The South Korean Film Renaissance: Local Hitmakers, Global Provocateurs

by Jinhee Choi

Overview

How a homegrown cinema took on Hollywood and dazzled Cannes

For the past decade, the Korean film industry has enjoyed a renaissance. With innovative storytelling and visceral effects, Korean films not only have been commercially viable in the domestic and regional markets but also have appealed to cinephiles everywhere on the international festival circuit. This book provides both an industrial and an aesthetic account of how the Korean film industry managed to turn an economic crisis—triggered in part by globalizing processes in the world film industry—into a fiscal and cultural boom. Jinhee Choi examines the ways in which Korean film production companies, backed by affluent corporations and venture capitalists, concocted a variety of winning production trends. Through close analyses of key films, Choi demonstrates how contemporary Korean cinema portrays issues immediate to its own Korean audiences while incorporating the transnational aesthetics of Hollywood and other national cinemas such as Hong Kong and Japan. Appendices include data on box office rankings, numbers of films produced and released, market shares, and film festival showings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819569400
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2010
Series:	Wesleyan Film Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

JINHEE CHOI is a lecturer in film studies at the University of Kent in the U.K. She is the coeditor of Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures (2005) and Horror to the Extreme: Changing Boundaries in Asian Cinema (2009). She has widely published in such journals as the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, the British Journal of Aesthetics, Asian Cinema, Post Script, and Jump Cut.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 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 government'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 production-distribution 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 box-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 production-distribution 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). In 1995 Samsung created Samsung Entertainment Group (SEG) to manage its media and entertainment division. After the establishment ofSEG, 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 distributor, established CJ Entertainment in 1996, launching itself into the motion-picture business rather late compared to other conglomerates. 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-TVnetworks: 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 (Cine-House 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 box-office hit The Foul King, directed by Kim Ji-woon. Mirae Venture Capital Co., an affiliate of Mirae Asset Investment Co. — which launched the first mutual fund in Korea — invested in films such as Lies (Jang Sunwoo), Chunhyang (Im Kwon-taek), and The Anarchists (Yu Young-sik) in 2000.

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.

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 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) — were all produced by new players in the industry: Kang Je-gyu 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 co-venture 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 renovate and equip themselves with multiple screens. 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.

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "The South Korean Film Renaissance"
by .
Copyright © 2010 Jinhee Choi.
Excerpted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Faces of Globalization
Blockbusters, Korean Style
No Blood? No Tears! Gangster Cinema
I'm Not a Girl, Yet Not a Woman: Romance Films
Once Upon a Time in High School: Teen Pics
Not Just Metteurs-en-Scène? ''High-Quality'' Films
Riding the New Wave
Afterword
APPENDIXES
Box Office Top Ten (1986 – 2006)
Korean Film Market Share
Number of Films Produced/Released (1986 – 2006)
Number of Theaters/Screens (1986 – 2006)
International Film Festivals: Award-Winning Films (1986 – 2006)
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Not all blockbusters come from Hollywood. For a decade South Korea has created films that galvanize a local audience, regional audiences, film festivals, and the European and North American multiplexes. In this discerning study, Jinhee Choi reveals in fascinating detail how a small local cinema became a global powerhouse."—David Bordwell, University of Wisconsin–Madison

"This is the book we've all been waiting for on the unique success story that is the New Korean Cinema. Choi provides a thorough and engaging account of the film industry and how it has transformed narrative and style in genres ranging from gangster films to high school films, horror, and romance.""—Chris Berry, Goldsmiths, University of London

"Not all blockbusters come from Hollywood. For a decade South Korea has created films that galvanize a local audience, regional audiences, film festivals, and the European and North American multiplexes. In this discerning study, Jinhee Choi reveals in fascinating detail how a small local cinema became a global powerhouse."—David Bordwell, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Editorial Reviews

"Here is an excellent book to add to the too-short shelf of work on the cinema of South Korea, which of late has produced some excellent films.... Deftly illustrated with frame blowups, and including useful appendixes charting box-office hits, film production overall in South Korea, and award-wining films, Choi's book provides an energetic, accessible overview of the Korean cinema as a popular art form. An excellent choice as either a course text or a library resource, this book fills a particular niche. Highly recommended (for) all readers."—W.W. Dixon, Choice

"Jinhee Choi's book contains information and insights that simply cannot be found elsewhere. It represents a major new contribution to the field, and has obvious value to researchers in the field, and to teachers, for use as a textbook on undergraduate Korean cinema courses."—Daniel Martin, Film and Television Studies

"an earnest focus on the fundamentals of the film industry's growth in the past decadeChoi's real strengths shine in the first pages of each chapter, which lucidly describe the domestic and sometimes foreign triumphs of various cycles and forms, and which also suggest the particularities and innovations that differentiate Korean products from the global conventions from which they drawThis detailed comparative perspectivewill prove useful for students of Korean film for the way they flesh out the body of national cinema with concrete and specific detail."—Steven Chung, Journal of Intercultural Studies

"It's a well-roundsed examination that knits together the many filmic strands of the last two decades to construct a thesis on how the 'renaissance' occurred."—James Havis & Borah Chung, Cineaste

"South Korean Film Renaissance: Local Hit Makers, Global Provocateurs, written by Choi Jin-hee in English probes how the Korean film industry turned an economic crisis into a cinematic renaissance. The book gives an exact historical chronicled assessment of the Korean film industry"—Chung Ah-young, The Korea Times

"Here is an excellent book to add to the too-short shelf of work on the cinema of South Korea, which of late has produced some excellent films. Deftly illustrated with frame blowups, and including useful appendixes charting box-office hits, film production overall in South Korea, and award-wining films, Choi's book provides an energetic, accessible overview of the Korean cinema as a popular art form. An excellent choice as either a course text or a library resource, this book fills a particular niche. Highly recommended (for) all readers."—W.W. Dixon, Choice

"Choi's book does admirably what it sets out to do: to explain, from a theoretically critical, technical/aesthetic point of view, how Korean cinema modernized itself in the face of many challenges, both domestic and international."—Gord Sellar, The Japan Times

"Not all blockbusters come from Hollywood. For a decade South Korea has created films that galvanize a local audience, regional audiences, film festivals, and the European and North American multiplexes. In this discerning study, Jinhee Choi reveals in fascinating detail how a small local cinema became a global powerhouse."—David Bordwell, University of Wisconsin–Madison

"This is the book we've all been waiting for on the unique success story that is the New Korean Cinema. Choi provides a thorough and engaging account of the film industry and how it has transformed narrative and style in genres ranging from gangster films to high school films, horror, and romance.""—Chris Berry, Goldsmiths, University of London

"Not all blockbusters come from Hollywood. For a decade South Korea has created films that galvanize a local audience, regional audiences, film festivals, and the European and North American multiplexes. In this discerning study, Jinhee Choi reveals in fascinating detail how a small local cinema became a global powerhouse."—David Bordwell, University of Wisconsin–Madison

From the Publisher