Milestones in Korean film history

Arirang is a silent film written, directed by and starring Na Woon-gyu, released in October 1926 at the Dansungsa theater in Seoul. It is remembered as a work that expressed the frustrations of Koreans under Japanese colonial rule and is treated as a landmark of Korean film history. However, no surviving print has been confirmed, so it is known today mainly through records and testimony.

The first Korean sound film, or talkie, is generally recognized as Chunhyangjeon, directed by Lee Myung-woo and released at Dansungsa in October 1935. Records describe how audiences were struck by hearing Korean dialogue from the screen for the first time. Unfortunately, the film itself is not known to survive today.

The late 1950s through the 1960s is often called the first golden age of Korean cinema. After the Korean War, both the number of films made and the size of audiences grew rapidly. Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid (1960) and Yu Hyun-mok's Aimless Bullet (1961) come from this period, and both are still frequently cited as classics of Korean film.

Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid follows a maid who enters a middle-class household and builds tension out of desire and class conflict. In a list of 100 Korean films compiled by the Korean Film Archive from critics' votes, it shared the top spot with Aimless Bullet. A new film under the same title was released in 2010, showing how long its influence has lasted.

On October 4, 1996, Korea's Constitutional Court ruled that pre-release film review by the Public Performance Ethics Committee amounted to censorship banned by the Constitution. The permission-based system was replaced by an age rating system. The decision is widely seen as one of the turning points that let Korean filmmakers explore a much wider range of subjects from the late 1990s on.

Im Kwon-taek's Seopyeonje (1993), about a family of pansori singers, is known as the first Korean film to draw more than one million viewers in Seoul. Films then usually opened at single theaters for long runs, and it played at Dansungsa for months. Because there was no unified national box office count at the time, the figure is usually given for Seoul.

CGV Gangbyeon 11, which opened in April 1998 in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, is usually cited as Korea's first full-scale multiplex. As cinemas with many screens under one roof spread, the way audiences chose films and the way films were released changed dramatically. Large theater chains then expanded across the country.

Kang Je-gyu's Shiri (1999), a large-scale action film about North and South Korean agents, is often described as the first Korean-style blockbuster. At the time it was reported to have surpassed the local record set by Titanic in terms of Seoul admissions. Its success is regarded as one of the moments that set off rapid growth in the Korean film industry.

The landmark case is actress Kang Soo-yeon, who won Best Actress at the 1987 Venice International Film Festival for Im Kwon-taek's The Surrogate Woman. The award is often described as a starting point for international attention to Korean films and performers. Many Korean actors and directors have since won prizes at overseas festivals.

Im Kwon-taek became the first Korean filmmaker to win a major Cannes award when he took Best Director in 2002 for Chihwaseon (Painted Fire). The film portrays the life of the late Joseon painter Jang Seung-eop. Two decades later, Park Chan-wook won the same Best Director prize in 2022 for Decision to Leave.

Park Chan-wook's Oldboy won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, the prize generally regarded as second only to the Palme d'Or. The award played a major part in introducing Korean genre filmmaking to international critics and audiences, and the film remains one of the most widely discussed Korean titles abroad.

Yes. Jeon Do-yeon won Best Actress at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival for Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine, known as the first acting award for a Korean performer at Cannes. In 2022, Song Kang-ho added Best Actor at Cannes for his role in Broker, directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda.

Several factors worked together. The end of pre-screening censorship widened what films could show, corporate capital and new investment structures entered the industry, and multiplexes changed how people went to the movies. A new generation of film-school-trained directors who embraced genre filmmaking also played a big role in drawing audiences back to Korean films.

In the early 2000s, large commercial productions and distinctive auteur films grew side by side. Many films reworked subjects such as national division, modern history and crime into genre stories. Directors including Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, Lee Chang-dong and Kim Jee-woon gained attention both at the domestic box office and at international festivals.

The Korean Film Archive (KOFA) is the main institution that collects and preserves Korean films and related materials. It began in 1974 as the Korean Film Depository and now has its headquarters in Sangam-dong, Seoul. It has also worked to locate lost Korean films overseas and restore them.

Yes. Hong Gil-dong (1967), Korea's first feature-length animated film, was missing for decades until a 16mm print was found in Japan in 2007 and then restored. Old Korean films occasionally turn up in overseas archives or private collections, so the search for lost works continues to this day.

Before unified national tracking was established, success was usually described by admissions at first-run theaters in Seoul. That is why figures from the 1990s are often reported as Seoul admissions. Today, nationwide numbers are checked through the Korean Film Council's integrated ticketing network.

Since the 2010s, Korean films have drawn even more attention at international festivals and award ceremonies, and Korean directors and actors increasingly work on overseas productions. At the same time, more titles now premiere on streaming services instead of in theaters, so the line between films and series has become less clear.

A good approach is to watch representative films from each era in order. Combining the Korean Film Archive's screening programs and research services with books on Korean cinema makes the background easier to follow. To start, try comparing one or two classics from the 1960s, a few late-1990s turning-point films and some works from the 2000s onward.

Korea's film community marked 2019 as the 100th anniversary of Korean cinema, counting from October 27, 1919, when the kino-drama Righteous Revenge was shown at Dansungsa. October 27 is observed as Film Day for that reason. The centennial year gained extra meaning when Parasite won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2019.