54
THE PEOPLE IN WHITE
30
TO THE STARRY
1 ISLAND
Hidden
PARK GWANGSU, 1993
The first film to take full advantage
of the new freedoms of speech in
1993, Park’s poetic drama uses two
time-frames to explore Korea’s modern
tragedy. In the present, the villagers
of Kwisong Island unite to block the
burial of a man expelled from the
community in the early 1950s. In a series
of flashbacks the local schoolteacher
Gems
recalls the joys and terrors of life on the
island when the Korean War erupted:
a splendidly earthy vision of an organic
way of life brought down by political
treachery. This being Korea, it takes
a shaman to expose the red-baiting
shame of how everything went wrong.
Tony Rayns
of
New
TO YOU, FROM ME
2 JANG SUNWOO, 1994
A deliberately shocking
curveball in Jang’s career (made right
after winning a prize in Berlin for a
sublime neo-Buddhist fable), this funny,
scabrous satire plumbs the depths of
the new vulgarity of the ‘liberated’ 90s.
The protagonists are a blocked novelist
(convicted of plagiarism, now trying to
Korean
write porno fiction), a bank clerk who
escapes from the boredom of his job
into Hollywood-fuelled fantasies and a
smart/sexy young working-class woman
on the rebound from abuse at the
hands of a leftist student activist. It’s
like a John Waters movie with added
style, political awareness and joyful
masochism. Tony Rayns
Cinema
THE MURMURING
3 BYUN YOUNGJOO, 1995
The Murmuring is the first in
a trilogy of documentary films directed
by Byun Youngjoo based around the
experiences of an ageing group of
‘comfort women’ (sex slaves for the
Japanese army during World War II).
The rhythm of the film is dictated by
the day-to-day activities of the women
korean cinema specialists, writers and as they protest outside the Japanese
embassy calling for an apology. This is
directors, including lee changdong, juxtaposed with the women’s stories of
park chanwook and chung seo-kyung, suffering at the soldiers’ hands, offering
an affective visual dialogue of bodily
pick great films from the past trauma. The film is a harrowing journey
three decades that failed to get the into the depths of colonial cruelty, the
scars of which are indelibly marked on
at tention they deserved in the uk the women’s bodies, attesting to the
truth of their trauma. Colette Balmain
4 BAE YONGGYUN, 1995
Bae Yonggyun is one of the
most mysterious f igures in the history
of Korean cinema. He made two f ilms
on his own outside the f ilm industry
and then retreated to live largely in
seclusion. This highly meditative
f ilm, deeply rooted in history and
memory, is one of the highlights of
New Korean Cinema. It follows a
man who returns to his hometown
after living overseas for many
years. He roams like a sleepwalker
through the bleak town, getting into
conversations with people who could
be dead or alive. An extraordinary
‘ghost story’ unprecedented in Korean
cinema. Yoo Unseong
NO. 3
5
SONG NEUNGHAN, 1997
For his debut film, Song
Neunghan mixed together all the
elements of B movies as if making
bibimbap, and created a scathing,
witty satire of Korean society and
Korean people’s rankism, achievement-
orientation, snobbery and materialism.
No. 3 is a film like a rare breed born into
the unjust and subversive vegetable
garden known as Korea, and one
we can also call an example of black
comedy or of the character trope-based
storyline. No. 3 provided the impetus
for what would become the Korean film
industry’s go-to for a sure-fire box-office
hit –gangster comedy – but among the
countless imitations that succeeded
it, none could compare in creativity.
After Song’s slightly more serious and
abstract second film, Fin de Siecle, was
shunned by critics and at the box office,
he emigrated to Canada and left an
irreplaceable hole in Korean cinema.
Lee Changdong
Translated by Clare Richards
RAINBOW TROUT
6 PARK JONGWON, 1999
Rainbow Trout is a brutally
compelling Deliverance-style thriller,
in which every small moment might
result in bloodshed. Director Park
Jongwon explored the drama of
power relationships in several films
in the 1990s, including Our Twisted
Hero (1992), and continues to develop
the theme here. A small van-load of
city dwellers heads to a mountain
trout farm for a weekend getaway,
but after the first night of drinking,
their vacation goes awry. Sol Kyunggu
appears in his first main role as
husband to the acclaimed actress Kang
Sooyeon, who died this year at the age
of 55. Eunji Lee

SORUM
7 YOON JONGCHAN, 2001
Steeped in desolation, Yoon
Jongchan’s Sorum, an atmospheric
horror film about a cabdriver (Kim
Myungmin) who moves into a rundown
flat with a mysterious history, is
reminiscent of Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s best
work. Yoon lost his partner when the
Sampoong Department Store collapsed
in 1995, killing more than 500 people, a
traumatic event in the country’s cultural
memory. The aftermath of the incident
is palpable in the film, which avoids
genre clichés and aims for a truly bitter
aftertaste. Gripping performances by
Kim and Jang Jinyoung, who died in
2009, are reason enough to watch it.
Eugene Kwon
TAKE CARE OF MY CAT
8 11
JEONG JAEEUN, 2001
Take Care of My Cat is
the story of three women in their
twenties. Coming out of the cinema,
I remember thinking that I would like
to do anything that would contribute
to making that kind of movie. Even
watching it now, the film has lost none
of its charm, with beautiful images, a
relatable story and great characters.
I still remember the selfishness of
the character played by Lee Yowon,
who leaves the cat behind with the
others, and the shape of Bae Doona’s
character’s nose as she looks afar. Even
watching the film back then, it had a
tinge of nostalgia. Chung Seo-kyung
the film’s
action
choreography
helps to
convey an
atmosphere of
overwhelming
helplessness
yoon jongchan’s
atmospheric
horror film
is reminiscent
of kurosawa
kiyoshi’s
best work
the film has
lost none of
its charm,
with beautiful
images
and great
characters
ONCE UPON A TIME
9 IN HIGH SCHOOL
YU HA, 2004
“Cursing schools / I longed for all
things forbidden / and strolled around.”
This line from a poetry collection by
Yu Ha, poet and filmmaker, captures
the essence of Once upon a Time in High
School, a brutal depiction of the realities
of growing up in the 1970s. Its young
hero’s love of Bruce Lee and nunchucks
become tools for survival when he
transfers to a school that’s notorious
for violent bullies, but the film’s action
choreography is less about offering
viewer gratification than in conveying
an atmosphere of overwhelming
helplessness. Yu’s film resonated widely
enough to become a box-office and
critical hit in Korea. Eugene Kwon
55
Korean Cinema Now 
SPIDER FOREST
10 SONG ILGON, 2004
Song Ilgon’s feature starts
off as a classic amnesiac thriller and
This haunting
ends up as an uncanny psychological
enigma, as Kang Min (Kam Woosung) and melancholic
wakes first in a forest near a murdered
couple, and then from a coma caused
by subsequent head injuries, and must
journey
retrace and revise his own forgotten
identity. This increasingly haunting and evokes alfred
melancholic backward journey evokes
Alfred Hitchcock, Alain Resnais and
David Lynch, as mixed-up memory,
Hitchcock, alain
desperate loss, overwhelming guilt
and ghosts from the past offer a heady
Resnais and
blend, and primal scenes prove places
of eternal return. Anton Bitel david Lynch
FACELESS THINGS BREATHLESS
KIM KYUNGMOOK, 2005 13 YANG IKJUNE, 2008
Since it features sado-
masochistic gay sex (including a
In this startling and
uncompromising debut feature, writer-
graphic scene of coprophilia), Kim’s
debut feature is both the most maudit
director Yang Ikjune stars as Sanghoon,
a violent, foul-mouthed loan shark who
Korean independent ever made and
the nearest thing in Korean culture
to photos by Robert Mapplethorpe.
only knows how to communicate with
his fists. That is, until he strikes up
an unlikely friendship with a troubled
Comprising just three fixed-angle
shots, it adds up to a meditation on
high-school girl, Yeonhee (Kim Kkotbi).
Yang tackles the uneasy subject of
‘dirt’ and the social exclusion of the
masked and ‘faceless’; it also suggests
provocative things about point of view
domestic violence with a compelling
lead performance. Shot with handheld
cameras, often in extreme close-up, the
in cinema, ending with a close-up of
Kim himself staring out defiantly at the
film conveys the deep-seated anger
and shame of its characters with grim
viewer. Surprisingly, the Korean left-
liberal government in power at the time
subsidised a DVD release on the indie
realism. The result is a powerful film
that holds its audience’s attention
throughout its two-hour run-time.
Mediact label. Tony Rayns Eunji Lee
BLOSSOM AGAIN
12
JUNG JIWOO, 2005
This melodrama about a
love affair between a teacher and her
teenage student is a film that lingers
with you for years after watching, for
reasons that aren’t easy to put into
words. Though it may not seem it at
first, it’s a cerebral film about falling
in love for the first time, and about
the circle of life and how similar
choices and mistakes are made by each
new generation. It is full of the kind
of fleeting moments in life that are
beautiful precisely because they don’t
last forever. Christine Ko
56
CRUSH AND BLUSH
14
LEE KYUNGMI, 2008
I always mention this film
when someone outside South Korea
asks me for a film recommendation.
Although I was involved in its
production and screenplay, this is a
pure Lee Kyungmi film. The only thing
I did was to help her really bring out
the film’s unique colour. It’s unique on
every level. As a producer, I encouraged
Lee to make it even more unique to the
point of excess and outright silliness.
The film deals in a very honest way
with the female character’s foibles.
I think it captures the emotions and
desires of an ordinary woman without
any unnecessary aestheticisation or
idealising gesture. And as a comedy,
there has never been a funnier film in
South Korean cinema, period.
Park Chanwook
15
THE JOURNALS
OF MUSAN
PARK JUNGBUM, 2010
Park Jungbum is known as an
uncompromising filmmaker whose
work interrogates extractive capitalism
from the perspective of the most
marginalised people in society. This
impressive debut feature fearlessly
reveals the brutal reality faced by Jeon
Seungchul, a North Korean refugee
living in Seoul. The handheld camera
captures the protagonist – based on a
close friend of the director, and played
by Park himself – as he desperately
tries to make a life for himself in this
merciless new place. We bear witness
to the exasperated physicality of
Seungchul’s exhausting day-to-day
struggles, but the film never depicts him
as a mere victim, instead illuminating
the dignity of a man who refuses to give
in to despair. Hyun Jin Cho
OKI’S MOVIE
16 HONG SANGSOO, 2010
Of the 28 (and counting)
features Hong Sangsoo has directed
since 1996, it can be hard to single out
one as representative or pivotal. But
the sly, knotty Oki’s Movie has a special
place in the Hong hall of mirrors: the
first film he made without any pre-
planning, not even a script treatment,
it is also, remarkably, one of his most
structurally complex films, examining
a love triangle via four stories whose
interrelation remains unclear. His first
film named for a female character, it
enacts a movement toward a female
perspective in its very structure,
prefiguring an overall tendency in his
work. The final segment takes the form
of a short film by Oki, who sums it up
much as Hong himself might: “Things
repeated with differences I could not
understand.” Dennis Lim
THE KING OF PINGS
17
YEON SANGHO, 2011
South Korea’s social hierarchy
is replicated in the classroom, where the
rich kids brutalise the rest with a regime
of vicious bullying. A frame narrative
shows us that the victims’ trauma lingers
into adulthood, compounding existing
inequalities. Working on a shoestring
budget, writer-director Yeon Sangho
(who moved to live action in 2016 with
Train to Busan) stages the escalating
violence with muscular framing and bursts
of kinetic animation. Subtle it ain’t, but as
drama it is grimly engaging, and as social
critique bluntly effective. An arresting
final line, coupled with a jolting zoom-
out, memorably captures the prevailing
mood of despair. Alex Dudok de Wit
THE ATTORNEY
18
YANG WOOSUK, 2013
This courtroom drama set in
the late 1970s and 80s is one of the top
20 box-office hits of all time in South
Korea. It is a biographical character
study of Roh Moohyun, a lawyer and
human rights activist who went on to
become South Korea’s president in
2003. Heartwarming and comically
charming, as well as poignant and
inspiring, this moving portrait of one of
the most politically and socially charged
periods in Korean history provides a
clear, if at times biased, picture of how
the country came to be the way it is
today. Christine Ko
MAN ON HIGH HEELS
19 JANG JIN, 2014
A leading theatre director,
Jang Jin is also a disruptive satirist
(his stewardship of Saturday Night Live
Korea twice caused national uproar)
and the writer/director of a dozen or
so highly original films. Man on High
Heels accurately reproduces the ultra-
violence and macho plotting of other
Korean cop-gangster movies, right
down to the put-upon policewoman
who nurses a crush on a male colleague
while she tracks down a serial rapist.
The twist is that the male colleague
(Cha Seongwon, maybe Jang’s
favourite actor, first seen naked in a
sauna) is saving up to transition to
female. Tony Rayns
Subtle it ain’t,
but as drama
it is grimly
engaging,
and as social
critique bluntly
effective
KARAOKE CRAZIES
20
KIM SANGCHAN, 2016
At the seedy Addiction
Karaoke Bar, a group of oddballs form
a fractured family. Characters have
hidden here after losses – of family, of
reputation – and spiral further, until
the arrival of perky Naju (Kim Nami),
whose backstory is just as tragic
but who is determined to infuse the
place with true karaoke spirit. Kim
Sangchan’s film feels for much of its
length like an off-Ealing comedy from
the 1950s but the threat of a serial killer
and tactful revelations of the truly
appalling things that have brought
these people to this place betray a
much, much darker sensibility. At once
sweet and sinister. Kim Newman
LITTLE FOREST
21 YIM SOONRYE, 2017
Little Forest centres on the
existential journey of Hyewon, who
returns to her home village from
Seoul, leaving behind her boyfriend
and dreams of being a teacher. The
narrative unfolds over a year, divided
into seasons, paralleling Hyewon’s inner
journey with cyclical changes in nature.
Although her mother is absent, she is
omnipresent through memories, which
concern the preparation and eating of
food made from seasonal fruits and
vegetables. As Hyewon repeats her
mother’s rituals of love with her friends,
she begins to understand her, and her
choices, and finds the strength to make
her own. Colette Balmain
MICROHABITAT
22
JEON GOWOON, 2017
Jeon Gowoon’s playfully
satirical debut follows Miso, a
thirtysomething former musician
turned house cleaner. When the cost
of living starts to bite, Miso chooses
to give up her tiny flat rather than
sacrifice her two remaining pleasures
– whisky and cigarettes. She embarks
on a ‘tour’ around Seoul staying with
former band members and witnessing
the compromises they’ve had to make
in order to find stability. Tackling the
weighty subjects of economic disparity
and structural misogyny, Jeon resists a
social realist approach, instead creating
an intimate, absorbing character study,
full of humour and originality. Miso’s is
a stylish rebellion against what one is
supposed to do, have and be.
Hyun Jin Cho
Jeon resists
social realism,
instead creating
an intimate
character
study full of
humour and
originality
 30 HIDDEN GEMS OF KOREAN CINEMA 57

GRAEAE: A WHISPERING

Korean Cinema Now 

27 STATIONED IDEA
JEONG YEOREUM, 2020
This creative reinvention of the essay
film presents an inquiry into the Cold
War origins of Yongsan Garrison in
Seoul, the former headquarters of the
US military, through a rich array of
images and documents explored through
the director’s own shifting subjectivity:
as a quasi-historian, a collector and
a player of Pokémon Go. Reflecting
the way in which our consciousness of
space and time and our memory have
been restructured by digital networks,
platforms and interfaces, the film shows
how Korean documentary cinema has
been dynamically expanding its technical
and aesthetic boundaries. Jihoon Kim
28 CORRIDORS 6:
THE HUMMING
LEE MIYOUNG, 2021
The Humming is the sixth film in the
Whispering Corridors series. Each film is
a standalone story, focusing on girlhood
and school rivalry. Here, Eunhee returns
to her childhood school as a teacher,
haunted by memories that seem to have
ghostly origins. In order to save her
students from the ‘ghost’, she is forced to
confront this trauma. Viewing girlhood
through the perspective of an adult,
The Humming offers a different concept
of haunting to the previous films,
locating it within the repressed political
past rather than in interpersonal
relationships. Colette Balmain

HOUSE OF
23 HUMMINGBIRD
KIM BORA, 2018
In 1994, as the newly democratised nation
Kim Bora’s debut
struggles to fix its identity, life for a
teenage girl in a Seoul tower block is no feature offers
picnic. Parents are worked to the bone,
relations with siblings are fractious, school
is an authoritarian results factory. Park
a tapestry of
Jihu’s mesmerising performance registers
the painful progress of tiny steps towards
micro and macro
selfhood, while writer-director Kim Bora’s
evidently semi-autobiographical debut
feature is a tapestry of micro and macro
emotional and
emotional and ideological significance.
Delicately alive in the historical moment,
ideological
this ruminative memoir underlines the
lowly status accorded to women in the
national picture. Trevor Johnston
significance
IN THE ABSENCE MY NAME IS KIM ALONERS
24 YI SEUNJUN, 2018 26 BOKDONG 29 HONG SUNGEUN, 2021 Hong Sungeun’s
Examining the 2014 Sewol SONG WONGEUN, 2019 Jina (Gong Seungyeon) lives
ferry disaster, in which 304 people (250
of whom were students at the same
A documentary looking at three
decades in the life of Kim Bokdong, one
a solitary life working at a credit-card
call centre. She avoids building close aloners
school) died as a result of widespread
negligence and a lack of action over
safety concerns, this short documentary
of the last remaining Korean ‘comfort
women’, and her tireless fight to get
the Japanese government to take full
relationships, choosing to eat by herself
and to live alone, with her headphones,
phone, webcam and television as her only
offers a deft
is simply but effectively constructed,
contrasting aerial footage of the sinking
responsibility for the issue and officially
apologise to the victims. Seeking to
real company. One day, the only next-door
neighbour who has made any effort to diagnostic
ferry with audio recordings that show
politicians prioritising optics over
life-saving measures. Testimonies
ensure that future generations won’t
forget about the the injustices of war
and the horrors experienced by these
talk to her is found dead in his apartment,
having lain undiscovered for several days.
Directing, writing and editing for the first
sketch of urban
from survivors, volunteer divers and
mourning parents, presented alongside
women, the film doesn’t force you to
feel pity, but the sheer resilience and
time on a feature, Hong Sungeun offers a
deft diagnostic sketch of urban isolation isolation and
transcribed text messages from the
teenagers, are utterly heartbreaking,
as is the footage of floating shoes and
unwavering determination of this
warm, powerful woman will move
you in the deepest parts of your soul.
and alienation, with Gong outstanding in
her first role in a feature film. Eunji Lee alienation
schoolbags submerged in the wreckage. Christine Ko
Thomas Flew

SCATTERED NIGHT THE GIRL ON A

25 KIM SOL AND LEE
JIHYOUNG, 2019 this is one of the 30 BULLDOZER
PARK RIWOONG, 2022
Compassionate yet unsentimental,
relatable yet highly imaginative, this
film is one of the most heartfelt and
most heartfelt Park Riwoong’s film follows a fearless
young woman determined to unravel
the truth behind a car accident that
nuanced reflections on the dissolution
of a family we’ve seen in recent years. and nuanced leaves her father in a coma. The film is
remarkable in the way it refuses to allow
Forced to choose between parents,
ten-year-old Sumin and her older
brother Jinho powerlessly observe
reflections on our attention to waver for a second, and
keeps us following on the heels of our
protagonist until we face the conclusion
their separation, but Sumin won’t give
up hope of reconciliation. Beautifully
the dissolution side by side with her. Though we start
out observing her through bleary eyes
understated performances and
naturalistic dialogue neatly capture
the essence of family dynamics. The
of a family and with crossed arms, before long
we find ourselves clasping our hands

film’s open-ended, no-frills approach

amplifies the tensions and tenderness
between characters, allowing empathy
with their plight. Hyun Jin Cho
we’ve seen in together and sending her support from
the edge of our seats. I don’t know if
I’ve had a more vivid experience in the
recent years cinema in the last ten years. July Jung
Translated by Clare Richards