Korea has being coming out with some incredibly powerful films over the past few years. But the graphic and gruesome violence and the fact the film makers revel in the horror of the violence even in very sensitive films, reveals that there must be smouldering angst in Korean culture that gets smothered by cultural conventions of blandness. This is also seen with Japanese films , where porn films and sexual magazines, have very gory sex and a lot of S&M. A level of sado machoism, you would typically not associate with such a calm and pacific society.