news — ﬁnal.asp?mkey=144201 (accessed Jan. 1, 2004). 9 Sung-wook Lee et al., ‘‘Kwangaek-deuli TTajigi Sijakhatda, ‘Well-made’ hit the target,’’ Cine 21 (Dec. 12, 2003). 10 Mi-Hyeon Kim et al. Ye0sulyeonghwakwan jiwonjeongchaek yeongu (Seoul: KOFIC, 2004), 35. 11 Ibid., 60–61. 12 Il-kwon Ko, ‘‘[Jumal Geukjanga] Dongmakgol vs. Geumjasi,’’ Cine 21 (Aug. 5, 2005). http://www.cine21.com/Article/article — view.php?mm=001001001&article — id=32592 (accessed on Sept. 1, 2005). 13 Mark Russell, The Hollywood Reporter (May 25, 2004): C4. 14 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘The Next Big Things,’’ Variety (Oct. 9–15, 2006). 15 Su-gyeong Kim, ‘‘[wangeui namja] sinmyeongnaneun heunghaeng jultagi, 3ju yeonsok boxofﬁce 1wi,’’ Cine 21 (Jan. 16, 2006). http://www.cine21.com/Article/ article — view.php?mm=001001001&article — id=36013 (accessed on Feb. 1, 2006). 16 Joon-ho Bong, ‘‘Interview with Park Seon-yeong and Kim Gi-chang,’’ in Salineui Chueok, Kim Gyeong-wuk et al. (Seoul: Yonsei Media Art, 2006), 255. 17 David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 64. 18 Derek Elley, ‘‘Memories of Murder,’’ Variety (Apr. 28–May 8, 2003). 19 Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film, 65. 20 David Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 81–82. 21 Joon-ho Bong, ‘‘Interview with Park Seon-yeong and Kim Gi-chang,’’ in Salineui Chueok. 22 Ibid., 277. 23 Washitani Hana, ‘‘Pyeonjehaneun Yeonse Salinbeom, Gieokeui Gongdongche,’’ trans. by Jo Man-yong, in Salineui Chueok, 76. 24 Murray Smith, ‘‘Gangsters, Cannibals, Aesthetes,’’ in Passionate Views, eds. Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1999), 226– 227. 25 Mark Russell, The Hollywood Reporter (Apr. 20, 2004). Chapter 7: Riding the New Wave

1 Kyung-hyun Kim, The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema (Durham: Duke University Press), 107. 2 Derek Elley, Variety (Dec. 16–22, 2002): 45. 3 Chuck Stephens, ‘‘Dutch Tilts: International Film Festival Rotterdam Bares Its Seoul,’’ Village Voice (Feb. 25, 1997): 72. 230 Notes to Pages 146–167

4 John Lie, Han Unbound: The Political Economy of South Korea (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 121. 5 Seung Hyun Park, ‘‘Film Censorship and Political Legitimation in South Korea: 1987–1992,’’ Cinema Journal, 42/1 (Fall 2002): 124. 6 Ibid. 7 Kim, The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema, 29, 139. 8 Ibid., 29. 9 Ibid., 139. 10 Hyo-in Yi, ‘‘A Turning Point: The New Wave (1988–1991),’’ in Korean New Wave: Retrospectives from 1980 to 1995 (The 1st Pusan International Film Festival, 1996), 36–37. 11 Dong-mi Hwang et al, Hanguk Yeonghwa Sungeop Gujo Bunseok (Seoul: KOFIC, 2001): 32. 12 Ibid., 33. 13 Ibid. 14 David Chute, ‘‘East Goes West,’’ Special Report: Cannes 2004, Variety (May 10– 16, 2004): 7. 15 Brian Fuson, ‘‘B. O. Always ‘Rings’ Twice,’’ The Hollywood Reporter (Mar. 21, 2005). 16 Tony Rayns, ‘‘Sexual Terrorism: The Strange Case of Kim Ki-duk,’’ Film Comment (Nov–Dec. 2004), 50–52. 17 Yonhap, ‘‘Editorial From the Korea Times on Wednesday September 15, 2004,’’ (Sep. 15, 2004). 18 Derek Elley, ‘‘Samaritan Girl,’’ Variety (Feb. 17, 2004): 25. 19 Stephen Holden, ‘‘Primal Passions, Gruesomely Rendered,’’ New York Times (Aug. 23, 2002): 23. 20 Ibid. 21 Derek Elley, ‘‘Old Boy,’’ Variety (Jan. 9, 2004): 28. 22 David Bordwell, ‘‘Hou or Constraints,’’ Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 231. 23 Kim, The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema, 209. 24 Jenny Kwok Wah Lau, ed., Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 2–3. 25 James Udden, ‘‘Hou Hsiao-hsien and the Question of a Chinese Style,’’ Asian Cinema, 13/2 (Fall/Winter 2002): 62. 26 Ken Eisner, Variety (Jan. 13–19, 1997): 152. 27 Akira Mizuta Lippit, ‘‘Hong Sangsoo’s Lines of Inquiry, Communication, Defense and Escape,’’ Film Quarterly 57/4 (2004): 22–30. Afterword

1 Darcy Paquet, ‘‘Korean Film Industry Labor Deal OK’d,’’ Variety (Apr. 16, 2007) http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117963218.html (accessed on Nov. 5, 2008). Notes to Pages 167–194 231

2 Sun-hee Han, ‘‘Korean Fund to Bail Out Film Biz,’’ Variety (Oct. 27, 2008) http:// www.variety.com/article/VR1117994770.html (accessed on Nov. 5, 2008). 3 Patrick Frater, ‘‘Korea Reaches out to Neighbors,’’ Variety (Oct. 5, 2007) http:// www.variety.com/article/VR1117973520.html (accessed on Mar. 21, 2008) 4 Sun-hee Han, ‘‘Warrant Issued for Korean Piracy Suspect,’’ Variety (Mar 22, 2008) http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117986328.html (accessed on Nov. 5, 2008). 5 Darrell Davis and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, East Asian Screen Industries (London: BFI, 2008), 93. 6 Dong-mi Hwang and Ji-in Park, Asia Gongdongjejak Hyeonhwanggwa Baljeon Bangan (Seoul: KOFIC, 2002), 76. 7 Ibid., 79. 8 Michael Curtin, Playing To the World’s Biggest Audiences: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 277. Curtin claims that an abstract diegetic setting of legend or myth facilitates the travel of historical ﬁlms better than ﬁlms and television series with a contemporary setting, since the latter invites the viewer to scrutinize the details and verisimilitude of the story. 9 Patrick Frater, ‘‘Asian Countries Face Holiday Jam,’’ Variety (Dec. 12–18, 2005): 16. 10 Patrick Frater, ‘‘Bumpy Road for Asian Film Financing,’’ Variety (Sep. 24, 2008) http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117992860.html (accessed on Nov. 5, 2008). 11 Ji-yeon Kim, ‘‘Jeokbyeok Daejoen, Yeokdae Choego Jungyeonghwa Yeyak,’’ Yonhap (Jan. 31, 2009). 12 Darrell Davis and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, East Asian Screen Industries (London: BFI Publishing, 2008), 90. 13 Frank Sergers, ‘‘Korean Film Biz on Way to Big Time,’’ The Hollywood Reporter (May 22, 2002). 14 Patrick Frater, ‘‘Asian Countries Face Holiday Jam.’’ 15 Patrick Frater, ‘‘Korea Reaches Out to Neighbors,’’ Variety (Oct. 5, 2007). http:// www.variety.com/article/VR1117973520.html (accessed on Mar. 21, 2008). 16 Patrick Frater, ‘‘Pic Biz Seeking a Seoul Mate,’’ Variety (Mar. 13–19, 2006): 6. 17 Hae-hyeon Park, ‘‘Post 386eui Bonggi,’’ Chosunilbo (Aug, 25, 2007). http:// news.chosun.com/site/data/html — dir/2007/08/24/2007082401077.html (accessed on Jan. 14, 2009). 18 Su-jin Park, ‘‘Daejungeui Banlaninga, Dasueui Poryekinga?’’ Hangyore (Aug. 16, 20070). http://www.hani.co.kr/section-021037000/2007/08/0210370002007 08160673041.html (accessed on Jan. 14, 2009). 19 Michael Curtin, Playing To the World’s Biggest Audiences: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 11. 20 Ibid., 10. 21 Darrell William Davis and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh, East Asian Screen Industries (London: BFI Publishing, 2008), 147–148. 232 Notes to Pages 194–196

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Index

Abelmann, Nancy, 9–10 abstract blockage, 86 action (genre), 7 Address Unknown (2001), 165, 178, 196 aesthetic reﬁnement, in well-made ﬁlm, 152 An Affair (1998), 29–30, 85, 87 The Age of Success (1988), 167–68, 173 The Aggressives (2005), 116, 122; analysis of, 123–24 Ahn Byeong-gi, 126 Ahn Byung Sup, 9 Aimless Bullet, The, 9 Aje Aje Bara Aje (1989), 61 Almost Love, 23, 89 anarchistic comedies, 79–80 The Anarchists (2000), 18–19 Ang, Ien, 197 anti-American sentiment, 25–26 Applause Pictures (Hong Kong), 86, 194–95 April Snow (2005), 23, 85, 88 Ardor (2002), 122 Art Museum by the Zoo (1998), 29–30, 86, 98, 101; analysis of, 90–94 Art of Fighting (2006), 116 Artplus Cinema Network, 146 Asako in Ruby Shoes (2001), 23, 85, 87, 103, 106, 115; analysis of, 107, 110–13 ‘‘Asia Extreme,’’ 164, 174, 177–79, 182 Asian economic crisis, 5, 18–19, 63, 176 Asian Minimalism, 182–83, 185 As Tears Go By, 75 Attack the Gas Station (1999), 23, 77, 78–80

Autumn Tale (2000), 88 Avex (Japan), 195 Bad Guy (2001), 165, 174, 178 Bae Chang-ho, 167 Baek Woon-hak, 32, 35, 144 The Barefooted Young (1964), 7 Beat (1997), 13, 29, 61, 64, 68, 70, 73– 75, 116, 127 Beijing Bicycle (2001), 196 Berlin Film Festival, 2 Berry, Chris, 5, 33 A Better Tomorrow I, II (1986, 1987), 65–68 Bichunmoo (2000), 22 A Bittersweet Life (2005), 61, 64, 69–70, 76, 147, 153 The Black Republic (1990), 87 Blind Chance (1987), 190–91 blockbuster (genre), 12, 147, 166, 193, 221n2 blockbuster, Korean, 31–40, 49–58 blockbuster ﬁlms: birth of, 19; use of term, 31 blockbuster mentality, use of term, 33 Blood Rain, 151, 153 A Bloodthirsty Killer (1965), 129 Blood Tie (2006), 75–76 B.O.M., 18, 126, 194 A Bonanza (1961), 7 Bong Joon-ho, 1, 5–6, 13, 29–30, 32, 59, 144, 147–49, 164 Bordwell, David, 11, 148 Bourdieu, Pierre, 5 box-ofﬁce disasters, 32 241

Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, 5 ‘‘buddy action’’ ﬁlms (Hollywood), 78 Bullet in the Head (1990), 66 Bungee Jumping of Their Own (2001), 103 Bye June (1998), 88 Byun Young-joo, 89, 116, 121–22 camera angles, 81, 225n35 Cannes Film Festival, 2, 29, 59, 164–65, 174 capital accumulation, 196 Carroll, Noël, 131, 136 CGV, 18, 20, 125 Champion (2002), 29 Chan, Benny, 65 Chang Yoon-hyun, 27, 85 Cha Seung-jae, 6 Cheil Chedang Corporation, 17–18 Chen Kaige, 194 Chihwason (2002), 2, 58, 164–65 Chil-su and Man-su (1988), 6, 167–69 China Film Group, 195 Choe Ik-hwan, 124, 128 Cho Heun-pa, 118 Choi Ho, 75–76 Cho Jin-gyu, 81 Christmas in August (1998), 18, 29–30, 64, 85, 145 Chu Chang-min, 77 Chun Doo-hwan, 25, 167–68, 176 Chung Hye-seung, 86, 113 Chungking Express (1994), 105–8, 191 Chungmuro (Korean Film District), 6, 12, 16–17, 19–20 chunhwado, 150–51, 157–158 Chunhyang (Chunhyangdeon, 2000), 18–19, 39–40, 58, 164, 173 chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving holiday), 76 Chute, David, 174 Cineline II, 64 cinema of girlhood, origin of term, 127 242 Index

Cinema Service, 18, 20–23, 173 Cinequanon Film, 24 Cine 21, 11, 146, 226n10 Cine 2000, 125 A City of Sadness (1989), 182 City of Violence (2006), 22 CJ Entertainment, 17–18, 21, 23, 125, 173, 194 CJ Media, 194 Classic (2003), 116 CMC (Taiwan), 195 The Coast Guard (2002), 165, 174 coﬁnancing, 86 Columbia, Korean distribution ofﬁce, 16 Columbia Tristar, 21, 195 Come, Come, Upward, Come (1989), 164 comedy (genre), 7, 13; sexuality of female protagonists in, 100–101 conglomeration, process of, 19 consumer nationalism, 8, 38 The Contact (1997), 27, 55, 85–87, 103, 106–7, 113, 115, 145; analysis of, 107–9 costume drama (genre), 7 Cowie, Elizabeth, 141 crime fabula, 148–49 crisis of masculinity, 168 Crocodile (1996), 165, 178 Cruel Winter Blues (2006), 73 cultural speciﬁcity of nation-states, 15 Curtin, Michael, 196, 232n8 Daddy Long Legs (2005), 226n10 daejung (the mass), 27 Daewoo, 17–18, 21, 173 Daewoo Cable Network (DCN), 17 Dance with the Wind (2003), 80 Dangerous Liaisons, 150. See also Untold Scandal (2003) Danseongsa Cinema, 20–21 Dasepo Naughty Girls, 119–21 Davis, Darrell, 8, 104

The Day the Pig Fell into the Well (1996), 166, 169–70, 183–84; analysis of, 185–86 The Decalogue (1988–89), 190 democratization, 26 Desser, David, 11, 64–65, 87, 116 The Devil’s Stairway (1964), 7 A Different Kind of Man (1993), 87 Diffrient, David Scott, 36, 49, 113 direct distribution, 16, 20–21; by U.S. majors, 61 Dirlik, Arif, 15 Dirty Carnival, A (2006), 22, 73 Disney, Korean distribution ofﬁce, 16 distribution, 196; data, 11, 23; direct, 16, 20–21, 61; ofﬁces, 16 Ditto (2000), 103 Double Agent (2003), 35–36 The Double Life of Véronique (1991), 103–4, 106–8; analysis of, 105–6 drama (genre), 13 Dr. Bong (1995), 87 DreamWorks, 17–18, 21–22, 24 Duelist (2005), 172 dusabuilcha, as gangster motto, 83 Dusabuilche, 82–83 DVDs, piracy of, 195 D-War (2007), 24, 39, 195; analysis of, 48 East Film, 64 education, as metaphor for relationship in romantic comedy, 99 E J-yong (aka Lee Je-yong), 5–6, 13, 29– 30, 85, 144 Elley, Derek, 103, 120, 149, 178, 181 emoticons, 139 episodic narrative structure, departure from, 40 European cinema, 193; as alternative to Hollywood, 103–4; art cinema, 146 Expect the Unexpected (1998), 65 export expansion (1980s), 27–28

Failan (2001), 103 Fallen Angels (1995), 105, 191 Family Ties (2006), 29–30, 104 Federation of Korea Movie Workers’ Union, 193 ﬁght scenes, 80–81, 141 ﬁle-sharing services, 25 Film Academy (government subsidized), 28 ﬁlm investments, organizations and tax treatment, 19. See also names of companies ﬁlm noir, 75–76 Film Poeta, 22 ﬁlms, classiﬁcation of, 219n38 Film 2.0, 11, 146 Five Marines (1961), 7 ﬂashback, use of: in JSA, 43–45; in Taegukgi, 45–46 Flying Boys (2004), 116, 122; analysis of, 122–23 Forbidden Quest, 151 Forever the Moment (2008), 39–40 Foul King, The (1999), 18 Fox with Nine Tails (1993), 222n15 Frau2 seeks Happyend, 89 Free Trade Agreement (U.S.), 7–8 French New Wave, 4, 104 Friend (2001), 20, 28–29, 32, 61–66, 70, 76, 83, 116, 119, 127; analysis of, 72– 73 From Me to You (1994), 166 Gagman (1988), 6, 168, 173 gangster (genre), 12–13, 60–84; and female characters, 70–71; and high school settings, 69–70; industry concern over criticism of, 73; and male icons, 71; and romantic plots, 70; style-driven, 63–64 gangster comedy (genre), 76–84; conventions of, 83–84; as parody of gangster ﬁlms, 78 Gangster High (2006), 120–21 Index 243

Gateward, Frances, 71 gender and romantic comedy, 87– 101 The General’s Son (series, 1990), 61, 63, 69, 164 generic hybridity, 84 genre, cinematic, 219n38; action, 7; blockbuster, 12, 147, 166, 193, 221n2; comedy, 7, 13; costume drama, 7; drama, 13; gangster, 12–13, 60–84; gangster comedy, 76–84; highquality ﬁlm, 13, 144–63; high school romance, 118; horror/thriller, 7, 13, 124–27, 129; melodrama, 7, 9–10; romance, 85–115, 190; romantic comedy, 12–13, 87–115; sci-ﬁ blockbuster, 12, 35; sci-ﬁ/martial arts, 13; teen, 116–43; teen delinquent, 122; teen horror, 118; war ﬁlm, 7; youth, 7; youth horror, 124– 37 Ghost House (2004), 80 ghost-story formula, 135 gihoek yeonghwa (high concept), 145 Gingko Bed (1996), 18, 20, 28, 222n15; production costs, 33–34 Girls Night Out (1998), 165 global capitalism, 15 globalization, 2, 8, 15–30 Go, 194 Godzilla (1998), comparison to D-War, 48–49 Gold Circle Films, 24 Golden Age, 217n18 Golden Harvest (Hong Kong), 18, 125 A Good Lawyer’s Wife (2003), 29–30, 165 Green Fish (1997), 61, 64, 70, 165 Grim Pictures, 22 Grossman, Andrew, 133 Guiyeoni (Gwiyeoni), 138–43 Guiyeoni syndrome, 138–39, 142 gunsabuilche (Confucian dictum), 82 Gwang-ju massacre, 25, 167 244 Index

hallyu (Korean Wave), 2, 88–89 Hana-bi (1997), as ﬁrst Japanese ﬁlm released in Korea, 65 The Hand of Destiny (1954), 37 han-guk-hyeong (blockbuster), 31 Han Hyeong-mo, 37, 89 Happy End (1999), 55 Hardboiled (1992), 66 Heo In-mu, 226n10 He Was Cool (2004), 116, 138–39, 141 Hi! Dharma! (2001), 24, 60, 77, 144–45 high concept, use of term, 145 high-concept ﬁlm, 146–47 high quality, use of term, 145 high-quality ﬁlm (genre), 13, 144–63; themes of, 146 high school: in Korean gangster cinema, 69–70; in Korean society, 116–18 high school romance (genre), 118 history, and national cinema, 10 Holden, Stephen, 179 Hollywood, 27, 193; ‘‘buddy action’’ ﬁlms, 78; conventions, 34; demand for free trade, 8; and DVD branches in Seoul, 25; gangster ﬁlms, 66; independent ﬁlms, 146; Korean competition with, 28–29; Korean partnership with, 195; market share, 1–2; melodramas, 67; predatory behavior of, 24–25; and release of ﬁlms into Korean market, 16–17; and remake rights, 24, 76–77, 174; school ﬁlms, 120; screwball comedies, 94; and TV, 31; youth ﬁlms, 118 Hollywood blockbuster, 31, 33; and genre, 34–35; and presold properties, 37 Hollywood Reporter, 11, 145 Hong Kong, 194 Hong Kong cinema, 35, 105, 193; action ﬁlms, 61; gangster genre, 41, 61, 65, 77; gangster-hero cycle, 66–67; heroic bloodshed action ﬁlms, 174 Hong Kong New Wave, 4, 39

Hong Sang-soo, 14, 30, 164–66, 169, 182–92, 196 Hong Seong-gi, 7 horror/thriller (genre), 7, 13, 124–25; emergence of, 124–27; traditional and contemporary, 129. See also youth horror (genre) The Host (2006), 1, 7–8, 12, 29–30, 32, 147; analysis of, 48 Hou Hsiao-hsien, 182–83 The Housemaid (1960), 7, 89 House of Flying Daggers, 174 How to Top My Wife (1994), 87 Human Rights Film Festival, 5 Hur Jin-ho, 5–6, 18, 29–30, 64, 85–86, 88, 145, 195 Hyundai, 17 Il Mare (2000), 29–30, 86, 89, 103, 106; analysis of, 107, 113–15 Ilshin Investment Co., 18, 20–21 Im Kwon-taek, 2, 6, 17–19, 39–40, 58, 61, 63, 151, 164, 170, 173 import quota, abolition of, 7 Im Sang-soo, 29–30, 116, 164–65 Im Soon-rye, 39–40 Indian cinema, 35 industry journals, lack of, 11 Infernal Affairs (series, 2002–3), 65 Internet, 138 investigation fabula, 148–49 investors, anxiety among, 24 The Isle (2000), 55, 165, 174, 178–82 I Wish I Had a Wife (2001), 33–34 Jacobs, Lea, 72 Jail Breakers (2002), 23, 77, 78–80; production costs, 33–34 Janghwa, Hongryeon (Korean folktale), 137 Jangsankotmae (cine club), 27 Jang Sun-woo, 6, 13, 18–19, 24, 28, 32, 35, 116, 138, 144, 165–66

Japan: blockbuster distribution in, 32– 33; effects of occupation, 3–4 Japanese anime, 174 Japanese ﬁlms, 193; acceptance of, 4; ﬁrst theatrical release in Korea (1998), 65; Korea’s ban on, 104 Jeong Chang-hwa, 7 Jeong Heung-sun, 60, 81, 144–45 Jeong Jae-eun, 27, 116–17, 122–23, 127 Jeong Ji-wu, 55 Jeong Seong-il (critic), 140–42 Jeong Yong-ki, 82 Jeong Yun-cheol, 22 Jeonju International Film Festival, 5 Jeon Yun-su, 32, 35, 144 Jewel in the Palace (series), 227n18 Jin Jung-kwon (cultural critic), 39 Jo Geun-hyeon, 153 Jo Jin-gyu, 60, 71, 144–45 A Joker in High School (1976), 118 Jo Ui-seok, 116 JSA (Joint Security Area, 2000), 1–2, 12, 20, 28–29, 35–36, 39–40, 71, 145, 164, 170, 189, 193; analysis of, 43– 45, 50–52, 54–58 Jung Cho-shin, 116 Kang Je-gyu, 1, 18, 20, 22, 28–29, 31– 34, 40, 165 Kang Je-gyu Film, 20, 23 Kang Woo-suk, 1, 17, 20, 22, 32, 59, 76, 77–79, 87, 195, 225n35 Kang Woo-suk Communications, 20 Kick the Moon (2001), 60, 78, 78–80 Kieslowski, Krzysztof, 103, 190–91 The Killer (1989), 41, 65–67 Kim Dae-jung, 25, 37, 176 Kim Dae-seung, 103 Kim Dae-woo, 151 Kim Dong-bin, 125 Kim Dong-ju, 66 Kim Dong-won, 76, 116 Kim Du-han II: Righteous Fighter (1975), 61 Index 245

Kim Du-han III (1975), 61 Kim Ho-joon, 116 Kim Hyeon-jeong, 35–36 Kim Hyo-cheon, 61, 63 Kim Jeong-kwon, 103 Kim Ji-hun, 24 Kim Ji-mi, 71 Kim Ji-woon, 13, 18, 22, 27, 30, 55, 61, 125–26, 137, 144, 164 Kim Jo Kwang-su, 39 Kim Jung-il, 37, 176 Kim Ki-duk (b. 1930), 7, 37–38 Kim Ki-duk (b. 1960), 2, 14, 30, 55, 164– 65, 174, 177–82, 196 Kim Ki-yeong, 89 Kim Kyeong-hyeong, 13, 85–86 Kim Kyung-hyun, 6, 71, 166, 168, 182 Kim Linsu, 116 Kim Sang-jin, 23, 33–34, 60, 76–77, 78–79, 225n35 Kim Soyoung, 89 Kim Sung-su (b. 1961), 13, 17, 28–29, 61, 64, 73, 116, 127, 165 Kim Sung-su (b. 1971), 76 Kim Tae-gyun, 13, 22, 29–30, 116, 138, 141, 145 Kim Tae-yong, 29–30, 104, 124 Kim Ui-seok, 6, 17, 87, 145 Kim Young-jun, 22 Kim Yu-jin, 60, 85 King and the Clown (2005), 144, 147 kkangpae (gangster), 60 Kong Jeong-sik, 226n10 Koo & Film, 23, 85 Kookmin Venture Capital, 18 Korean Academy of Film Art (KAFA), 5–6, 29–30 Korean ambivalence about embracing modernity, 9 Korean Film Council (KOFIC), 11, 19, 24–25, 104, 194 Korean ﬁlm industry, 194; aesthetic achievements, 144; concern over criticism of gangster ﬁlms, 73; and 246 Index

Japanese ﬁlms, 125–26; origins of, 2–3 Korean Film Producers Association (KFPA), 194 Korean government: ban on Japanese cinema, 104; and national economic bankruptcy (1997), 63 Korean New Wave, 6, 14, 28, 164, 166– 73; ‘‘second new wave,’’ 165. Korean Telecom, 23 Korean Wave. See hallyu Korea Pictures, 20 KOSDAC (Korean Stock Exchange), 23 Ko Young-nam, 61 Krutnik, Frank, 94 KT, 23 Kurosawa, Akira, 156 Kwak Han-ju (critic), 63 Kwak Jae-Young, 13, 85–86, 116 Kwak Kyung-taek, 28–29, 32, 61–62, 116, 127, 165 Kwon Cheol-hwi, 7, 129 Kwon Jong-kwan, 104 Lau, Andrew, 65, 69 Lee, John H., 85 Lee, Jooran, 133 Lee Bong-rae, 7 Lee Chang-dong, 2, 61, 64, 150, 165, 169, 196; as minister of culture, 174 Lee Chang-ho, 167 Lee Chun-yeon, 125 Lee Eun, 27 Lee Gwang-hun, 87, 174 Lee Hwan-gyeong, 116, 138 Lee Hye-won, 86 Lee Hyun-seung, 29–30, 86, 103 Lee Jeong-beom, 73 Lee Jeong-guk, 85 Lee Jeong-hyang, 5–6, 29–30, 86, 90, 145 Lee Jun-ik, 144 Lee Kwang-mo, 170 Lee Man-hui, 7

Lee Myung-se, 6, 61, 73, 81, 87, 172 Lee Song Hui-il, 39 Lee Yeong-min, 129 The Letter (1997), 85, 124 Libera Me (2000), 22 Lies (2000), 18–19, 166, 173 The Longest Nite (1997), 65 Lotte, 194 A Love (2007), 29 Love Letter, 108; analysis of, 105–6 Love So Divine (2004), 226n10 loyalty, in Korean gangster cinema, 68 Lung Kong, 66 Madame Freedom (1956), 89, 217n18 madangeuk (indigenous cultural art form), 35 Ma Ka-fai, 66 Make It Big (2002), 116 Mandala (1981), 61 Mapado (2005), 77 Marathon (2005), 22 The Marines Who Never Returned (1963), 7 market share, 22, 24 marriage, treatment of, in Marrying the Maﬁa series, 82 The Marriage Story (1992), 6, 17, 20, 87, 145 Marrying the Maﬁa (series, 2002–6), 12, 60, 76; analysis of, 81–82 Marrying the Maﬁa I (2002), 81, 144– 45 Marrying the Maﬁa II (2005), 82 Marrying the Maﬁa III (2006), 76 Martin-Jones, David, 103 Mason, Fran, 68 mass culture, 27 May 18 (2007), 24 media conglomerates, Korean, rise of, 16–30 Megabox, 22 melodrama: in Korean blockbusters, 49; use of term, 67

melodrama (genre), 7, 9–10 Memento Mori (1999), 29–30, 124–25, 127–33, 136–37. See also Whispering Corridors (series, 1998–2005) Memories of Murder (2003), 13, 29–30, 144–47, 150, 153; analysis of, 148– 50, 153–57 Metro Tartan, 164, 174 MGM, 24, 77 migration of creative labor, 196 Milkyway Image Production (Hong Kong), 65 A Millionaire’s First Love (2006), 116, 145 Min Byeong-cheon, 35, 144 minjung movement, 26–28, 35 Min Kyu-dong, 104, 124 Mirae Asset Investment Co., 18–19, 173 Miramax, 22, 77 mise-en-scène, 13, 58, 76, 126, 131, 145, 151, 153–57, 160–63, 178, 184 The Mission (1999), 65 MK Pictures, 23 Moho Film, 22 A Moment to Remember (2004), 85 Moon is . . . the Sun’s Dream, The (1992), 29 Motion Picture Export Association of America (MPEAA), 7 Motion Picture Law (MPL), 1, 16; changed from registration to license system, 3; sixth amendment, 7 Mr. Momma (1992), 17, 87 Muhan Film Venture Capital Co., 19 multigenerational audience, need for, 38 multiplexes, 20–21 The Mummy (1999), 32 The Murmuring (1995), 89, 122 Musa, The Warrior, 29 Mutt Boy (2003), 29, 73 My Boss My Hero (series, 2001, 2006), 76, 116 My Boss My Hero (2001), 13, 76, 83, 118; analysis of, 82–83 Index 247

My Boss My Student (2006), 76, 83–84 My Little Bride (2004), 116 My Love, My Bride (1990), 87 My Lovely Sam-Soon, 227n18 My Lovely Week (2005), 104 My Sassy Girl (2001), 13, 85–89, 98, 101, 113; analysis of, 90, 94–96, 102; remake rights, 24 My Tutor Friend (2003), 13, 85–86, 88, 90, 101; analysis of, 97–100 Myung Film, 20, 23, 54–55 My Wife Is a Gangster (series, 2001–6), 12, 60, 71, 76–77, 84; remake rights, 24 My Wife Is a Gangster (2001), 83, 113, 144–45; analysis of, 80–81 My Wife Is a Gangster II: The Legend Returns, 77, 81 My Wife Is a Gangster III: analysis of, 81

Oasis (2002), 2, 64, 165, 196 The Odd One Dies (1997), 65 Oh Ki-min, 27, 126–27 Oh! Soo-jung: The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (2000), 166, 170, 183–84, 191–92; analysis of, 187–90 Oldboy (2003), 1–2, 29, 58–59, 152–53, 164, 174, 181; analysis of, 176–77. See also Vengeance (trilogy) Once Upon a Time in China (series), 39 Once Upon a Time in High School (2004). See Spirit of Jeet Kune Do One Fine Spring Day (2001), 29–30, 86, 195 180-degree rule, 159 Ong, Aihwa, 10 On Media, 22 Orion, 22 Out to the World (1994), 173

narrative structure, elliptical, 69 national cinema, 10 nationalism, as marketing strategy, 39– 40 Natural City (2003), 12, 35, 144 Neale, Steve, 32–33, 92–93, 96, 221n2 Nelson, Laura, 8 New Hollywood, 34–35 New Line Cinema, 17, 22, 195 New Regency, 17 New Wave. See French New Wave; Hong Kong New Wave; Korean New Wave Night and Day (2008), 166 No Blood No Tears (2002), 71, 153 Noma International, 21 nonlinear narrative, in JSA, 43 Noraereul Chatneun Saramdeul, and minjung movement, 26–28 The North and the South (1965), 37–38 North Korea, representations of, 38 North-South issues, 36–38 No. 3 (1997), 12, 60, 64, 77 Nowhere to Hide (1999), 61, 64, 81, 173; analysis of, 172

Paeopjeonya (1990), 27 Pandora Film Produktion, 174 Paquet, Darcy, 7 Paramount decrees of 1948, 31 Park Chan-wook, 1–2, 14, 22, 28–29, 59, 145, 153, 164, 170, 173–77, 182 Park Cheol-kwan, 60, 77, 144–145 Park Chung-hee (dictator), 3, 7, 167; and censorship, 60 Park Heung-sik, 33–34 Park Jin-pyo, 85 Park Ki-hyeong, 13, 116, 121 Park Kwang-chun, 125 Park Kwang-hyun, 22, 144, 170 Park Kwang-su, 6, 17, 27–28, 87, 165, 168 Peppermint Candy (1999), 64, 150, 165, 169 A Petal (1996), 166, 169 Petty Middle Manager (1961), 7 Phone (2002), 126 piracy, of DVDs, 195 Plenus Entertainment, 23 polarization, of ﬁlm industry, 29–30

248 Index

political activism, 26–28 post-386 Generation, 195–96 post-trauma, cinema of, 169 The Power of Kangwon Province (1998), 166, 183–84, 190, 192 Prankster of Girls’ High School (1977), 118 The President’s Last Bang (2005), 29– 30, 165 Princess Hours, 153, 227n18 Private Tutor (1963), 7 production, in Korean ﬁlm industry: decrease in, 19; recent decline in, 24; vertical integration of, 21–22, 31 production companies, mergers of, 20– 23 production cost, increase in, 19 production values, 2 A Promise (1998), 60, 85, 124 The Promise (2005), 194–95 protective measures, decision to lift, 15–16 PTU (2003), 65 The Public Cemetery under the Moon (1967), 7, 129 Public Toilet, 194 The Puppet Master (1993), 183 Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF), 5 Pusan Promotion Plan (PPP), 196 Queer Film and Video Festival, 5 The Quiet Family (1998), 18, 55, 125 quota system for production and distribution, 3 Rayns, Tony, 178 realism: gritty, 75–76; in Korean New Wave, 170 Red Cliff 2 (2009), 195 remake rights, Hollywood and, 24, 76– 77 Resurrection of the Little Match Girl

(2002), 24, 35, 144, 166, 173; as box ofﬁce disaster, 32 Ring (1999), 125 Ringo Lam, and gangster ﬁlms, 61 R&K Production, 22 Roh Moo-hyun, 176 Roh Tae-woo, 26, 167–68 romance (genre), 85–115, 190; popularity of, 85–88 Romance of Their Own (2004), 22, 29– 30, 116, 138–39, 145; analysis of, 140–43 Romance Papa (1961), 7 Roth, Eli, 164 Rowe, Katherine, 100 Run Away (1995), 17 Running Wild (2006), 23, 76, 89 Ryu Seung-wan, 22, 71, 153 Sad Movie (2005), 104 Saha Monkol, 194 Samaritan Girl (2004), 2, 165, 178 sammai (use of term), 77 sammai comedy, 77–78 Samsung, 17–18, 21 Samsung Entertainment Group (SEG), 17 The Sandwich Man (1983), 183 Saneun Capital, 173 satiric tradition, replaced by sentimentalism, 9 saturation booking, 34, 76, 147; use of term, 21 Schatz, Thomas, 68 sci-ﬁ blockbuster (genre), 12; as boxofﬁce failures, 35 sci-ﬁ/martial arts (genre), 13 screen quota, 1, 7–8, 28; for art-house cinema, 146; U.S. pressure to eliminate, 16 Secret Sunshine (2007), 165 Seogang Communications, 29 Seok Rae-myeong, 118 seol (lunar New Year’s Day), 76 Index 249

Seong Chun Hyang (1961), 7 Seoul Cinema Town, 22 Seoul Film Group, 27, 167 Seoul Jesus (1986), 167 Seven Swords (2005), 194 The Shadowless Sword, 195 Shary, Timothy, 118, 122, 138 She’s On Duty, 118 Shim Hyung-rae, 24 Shim Jae-myung (Sim Jae Myeong), 6 Shin Cheol, 6 Shin Chi-Yun, 6, 63 Shin Cine, 94 Shin-Cine Communications, 20 Shin Han-sol, 116 Shin Sang-ok, 7, 89 Shin Seung-su, 87 Shiri (1999), 1, 12, 18, 20, 23, 28, 31–32, 35–36, 39–40, 62, 71, 193; analysis of, 40–43, 50–52; commercial success of, 49 Shiri syndrome, 32 Shochiku Co. (Japan), 23, 86, 195 Showbox, 18, 21–23, 173, 195 Showeast, 195 Shyamalan, M. Night, 126 Sidus, 23, 64, 86, 195 Silmido (2003), 1, 12, 32–36, 39–40, 59, 147, 193, 195; analysis of, 46–47, 50–52 A Single Spark (1996), 17, 169, 173 The Sixth Sense, 126 SK Telecom, 23 Small Business Corporation (SBC), 19 social structure, 196 Sommers, Stephen, 32 Song Hae-sung, 103 Song Neung-han, 12, 60 sonyeo sensibility, 126–27, 131, 137 Sopyonje (1993), 6, 39–40, 164 Sorum (2001), 126 The Soul Guardians (1998), 125 spatial distance, in Korean romantic cinema, 105–6 250 Index

specialness, and blockbuster status, 32– 33 spectacle, and blockbuster status, 32– 33 Spin Kick, 119 Spirit of Jeet Kune Do (a.k.a. Once Upon a Time in High School, 2004), 13, 70, 116, 120, 127–28, 138; analysis of, 119, 121 Spring in My Home Town (1998), 170 Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring (2003), 165, 174; analysis of, 178–82 Spring Waltz (2006), 88 Staiger, Janet, 11 Stairway to Heaven, 89 Starmax, 194 The Story of a Discharged Prisoner (1967), 66 Story of Chunhyang (1955), 217n18 Stray Dog, 156 Stringer, Julian, 6, 67 Summer Scent (2004), 88 The Surrogate Mother (1987), 61, 164 Sword in the Moon, 174 Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005), 22–23, 58, 164. See also Vengeance (trilogy) Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), 2, 29, 58, 173–74, 177; analysis of, 175–76. See also Vengeance (trilogy) Taebaek Mountain (1994), 17, 170 Taegukgi (2004), 1, 12, 22–23, 31–32, 34–36, 147; analysis of, 45–46, 52– 54 Taeheung, 195 Taiwan, 194 Take Care of My Cat (2001), 27, 117, 127; analysis of, 123–24 Tale of Cinema (2005), 166 A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), 13, 27, 126–27, 137, 144, 147, 151–53; analysis of, 160–63 Tartan, 152

Teach Me English (2003), 29 Tears (2000), 116, 165 teen (genre), 116–43 teen delinquent (genre), 122 teen horror (genre), 118 teen stereotypes, 119 Tell Me Something (1999), 27 temporal barriers, in Korean romantic cinema, 105–6 theaters, 20–21 Thompson, Kristin, 11 Three (trilogy), 194 386 Generation, 4–5, 12, 25–26, 30, 35, 38–39, 58, 148, 165, 167, 193, 196; directors, 28–29. See also post-386 Generation 3-Iron (2004), 2 ticket sales records, 32 Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie (1997), 13, 116, 138, 166, 169; analysis of, 170–71 To, Johnnie, 65 Toei (Japan), 194 Tong-Yang Group, 18 To the Starry Island (1993), 173 To Top My Wife (1995), 17 To You, From Me (1994), 168–69, 173 transnational cinema, use of term, 10 The True Story of Kim Du-han (1974), 61 Tsai Ming-liang, 184 Tsui Hark, 39, 194 Tube (2002), 12, 32, 35, 144 Tube Investment, 19 A Turning Gate (2002), 166, 174, 183– 84, 192; analysis of, 186–87 Twentieth Century Fox, 21; Korean distribution ofﬁce, 16 Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 24 Two Cops (series, 1993–1998), 76–79 Two Cops 1 (1994), 17, 20, 77–78, 79 Two Cops 2 (1996), 78, 79

Two Cops 3 (1998), 78 2046, 174 2 Way Media, 18 Typhoon, 23, 29, 195 UIP, 21 United States, 3; direct distribution rights, 8. See also Hollywood Uno Film, 20, 64 Untold Scandal (2003), 13, 29–30, 144, 147; analysis of, 150–51, 157–60 Uprising (1999), 173 Uruguay Round, 3 Variety, 11, 86 Vengeance (trilogy), 164, 174, 182 Venice Film Festival, 2, 165, 178 victimology, sense of, as recurrent theme in Korean blockbusters, 35– 36 Vietnam, 194 Village Roadshow, 18, 125 Voice (2005), 124, 128, 130–31. See also Whispering Corridors (series, 1998– 2005) Volcano High (2001), 13, 29–30, 116, 119–21, 141 Wai Ka-fai, 65 Wang Xiaoshuai, 196 war ﬁlm (genre), 7 Warner Brothers, 21; Korean distribution ofﬁce, 16 Warshow, Robert, 68 The Way Home (2002), 30, 145 Welcome to Dongmakgol (2005), 22, 144, 147, 170 well-made ﬁlm. See high-quality ﬁlm (genre) Wet Dreams (2002), 116 What Time Is It There? (2001), 184 When Harry Met Sally, 93 Whispering Corridors (series, 1998– 2005), 116, 124–37 Index 251

Whispering Corridors (1998), 13, 27, 124, 127, 129 Wild Animals (1996), 178 Wild Scoundrels of College, 118 Willemen, Paul, 9 Windstruck (2005), 85 Winter Sonata (2002), 88–89 Wishing Stairs (2003), 124, 129–31. See also Whispering Corridors (series, 1998–2005) Woman Is the Future of Man (2004), 166, 187, 196 Woman on the Beach (2006), 166, 189 Women’s Film Festival, 5 Wong Jing and gangster ﬁlms, 61 Wong Kar-wai, 73, 105, 174, 190–91 Woo, John, 41, 61, 66–67, 195 Wyatt, Justin, 145 xiao (hyo, ‘‘ﬁlial piety’’), 67 yakuza ﬁlms, Japanese, as inﬂuence, 60 Yalgae (series), 118 Yalgaejeon (1965), 118 Yang Yun-ho, 22

252 Index

Yau, Patrick, 65 Yeh, Emily, 104 Yeo Kyun-dong, 173 Yeonriji Here and Forever, 23, 89 yeosong ﬁlm, 89–90 Yesterday (2002), 12, 32, 35, 144 yi (righteousness), 66–67 Yi Hyo-in, 6 You Are My Sunshine (2005), 85 Young and Dangerous: The Prequel (1998), 69 youth (genre), 7 youth horror (genre), 124–37 Yu Ha, 13, 22, 70, 73, 116, 127 Yu Hyun-mok, 7, 9 Yu Ji-na (critic), 87 Yun Jae-yeon, 124, 129 Yun Je-gyun, 13, 76, 116 Yun Jong-chan, 126 Yun Seok-ho, 88 Yu Young-sik, 18–19 Zhang Yimou, 174 zhong (chung, ‘‘loyalty to one’s superior’’), 67