The advent of democracy in South Korea and efforts to defend local film production against U.S. competition have spawned a new generation of filmmakers who are winning plaudits at home and abroad.
South Korea's filmmakers are in a recalcitrant mood. They are battling the American juggernaut in its effort to lift a local quota on importing foreign films, but these militants don't have their backs to the wall: the general public shares the country's new cultural exuberance, and is backing its young directors. "Our young filmmakers are to be congratulated on the breadth of their imagination and their box-office successes," says 58-year-old Lee Doo-yong, who has made more than 50 films. "They know what they want to say. That's something new round here."
The South Korean film industry is doing extremely well. It conquered 37 per cent of the domestic market in 1999 (up from 25 per cent the previous year and 18 per cent in 1997), a total boosted by a record 6.5 million people who went to see the film Shiri (Titanic only managed a local audience of 4.3 million).
With this windfall, the man who made the film, Kang Je-gyu, decided to join forces with young filmmakers, revamp the distribution network and lay the groundwork for cooperation between Asian countries. New film companies (Sidus, Cinema Service, Myung Film, East Film, Bom) are also zeroing in on young directors just starting out. Serious money from the likes of Mirae Esset, Unikorea, CJ Entertainment and National Technology Finance is filling the gap left by the big industrial conglomerates, the chaebol, which pulled out of film financing during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis.
