Although it has gone criminally underreported in the rest of the world until recently, for the past several years South Korea has been enjoying a full-fledged renaissance of indigenous moviemaking. Those who have noticed inevitably compare the recent boom in Korean homegrown films to the burst of talent and enthusiasm that re-energized Hong Kong’s cinema in the late ’70s and early ’80s. World cinema fans should brace themselves for an explosion of vitality and creativity from a cast of characters who will likely dominate the Korean film industry for decades to come.

Any time a country begins to produce domestic hits that outperform the high-profile Hollywood exports at the box office, it’s time to take notice. Considering Hollywood’s estimated 85 percent share of the global market, that’s a huge accomplishment. That was exactly the case, though, when South Korean revenues for 1999’s blockbuster blend of espionage and romance, Kang Jae-Gyu’s Shiri, eclipsed the record set there by Titanic. Fast moving—with the shattering impact of John Woo’s better work, Shiri reached the one million viewer mark in Seoul in 23 days. (It took Titanic 38 days to reach the same mark.) Last year’s smash drama of the tensions and absurdities of life along the line between North and South Korea, Park Chan-Wook’s Joint Security Area, was even more successful, becoming the highest grossing film in Korean history.

While these two films are especially impressive illustrations of the hold Korean moviemakers have on their public’s imagination, they’re just a small part of the ever-growing body of South Korean cinema. A combination of liberalizing social standards, protectionist policies favoring Korean-made movies, a youth population prone to protest and self-expression and free-flowing funds courtesy of Korean corporations has fueled a new Golden Age of indigenous movies.

The current growth of the South Korean film industry contrasts starkly with the lack of examples in its roots. The country’s history of war, foreign intervention and economic chaos has left South Korea with an extraordinarily skimpy celluloid record of early work. Nevertheless, scholars recognize three key periods, or “Golden Ages,” in the country’s cinema. Of the first, which lasted from 1926 to 1935, not a single example survives. Last year, one reel of 1936’s Shimchung was found in Russia and returned to Korea. This is presumably the earliest artifact of Korean film.

Three films dated prior to 1946 survive, but all were filmed by occupying forces during WWII. Though Korea produced 15 movies a year from the time of Japan’s surrender in WWII to the outbreak of the Korean War in 1953, only five of these remain.

Film production never approached its potential until after the Korean War. And only then did the country enjoy enough stability to foster its second Golden Age. Spanning a period from the late 1950s through the 1960s—the second Golden Age included those films now regarded as the “classics” of Korean cinema. Moviemakers who dominated this period included Yu Hyun-Mok, Kim Ki-Young and Shin Sang-Ok—whose odd life would make a terrific film in itself (after a very successful career in South Korea, he was kidnapped into North Korea, where he was forced to make films. He later escaped to North America where he has directed and/or produced a handful of forgettable genre films, including installments in the Three Ninjas series). Im Kwon-Taek is the only moviemaker from this era whose work in the subsequent doldrums of the 1970s is taken seriously. Unfortunately, movies from this era have rarely been screened outside of Korea. The rest of the world has yet to see many of the “foundation” films that set the standards for the Korean film industry.

It took the easing of restrictions on screenings of foreign films in 1984 (Japanese films were finally allowed in 1999) and a climate of demonstrations in the wake of the Kwang-Ju Massacre, to inspire the next wave of progressive cinema in South Korea. A generation of politicized young Koreans with something to say began writing, producing and filming their own visions, energizing the film scene and fueling the birth of a full-fledged independent cinema.

South Korea’s “indie revolution” has produced an impressive body of experimental work, short films, documentaries and moviemaking collectives like Jangsangotmae, for example, which made the pro-union opus The Night Before the Strike. The country’s protectionist policies mandate that every theater devote 115 days a year to Korean movies, a situation uniquely helpful to a fledgling independent movement. With an average of one major film festival a month, there are plenty of potential screens for shorts and experimental work. The Chonju International Film Festival, for example, has a specific mandate to feature interesting alternative work, with a particular emphasis on digital film.

In a panel on Korean film at Montreal’s first AmerAsia International Film & Video Festival, indie moviemaker Yun-Tae Kim estimated South Korea’s independent output—shorts and videos included—at around 300 films annually. Moreover, he observed that the Korean Film Commission has begun to throw its support and, more importantly, its funding, to independent projects as well.

Mainstream offerings have likewise never been better, nor more plentiful. Im Kwon-Taek, cited by many as Korea’s foremost director, scored a recent critical hit with this year’s Chunhyang. A retelling of an oft-filmed Korean folktale, the film is one of three high profile Korean releases to play U.S. theaters this year. The other two films are Jang Sun-Woo’s Lies, which challenged the Korean censors with its overtly sexual content (at home, the censors won) and Nowhere to Hide, by Lee Myung-Se. This stylish and darkly hilarious crime story has already been called “the single best film to come out of Korea in the modern era.”

The growing awareness of Korea’s flourishing film scene has also led to some notable film festival screenings for recent Korean hits. In addition to Montreal’s AmerAsian festival, New York City’s Subway Cinema and the Korean Film Forum put together a tremendously popular event called “When Korean Cinema Attacks.” The festival featured 11 recent films, including Joint Security Area, Chang Yoon-Hyun’s Tell Me Something, a dark and visceral thriller; The Foul King, Kim Ji-Woon’s comic farce about a bank teller who “finds himself” via the world of professional wrestling (in a very game bit of realism, the actors do their own body slams!); and the multiple-award winning Barking Dogs Never Bite, by Bong Joon-Ho.

There still aren’t many avenues available to those of us in the West who want to see more Korean product. Yet with its rich and rewarding array of styles and approaches, it’s definitely a cinema to watch closely. I’ll keep hoping for a Korean film festival in my area. For now, I’ll content myself with tapes I don’t understand from the local Korean market, secure in the knowledge that films this good won’t be a secret forever. MM