The movie ‘Parasite’ brings Korea’s pop culture to the world.

Which movie do you think is a blockbuster? For the famous movie among these years, a movie from Korea, ‘Parasite’ deserved this title. ‘Parasite’ won a bunch of prizes over the world including the Cannes Film Festival, Golden Globe Awards, British Academy Film Awards, and Academy Awards, for the first Korean movie and the non-English movie, got six prizes in Academy Awards as known as The Oscars. ‘Parasite’ ranked No.1 on IMDB’s 100 Most Popular Korean Movies. (IMDb, 2019)

Figure 1: Actors of movie ‘Parasite’ holding prizes of The Oscars

South Korea’s pop culture is a source of its soft power making Korea being the ‘Capital of pop culture’. In addition to K-pop, which has been growing around the world in the past ten years, there are also K-drama and K-food. Those cultures take K-pop culture global rise, but when it comes to pop culture that has the highest glory, it must be the movie ‘Parasite’. Because of it, Korean movies began to be recognized globally.

Besides, Korea has a lot of great movies to watch, for example, ‘Hope’ and ‘Silenced’, ranked 22, 32 on IMDb’s 100 Most Popular Korean Movies, these two movies are adapted from ‘Cho Doo-soon case’ and ‘Gwangju Inhwa School case’, two cases that related to underage sexual assaults and sexual violence. Luckily, these movies change Korea’s law to protect children. These two are the best movies that I have ever watched, and I can’t watch them the second time, because it was too angry and sad to watch and made me heartbroken.

Figure 2: Posters of movie ‘Hope’ and ‘Silenced’

Commentary

Korean movie is rising these years, people can feel that Korea movie’s quality and skills are upgrading when ‘Parasite’ sweeping prizes in Academy Awards. Therefore, I would like to recommend some Korean movies to you which are high quality and tugs at the heartstrings! Apart from ‘Hope’ and ‘Silenced’, ‘I can speak’ and ‘A Taxi Driver’ also impressing, these movies are based on true stories, reflecting the histories which are comfort woman during World War II and Gwangju Democratization Movement in 1980. The main actor in ’Parasite’, Song Kang-ho, also the main actor in ‘A Taxi Driver’, his acting skills are awesome!

If you ask me why Korean movies are worth watching, I will tell you that those movies are linked with the true story or reality of society, could cause people to think deeply about society and their life. Many Korean films are also adaptations of real stories, the public could pay attention to the cases through the films. Korean films are great because some of them can attract the attention of the people and the government successfully, then they can reverse the cases and even change the law. For example, Gwangju Inhwa School case, a former administrator sentenced to probation in 2006, but sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2012 after the movie was released (The Korea Times, 2012). In 2011 ‘Dogani Law’ (Dogani (도가니) is the original name of the movie ‘Silenced’) was passed by The Korean National Assembly, to protect underage children. (Kim, 2011). I think that is the power of Korean movies.

What do you think about Korean movies? And do you know is there any country that changed the law because of movies? Leave your comment below!

——————————————————————————————————————

Reference

100 Most Popular Korean Movies - IMDb. (2021). Retrieved 7 February 2021, from https://www.imdb.com/list/ls042966798/?sort=moviemeter,asc&st_dt=&mode=detail&page=1

Gwangju school sex offender gets 12 years in prison. (2012). Retrieved 7 February 2021, from http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2012/07/117_114513.html

Kim, R. (2011). National Assembly passes ’Dogani Law’. Retrieved 7 February 2021, from http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/02/113_97529.html