More from Soomee Park
Busan Film Festival’s Market Notches Record Attendance Despite Reduced Budget, Headwinds
The Busan International Film Festival’s Asian Contents and Film Market wrapped up its 2023 edition with record attendance from over 2,479 industry representatives, according to organizers. Despite industry-wide headwinds, attendees from sales and licensing companies, buyers, producers and investors gathered in Busan in an expanded exhibition hall at BEXCO, the main venue, to trade content […]
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Busan: Korean Film Legends Kim Ji-woon, Song Kang-ho Discuss ‘Cobweb’ and the Essence of Cinema
For veteran Korean director Kim Ji-woon, his latest feature Cobweb was an exploration into the aesthetics and meaning of cinema. A satire about a film director who is convinced that a reshoot of his film’s ending could make it a masterpiece, the film delves into the beauty of cinema and the emotional journey of those […]
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Korea Box Office Scandal: Distributors Say Manipulation Was “Open Secret” for Years
Allegations of a massive, multiyear pattern of box office fraud rocked the Korean film industry last week. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s anti-corruption office said 69 executives from the country’s largest theater chains — CGV, Lotte Cinema and Megabox — and 24 distributors, including Showbox, were referred to prosecutors on Thursday. The police said the […]
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South Korea’s Directors Guild Pushes for Bargaining Rights and Backend Pay from Streamers, Studios
South Korea’s powerhouse entertainment industry is beginning to experience some of the same labor unrest that has rocked Hollywood. In an echo of the screenwriters and actors guild strikes that have brought the U.S. film and TV sector to a halt, the Directors Guild of Korea is lobbying its country’s legislature to revise a Copyrights […]
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Netflix’s Ted Sarandos Touts the “Power of Korean Storytelling,” Says K-Content Views Are Up Sixfold
Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos will never forget the day he met director Bong Joon Ho in 2017 to discuss Okja, the sci-fi action drama that became Netflix’s first international film. “He’s the ultimate master, and he gave me a crash course in Korean cinema. I learned so much,” he said. “And afterwards I had the […]
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Busan Film Fest Insiders Push for Generational Change Amid Sexual Misconduct, Cronyism Allegations
Less than four months from the opening ceremony of the 28th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), widely considered Asia’s most influential festival, the event remains mired in turmoil, with insiders increasingly agitating for a generational change. Korean industry figures tell The Hollywood Reporter they are worried both about the immediate organization of the next festival, […]
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Cannes: How South Korea Became a VFX Powerhouse
Before shooting began on Bong Joon Ho’s Oscar-winning Parasite, the film’s production crew had trouble finding one of the film’s crucial locations: the luxurious home of the wealthy Park family. The chances of finding the right house were slim, but the chances of finding a two-story house with an ideal setting was even slimmer. As […]
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‘Kill Boksoon’ Filmmaker Talks Netflix Action Thriller With Shades of Female ‘John Wick’
Director Byun Sung-hyun was baffled when he first learned that his feature film Kill Boksoon would be invited to the Berlin International Film Festival last month. “I didn’t expect it at all,” he said at a press conference for Kill Boksoon held in Seoul earlier this month. “I thought Kill Bok-soon was not the type […]
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Could Reality TV Be the Next Global Trend in Korean Content?
In October 2021, Yoo Ki-hwan, content manager at Netflix Korea, received an e-mail from a stranger with a bold pitch for a show involving 100 contestants competing in a series of brutal challenges to win a cash prize worth 300 million Korean won (about $315,000). The scale of the show was so grand that it […]
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AFM: How Korean Cinema Came to Rule the Crime Genre
Lee Sang-yong’s 2022 feature, The Roundup, had many twists and turns before it was finally released in South Korean theaters in May. The production originally began in 2019, but filming was temporarily postponed, as location permits did not come through in Vietnam, where the story is mostly set, because of the pandemic. The industry’s old saying […]
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Busan’s Asian Film Content Market Wraps Up Amid Optimism and Post-Pandemic Concerns
The Asian Content Film Market (ACFM), the Busan International Film Festival’s industry platform, wrapped up this week with organizers and market participants voicing a mix of optimism and concern for the post-pandemic state of the movie market. The event, which was held in the city’s massive BEXCO convention center, attracted 1,059 companies and 2,185 industry […]
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Busan: Classic Korean Film ‘Nakdong River’ — Previously Feared Lost — Is Rediscovered and Restored
Nakdong River, by the director Jun Chang-geun, was one of just 12 Korean films produced during the Korean War — and for years it was thought to have been lost. So when staff at the Korean Film Archive recently happened upon a print of the film — miscategorized and kept in the wrong section of […]
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