Korea’s cinema of the fantastic
BOB RICKARD welcomes the success of Parasite and recommends 12 more Korean films every fortean should see…
The Korean film Parasite recently won the hearts of Western audiences and critics. While the praise is deserved and it’s encouraging to see a non-Western, non-Hollywood, subtitled movie so widely appreciated, it was – to me at least – disappointing to see the media taken by surprise by this ‘outsider’ and pushing it as a ‘best’ film.
Over the last few decades, the film studios of China, India and Korea (among others) have been producing movie and TV masterpieces of a creative and technical quality that can rival the very best of the West – and often exceed it. While I could give details about the others, I’ll focus, here, my ‘Top 12’ of modern Korean cinema which might interest FT readers. They are all movies which, in my view, exceed even the high standard set by Parasite, and all did very well in their home market.
Parasite director Bong Joonho, of course, made his name with Train to Busan in 2016, an inspired take on the zombie genre in which the action, both tense and claustrophobic, is largely confined onboard a non-stop express from Seoul to Busan. Strangely, the undead have taken a strong grip on the Korean imagination, which has exploited them creatively. Even more fascinating is the revelation that the historical form of Korean shamanism – mudang, a blend of Mongolian animism, Japanese Shinto, and Chinese Daoism –is very much alive in modern Korea and the touchstone for anything weird, especially ancient weirdness.
In the case of The Wailing (2016), zombies become a metaphor for social anxiety in a small rural town caused by the coincidental arrival of a solitary foreigner (a mysterious Japanese priest). The main protagonist, a local cop forced to investigate the deaths to save his daughter, seeks help from both modern exorcists and traditional shamans.
The multiplication of zombies, spreading quite literally like a plague, also features in two dramas, both released in 2018 but set in ancient Joseon. This dynastic period – which from the 14th century entrenched Confucianism at the expense of Buddhism, Christianity and traditional mudang –isthe favoured setting for most Korean historical drama and fantasy. In Rampant, a prince, returning home after being a hostage in Qing dynasty China, finds zombies taking over the villages while the royal court ignores the threat to their sequestered and privileged way of life. In Detective K: Secret of the Living Dead ,the title character – played by the
ubiquitous Kim Myung-min – is a riff on the great inquisitor-cumSherlock of Chinese literature, Detective Dee. ‘K’ is also a familiar character for Koreans, having featured in a number of film and TV adventures. Here, he investigates a series of murders in a political intrigue that implicates his father, a court official. What lifts this film out of the ordinary is that, despite its commendably light humour, it delivers a fascinating parable about reincarnation and redemption.
Nor are vampires forgotten. Perhaps the most startling film is the noirish Thirst (2009) by Old Boy director Park Chan-wook, in which a devout Christian priest develops vampiric tendencies after a medical experiment goes wrong. His agonising attempts to control the unwanted changes in his body and mind eventually give way to acceptance, and the climactic exhilaration with which he embraces his new potential is almost shocking.
The Korean imagination tends to treat science-fiction as
a type of fantasy which allows its directors to experiment with the overlap between the ancient and the new in both technology and phenomena. This fertile melting pot has produced several excellent examples. In Lucid Dream (2017) – said to have been inspired by Christoper Nolan’s Inception
– an investigative journalist employs neurological devices to explore the dreams of suspects in the unsolved abduction of his son. Psychokinesis (2018) follows the story of an ordinary man who develops telekinetic powers, which he uses to defend his daughter’s fried-chicken business against unscrupulous property developers. The hero’s superpowers develop when he drinks water from a sacred spring at a mountain shrine, unaware that a meteorite had struck the mountain, passing something alien into the source of the spring.
In my final example of this theme, The Witch (2018), a high school student with amnesia seeks answers to her sense of difference, triggering the awakening of super-soldier type abilities. Most of the film is one long fight in which she demolishes the agents of the secret programme that created her. It tells us something about the
Korean audience that this heroine is shown to be the product of modern biological technology, yet she is branded as an old-fashioned ‘witch’.
Even The Host – another box-office success from 2006 – cannot shake off more ancient associations despite being SF of a slightly harder type. In it, a monstrous mutation emerges from Seoul’s Han River and makes forays into the city. The
family of one of its victims track it down using good old fashioned hunting and sports skills.
My joint penultimate favourites are The Restless (2006, aka Demon Empire )and Woochi: The Tao Fighter (2009, aka The Demon Slayer), both about (you guessed it) demon slaying. The first is the tale of a weary swordsman in the royal demon-hunting squad who stumbles into Joong-cheon ,a spirit world somewhere between Heaven and Hell. It is a stylish cinematic evocation of wu-shu and manga. Woochi is a more traditional fantasy set in 15th century Joseon, where Woochi is a rascally disciple of a Daoist wizard. Blamed for the theft of a magic pipe, he hides inside a painting, by which means he emerges into the present day, pursued by rat demons and an evil wizard, all seeking the hidden pipe. For me, the highlight comes early in the story when Woochi, a master of illusion, creates a stunning vision of a Buddhist deity and his entourage descending from Heaven. This wonderful exposition of religious CGI is, alone, worth the price of admission.
However, top of my list is a truly epic film (in two parts) that excels in every department, with superb production values,
brilliant writing and acting, and a thoughtful plot that never flags. Along with the Gods, directed by Kim Yong-hwa, follows a team of three Purgatory judges tasked with proving that a recently dead fireman was truly a good man. His story – taking them through seven trials (or Hells) – forms the first part: Two Worlds (2017). In the second part – The Last 49 Days (2018) – the Joongcheon judges themselves are investigated. It draws heavily on the distinctive Korean mix of Buddhist, Daoist and Christian mythology without proselytising, and alternates between the intimacy of individual lives and motivations and the Cecil B DeMille-scale landscapes of the otherworldly trials. It is a hopeful movie, full of finely crafted and innovative moments. I’m told that within two months it became the highest grossing film in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong and will be followed, eventually, by two sequels. It would be satisfying to see this level of Asian cinematic movie-making rewarded with appreciation in the West.
2 BOB RICKARD started Fortean Times back in 1973. He is currently on lockdown, enjoying more of the best in Asian cinema.
Shamanism is very much alive in modern Korea