Rent It When I first got into Asian film, in a cinephile way, I quickly realized that the first few books I read never mentioned Korea and I hadn't really seen or heard much about Korean films except for some cult mags that mentioned the Young-gu series. It seemed especially odd considering, like Hong Kong and Japan, there was a strong English speaking presence in Korea following the war, so why weren't servicemen coming back with tales of Korean cinema? Eventually, I stumbled upon better material and found out why. To briefly explain- Japan occupied Korea in the early days of cinema and didn't exactly nourish film making outside propaganda-leaning films. Things loosened up after WW2, but then, of course, Korea quickly had its own war and there was barely means to feed people let alone make films. Again, following that divisive war, cinema started to get some ground again in South Korea, but eventual polit... Read the entire review ...
Anytime
Rent It When I first got into Asian film, in a cinephile way, I quickly realized that the first few books I read never mentioned Korea and I hadn't really seen or heard much about Korean films except for some cult mags that mentioned the Young-gu series. It seemed especially odd considering, like Hong Kong and Japan, there was a strong English speaking presence in Korea following the war, so why weren't servicemen coming back with tales of Korean cinema? Eventually, I stumbled upon better material and found out why. To briefly explain- Japan occupied Korea in the early days of cinema and didn't exactly nourish film making outside propaganda-leaning films. Things loosened up after WW2, but then, of course, Korea quickly had its own war and there was barely means to feed people let alone make films. Again, following that divisive war, cinema started to get some ground again in South Korea, but eventual polit... Read the entire review ...