May 12-14, 2008

South Korean films continue to set box-office records across Asia and win laurels in international film festivals. Meanwhile, little attention is given to the cinema from the other half of the peninsula. From May 12 to 14, 2008, three films from the DPRK’s canon will be screened as a special presentation in the Classic Movie Night series.

   A Tradition of Critical Realism

Monthly Screenings, Every Third Thursday

These films represent the best of that tradition. More than simply portraying the tumultuous events that wracked Korea in the twentieth century, they parse the various, deeply personal, meanings that the country’s recent past have had for those who have lived through it and imagine the lingering, unpredictable consequences of such events on the ever-fleeting present.


Thursday, May 15, 2008 at  6:30PM
The Ball Shot By A Midget 난장이가 쏘아올린 공
1981, 100 minutes
Director: Lee Won-se
Cast: Ahn Sung-ki, Jeon Yang-ja, Keum Bo-ra

“Violence is not just bullets, nightsticks and fists,” says one character in Lee Won-se's screen adaptation of Jo Se-hee's best-selling novel. Living a hand-to-mouth existence in the ironically named neighborhood of Haengbok-dong (happy street), Kim Bul-yi's family struggles with social acceptance, poverty and lost dreams. The film's exploration of one family's struggle to earn their daily bread illustrates Leo Tolstoy's immortal observation that "happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Click here to buy tickets.
Movies will be screened at The Korea Society in midtown Manhattan (950 Third Avenue, 8^th Floor.)

Individual ticket price (one film): $5 for members,  $10 for non-members
For more information contact Yuni Cho at (212) 759-7525, ext. 323 or click here to email.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

The Korea Society, 950 Third Avenue, Eighth Floor, New York City
(Building entrance on SW corner of Third Avenue and 57th Street)

When Bruce Lee died, he left behind 12 minutes of footage from his final film. The upcoming movie Finishing the Game imagines what would have happened if bumbling studio executives had tried to find a passable stand-in for Lee to finish the film. The answer is hilarity.

Starring Roger Fan (Better Luck Tomorrow), Sung Kang (The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift), Monique Curren (Maria Full of Grace) and MC Hammer, Finishing the Game was an official selection of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Now yKAN and The Korea Society are presenting the film’s director and lead actors for a film panel at The Korea Society (950 Third Avenue, on the corner of 57th Street) on September 26, 2007 from 7:00 to 9:00 PM, followed by a reception at Opia.

The panel will feature Finishing the Game director Justin Lin, and actors Roger Fan and Sung Kang, discussing their recent film and their experiences as Asian American artists in Hollywood.

Admission is free. Please RSVP to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

co-presented with yKan

About the Panelists

Is the Korean Wave Dead? The Next Phase of Korean Pop Culture

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Recent years have seen a wave of Korean pop culture—known as hallyu—sweep across Asia as consumers from Thailand to Japan became ardent fans of Korean TV dramas, movies and music acts. No pop culture phenomenon lasts forever, however, and recently released statistics suggest that exports from Korea’s entertainment industry are now declining. Is the Korean wave finally ebbing? If so, why? And what can be done about it?

These questions were put to Michael Huh, vice president of ImaginAsian TV and Kim Yong-hwa, director of the recent Korean comedy 200 Pound Beauty, at a panel discussion moderated by The Korea Society’s film blogger Samuel Jamier.

Huh characterized the current trend as a market correction. When Korean pop culture first caught the world’s attention—especially Korean TV dramas, which are the most profitable segment of Korea’s entertainment exports—the industry responded with hasty exuberance. Korean producers rushed to create new dramatic series in order to capture the momentum. In the process, they might have neglected the fundamentals of their genre, and soon many Korean dramas featured formulaic narratives and focused on the drawing power of a limited number of stars. It should be no surprise then, he added, that viewers’ interest is waning.

The panelists agreed that Korean film companies would be wise to improve their marketing strategies, as they often lack clear plans on how to promote their cultural products abroad. Huh pointed to the recently released film The Host as evidence. The Host did phenomenally well with South Korean audiences he said, and had all the qualities necessary to be an international hit. But The Host’s distributors didn’t have a specific target audience in mind when they released it in the U.S., and as a result their marketing efforts fizzled and The Host was less successful in the American market than it could have been.

Kim shared Huh’s belief that the current downward trend was more of a normal fluctuation than a disaster. He described the state of the industry as basically healthy, but suggested it is facing long-term troubles. Presently, a small number of hit movies are subsidizing the production of many more mediocre films. While this keeps the industry afloat, it contributes to a blockbuster mentality that might sink it in the long run.

Kim said that the Korean entertainment industry’s emerging success in the late 1990s was derived, paradoxically, from its inability to compete with Hollywood blockbusters on equal terms when it came to production budgets or special effects. As a result, Korean directors were forced to focus relentlessly on the quality and originality of their stories and audiences responded. Now that the industry’s appeal is softening, Kim believes Korean directors have an excellent opportunity to refocus on their storylines and surprise their audiences all over again. Indeed, he added, Korean directors are already experimenting with new cinematic formulas that augur well for the future—such as the upcoming D-War, a sci-fi epic that blends Korean folklore with non-Korean actors.

Hollywood makes lots of legal thrillers, but none of them speak so directly to the Korean American experience as the newly released West 32nd. While in New York for the film’s premiere at the Tribeca Flim Festival, co-writer and director Michael Kang and stars Grace Park and Jun Sung Kim came to The Korea Society for a freewheeling panel discussion on how the film was made and what this unique, Korean American statement means to its creators.

West 32nd is more than a Grisham-esque story of murder and deception among gangsters in New York’s Koreatown, said Kang. It’s a drama about one’s connection to, and separation from, one’s culture. The lead character, John Kim (John Cho), is a pro-bono lawyer assigned to defend a Korean American teenager framed for a gangland murder. With the help of the boy’s sister, Lila Lee (Grace Park), Kim delves deep into Koreatown’s underworld where he’s manipulated by gangster Mike Juhn (Jun Sung Kim). Though Kim is the model of second-generation immigrant success, he can’t speak Korean and as the mystery deepens, despite the fact he’s Korean, he’s increasingly out of his element.

With a predominately Korean American cast, West 32nd’s themes of identity seeped into the production process. The film’s characters alternate between Korean and English dialog, and Kang said that he wanted both languages to sound authentic. Many sections of dialog required extensive re-writing and finding bilingual actors was a major challenge. Once Park and Kim signed onto the project, language was still a problem. Both actors said they had to rehearse their Korean to appear perfectly fluent.

Whatever the travails, they were glad to have done West 32nd. Though both have played many roles in Hollywood and Korea, this was the first project that allowed them to give portray Korean American characters in a multi-dimensional way.

• Click here to see the event in pictures