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The Emergence of Korean Cinema: Out of the Darkness, Onto the World Stage

Korean cinema has taken a long, winding road to where it is today: in the 20th century, it has weathered foreign occupation, civil war, political censorship, a maze of regulations, a barrage of imports, and South Korea's turbulent democratization movement two decades ago.

At least a shortage of dramatic inspiration is not a problem.

In recent years, with the full support of a proud government that realizes the power of its cultural exports, Korean films have finally arriving at a well-deserved place on the world stage.

To choose but a few highlights, Korean films have boasted wins in 2007 for best actress at Canne (Jeon Do-yeon) and best actor at the Asian Film Awards (Song Kang-ho), in 2004 for best director at the Berlin Film Festival (Kim Ki-duk's "Samaria") and the Grand Prix at Cannes (for Park Chan-wook's "Oldboy"), plus a growing plethora of domestic festivals, chief among them the Pusan International Film Festival, one of Asia's biggest.

"I would say that the major strength of Korean film could be...not quite sophistication, but diversity", says Ahn Sung-ki, perhaps Korea's most well know actor: a veteran professional and head of the Korean Actors' Guild. Soft-spoken and broadly smiling, he spoke through an interpreter at the Korean Embassy's KORUS House in Washington D.C. in August, 2008.

"When you're asked to come up with a representative image of Korean cinema, it's very difficult", Ahn said, in contrast to the iconic samurai films of Japan or Kung-fu epics of Hong Kong. "There isn't just one word that can capture the characteristics of Korean cinema at the moment".

At age 57, having acted in more than 100 films spanning more than 50 years, Ahn should know: he has experienced first hand where Korean cinema has been, and how far it has come.

"His acting career nearly coincides with the history of contemporary Korean cinema", says Hyangsoon Yi, an associate professor at the University of Georgia, where she teaches Korean and Japanese cinema. "So in a sense, he's a living witness of the emergence of Korean cinema as a new vital cultural force in Asia and the spread of what we call Hallyu, the Korean Wave". Yi helped organize and served as interpreter for Ahn's U.S. visit in 2008, which included film screenings and discussion events at the Smithsonian Institution's Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, D.C. and the Korea Society in New York.

That "Korean Wave" of popular culture comprises film, music, dance, television dramas, and even the traditional arts of South Korea that have swept across Asia over the past decade as hot cultural commodities. Hallyu, as it is known in Korean, has made ever deeper inroads in the Americas, Europe, and even the Middle East, where traditional values strike a chord.

Ahn, however, was a Korean celebrity long before it became cool to be one.

The Long Journey

Born in 1952, Ahn became a child actor in many films from the 1950s-60s heyday of Korean cinema, including one of his earliest roles at age seven in Kim Ki-young's "The Housemaid - 1960", now considered a true classic. "He virtually monopolized...child and even teenage roles in Korean films, starring in nearly 70 works", said Yi.

After his mandatory military service, Ahn resumed his acting career in the late 1970s, at the height of South Korea's authoritarian military rule. He says this era of protest riots and stifled creativity was a formative period for modern Korean cinema.

"There were a lot of restriction and limitations on freedom of expression due to the military regime.... Our Korean ancestors in Asia were known for their talents in entertainment and the arts, and these talents were suppressed for such a long time that with democratization of the nation in the 1990s, this repressed potential erupted like a volcano".

The result, Ahn says, is that some Korean films can seem rough, less than aesthetically smooth, and at times violent or brutal. "But there is an energy you can feel from Korean cinema", he adds.

It was not until the 1980s that Korean films began to gain attention around the world, Ahn said, with celebrated directors like Im Kwon-taek and Lee Doo-yong.

A key turning point from Ahn's perspective was the 1992 Pesaro Film Festival. This annual festival in the Italian coastal town often highlights films from developing countries and film industries-in 1992, it was Korea.

"It's not widely known, but from my own experience, I know that Korean film became known as a major force [after the] festival", Ahn said. "This was a major channel through which we could introduce Korean cinema". Pesaro director Adriano Aprà had come to Korea the preceding year and selected 30 films-13 of which Ahn appeared in. While each of the film directors was invited, Aprà insisted than Ahn be there. The event was well received by critics and reporters from throughout Europe. Three years later, Aprà again brought Korean films to Europe on an even larger scale, screening nearly 100 films at the Pompidou Center in Paris, France.

Korean Cinema Today

While South Korea's government may have been an obstacle for its film industry in the past, Ahn says this is no longer the case.

"These achievements are due to prominent actors and directors", Ahn said, "but I also think that these achievements were made possible because of support form the government" promoting Korean cinema overseas.

Although he has fought against reductions to the film screen quota for Korean films, Ahn says there are more pros than cons, unlike in the past. "The basic attitude of the government is to support but not interfere. It seems they are searching for specific ways to implement that policy".

"Perhaps we can think of film as a nation's commercial", Ahn said. "Film can show people, language, environment, clothes, music-all these cultural aspects of the nation in which it was made. So I think the impact of film is tremendous. The particular advantage of film is that it can create delight as well as deeply move our hearts, combining culture with entertainment".

By Adam Wojciechowicz

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