Korean Director Research Articles

Why American Studies Needs to Think about Korean Cinema, or, Transnational Genres in the Films of Bong Joon-ho

This article explores how Korean director Bong Joon-ho appropriates and reworks Hollywood genre conventions in his films Memories of Murder and The Host , and uses them as tools to explore Korea’s experience of dictatorship and its vexed relationship with the United States.

The Triple Helix paradigm in Korea: A test for new forms of capital

The Triple Helix paradigm a construct addressing the research-based links between government, universities, and firms is lacking in formal tests. This study attempts to alleviate this deficiency by conducting an empirical analysis of the effects of relationship-based forms of capital, which has been identified by theorists as an attribute of Triple Helix-based R&D. OLS results utilising a unique dataset (KORTAI R&D) comprised of 108 questionnaire responses of Korean directors and project leaders reveal that new forms of capital are especially significant for firms and universities while less so for government research institutes (GRIs). The effects for universities, however, are delayed and indicate a spillover effect.

Shakespeare, Yard, and the Style of Traditional Korean Theatre

Since the New Globe Theatre opened in 1996, they have used the yard as an acting area or entrances. Even though the authenticity of using the yard is disputable, nobody denies that the yard must be a very effective tool for performing Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre. The yard is an essential part of traditional Korean theatre, called 'talchum (mask dance)' or 'talnori (mask play).' The yard is its stage as well as the auditorium. Therefore, the players are surrounded by the audience, and the players can, and often do interact with the audience, speaking to the audience, or treating them as players, or acting as if they were some of the audience. The theatrical style of using the yard has much influenced the modem theatre of Korea. And some Korean directors, such as Oh Tae-suk, Yang Jung-ung, and Lee Hyon-u, have applied the yard techniques to their Shakespearean productions. Yang Jung-ung's A Midsummer Night's Dream used the yard exactly the same way as talchum performances. Oh Tae-suk's Romeo and Juliet adopted the acting style of talchum players, they would face the audience and speak toward the audience as they act. And Lee Hyon-u's Coriolanus set up 15 television monitors on the stage in order to let the audience see themselves as part of the play, and made the underground entrance between the auditorium and the forestage in order to give the illusion of players appearing from the audience and disappearing into the audience. Sometimes the actors actually became part of the audience thus including them in the performance both orally and physically like traditional Korean theatre. Korean Shakespearean productions, which use the yard actively, can be more evidence that the yard must be an effective tool for Shakespeare, not only at the Globe Theatre but also at any kind of theatres of today. No one knows whether Shakespeare actually used the yard or not. But the fact that many Shakespearean productions have used the yard successfully, means that Shakespeare's texts themselves have enough room for the yard.

The orphaned nation: Korea imagined as an overseas adopted child in Clon's Abandoned Child and Park Kwang‐su's Berlin Report

International adoption from Korea constitutes the background to this study. The forced migration of Korean children has by now continued for over half a century, resulting in a diaspora of more than 150,000 adopted Koreans dispersed among 15 main host countries on the continents of Europe, North America and Oceania. Both the demographic scope, the time span and the geographic spread are absolutely unique in a comparative historical child migratory perspective, and still over 2,000 children leave Korea annually. This massive intercontinental displacement and dispersal of Korean children was, for many years, silently taking place in the shadow of Korea's transformation from a war‐torn and poverty‐stricken country to a formidable economic success story in the postcolonial world. Even if the subject of international adoption and adopted Koreans turned up now and then in the political debate throughout the years, it was not until the end of the 1980s that a comprehensive discussion started. Ever since, the adoption issue (ibyang munjê) has been haunting Korea as a recurrent subject in Korean media and popular culture. This paper is a reading of the pop group Clon's song Abandoned Child from 1999 and the world‐famous Korean director Park Kwang‐su's film Berlin Report from 1991 where adopted Koreans are seen as symbols of a divided and dispersed nation. With the background of Korean nationalism with its notion of the nation as family and its strong emphasis on homogeneity and continuity, the point of departure is the very existence of the adopted Koreans as a delicate threat to nationalist ideology, causing anxieties of disrupting a supposedly fixed and unified national identity, and calling into question what it means to be Korean and who belongs to the Korean nation. The reading is grounded on the fact that the subject of separated families is considered to be one of the most important aspects of the Korean reunification discourse, and has become a powerful metaphor of the Korean nation itself. Abandoned Child is the most typical of Korean adoption songs in representing the fate of Korea's 150,000 lost children, and the adoptee of the song is easily transformed into a powerful symbol of one of Korea's numerous separated families. In Berlin Report, the divided and dispersed Korean nation is represented by two separated adopted Koreans longing and searching for each other as the adoption issue is set upon the reunification issue, and their individual traumas become the national trauma of all Koreans.

Turning Gate

Abstract This review analyzes Turning Gate, the maverick Korean director Hong Sangsoo's fourth film and perhaps the most critically acclaimed title in his distinguished filmography. It discusses how the film—in a humorous yet rigorous fashion—recasts the modernist filmmaking strategies of double articulation, depiction of everyday mundanity, and subtle disruptions of the dominant film language.

Memory and Amnesia: An Interview with Korean Director Seong-Wook Moon

This interview took place at a cafe in New York City on August 19,2002 during Seong-Wook Moon's first trip to the US. He was in New York to screen his most recent film at the 2nd annual New York Korean Film Festival, and also to scout locations for his next-planned feature, a New York-based film on US/Korea bilateral relations. Ordering his espresso, Seong-wook Moon explained that he does much of his work in Seoul cafes, and parts of New York reminded him of the Korean city. We then spent the next few hours asking director Moon about his other cross-cultural experiences and impressions: Polish film school and movie-making in Korea; his thoughts on the state of contemporary Korean cinema; his status as an independent; as well as international directors and writers who have influenced and inspired him; the joys of digital filmmaking, and the latest feature he wrote and directed: the dystopic-but-lyrical Nabi {The Butterfly).

Chunhyang, chunhyang, chunhyang: Poetics of Im Kwan-Taek's Chunhyang

Im Kwan-Taek, a leading Korean director, explores an aspect of Korean artistic heritage, pansori, in his recent film Chunhyang (2000). Korean traditions influenced by Buddhism and Shamanism have been major themes in his other films, including Mandala (1981), Aje Aje Bara Aje (1989), and Daughter of the Flame (1983). In his film Chunhyang, Im combines two different art forms: the Korean traditional performance art pansori and cinema. Pansori was a major theme in his film, Sopyonje (1993), in which he portrays the life of the pansori performer Song-hwa, whose father sacrificed her sight for the sake of mastering the artistry of pansori. In an interview, Im tells us that without having made Sopyonuje, Chunhyang could not have come to existence.1 Unlike Sopyonje in which pansori is incorporated within the film through the characters' performances, in Chunhyang, pansori singing leads the narrative.

Pusan 1997

SOME OBSERVATIONS OF ASIAN FILMS IN THE 2nd PUSAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL The 1997 Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) witnessed a deluge of films -- new and old Korean films, Asian and international films, independent films, documentaries, and animations. Equally impressive was the response from the home crowd which appeared to have an insatiable appetite for internationally acclaimed films and young, famous Korean directors. (According to official records, the first PIFF attracted 200,000 people, this year, it seemed to be even more.) The 1997 festival opened with Wayne Wang's Chinese Box and closed with Ann Hui's Eighteen Springs at the 4,200-seats Pusan Yachting Centre Outdoor Theatre which also happens to be Asia's largest outdoor screen equipped with a digital sound system. Situated in Haeundae, Pusan's well-known beach resort, it was also where popular Hollywood fare such as G.l. Jane, One Night Stand, Bean, and crowd-pleasing Asian films like Opium...

Lousy Films Had To Come First--Im Kwon-taek, Korean Director

Im Kwon-taek has been an important figure in the Korean film world for about thirty-five years, directing both commercial and artistic successes, tackling subjects that have led to controversy at times, and garnering a number of awards. Born in 1936 in the southern part of Korea, Im debuted with Dumangang-a Jalitkora (Good-bye! Duman River) in 1961. His films won the Grand Bell (Korea's top award) in 1978 (Jokbo or The Family Tree Book), 1979 (Gitbal Obnun Gisu or The Hidden Hero), 1981 (Mandara), 1982 (Abengo Gongsugundan or Abengo Air Green Berets), 1985 (Gilsodom) 1987 (Yonsan IIgi, or Diary of King Yonsan). Other films have won the Korea Paeksang Arts Grand Award (1976, Wangsimri; 1983, Angae Maeul) and Yongpyong Award (1987, Ticket). Mandara was selected to compete in the 1982 Berlin International Film Festival, as was Gilsodom in 1986.