The earliest
movie theaters in the country opened during the late
Joseon to
Korean Empire periods. The first was
Ae Kwan Theater, followed by
Dansungsa.
Liberation and war (1945–1953) '' (1946) With the
surrender of Japan in 1945 and the subsequent liberation of
Korea, freedom became the predominant theme in South Korean cinema in the late 1940s and early 1950s. One of the most significant films from this era is director Choi In-gyu's
Viva Freedom! (1946)
, which is notable for depicting the
Korean independence movement. The film was a major commercial success because it tapped into the public's excitement about the country's recent liberation. However, during the
Korean War, the South Korean film industry stagnated, and only 14 films were produced from 1950 to 1953. All of the films from that era have since been
lost. Following the
Korean War armistice in 1953, South Korean president
Syngman Rhee attempted to rejuvenate the film industry by exempting it from taxation. Additionally foreign aid arrived in the country after the war that provided South Korean filmmakers with equipment and technology to begin producing more films.
Golden age (1955–1972) '' (1960) Though filmmakers were still subject to government censorship, South Korea experienced a
golden age of cinema, mostly consisting of
melodramas, starting in the mid-1950s. One of the most popular films of the era, director Lee Kyu-hwan's now lost remake of '''' (1955), drew 10 percent of
Seoul's population to movie theaters South Korean filmmakers enjoyed a brief freedom from censorship in the early 1960s, between the administrations of Syngman Rhee and
Park Chung Hee.
Kim Ki-young's
The Housemaid (1960) and
Yu Hyun-mok's
Obaltan (1960)
, now considered among the best South Korean films ever made, were produced during this time. Kang Dae-jin's
The Coachman (1961) became the first South Korean film to win an award at an international film festival when it took home the Silver Bear Jury Prize at the
1961 Berlin International Film Festival. When Park Chung Hee became acting president in 1962, government control over the film industry increased substantially. Under the Motion Picture Law of 1962, a series of increasingly restrictive measures was enacted that limited imported films under a
quota system. The new regulations also reduced the number of domestic film-production companies from 71 to 16 within a year. Government censorship targeted obscenity,
communism, and unpatriotic themes in films. Nonetheless, the Motion Picture Law's limit on imported films resulted in a boom of domestic films. South Korean filmmakers had to work quickly to meet public demand, and many films were shot in only a few weeks. During the 1960s, the most popular South Korean filmmakers released six to eight films per year. Notably, director
Kim Soo-yong released ten films in 1967, including
Mist, which is considered to be his greatest work. According to the 1981
International Film Guide, "No country has a stricter code of film censorship than South Korea – with the possible exception of the North Koreans and some other Communist bloc countries." Only filmmakers who had previously produced "ideologically sound" films and who were considered to be loyal to the government were allowed to release new films. Members of the film industry who tried to bypass censorship laws were blacklisted and sometimes imprisoned. One such blacklisted filmmaker, the prolific director
Shin Sang-ok, was kidnapped by the North Korean government in 1978 after the South Korean government revoked his film-making license in 1975. The propaganda-laden movies (or "policy films") produced in the 1970s were unpopular with audiences who had become accustomed to seeing real-life social issues onscreen during the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to government interference, South Korean filmmakers began losing their audience to television, and movie-theater attendance dropped by over 60 percent from 1969 to 1979. Films that were popular among audiences during this era include ''
Yeong-ja's Heydays (1975) and Winter Woman'' (1977), both box office hits directed by
Kim Ho-sun. In 1985, the South Korean government signed an agreement to lift all restrictions on foreign films, allowing US companies to import films freely and distribute their films in Korea rather than through Korean distributors. By 1988,
United International Pictures (UIP) and
20th Century Fox had set up offices in the country. However, the Performance Ethics Committee would not allow more than one film per company on its censorship list at a time and took over 2 months to approve a film for release, which restricted the number of films that could be released. In September 1988,
Fatal Attraction was the first film to be directly distributed by a US company (UIP), with the film sold on a royalty basis, but the release led to protests from Korean film directors, producers and distributors as they were concerned that UIP wanted to remit all the ticket sale revenue to the US which would have a negative impact on the manufacture and promotion of Korean motion pictures. In order for domestic films to compete, the government once again enforced a
screen quota that required movie theaters to show domestic films for at least 146 days per year. However, despite the quota, the market share of domestic films was only 16 percent by 1993. Until 1996, when the Film Promotion Law was passed, the film industry was still subject to censorship. Censoring of scripts in pre-production was officially dismissed in the late 1980s, still producers were
unofficially expected to present two copies to the Public Performance Ethics Committee, who had the power to modify by completely cutting scenes. South Korean cinema saw domestic box-office success exceeding that of Hollywood films in the late 1990s largely due to
screen quota laws that limited the public showing foreign films. First enacted in 1967, South Korea's
screen quota placed restrictions on the number of days per year that foreign films could be shown at any given theater—garnering criticism from film distributors outside South Korea as unfair. As a prerequisite for negotiations with the
United States for a
free-trade agreement, the Korean government cut its annual screen quota for domestic films from 146 days to 73 (allowing more foreign films to enter the market). In February 2006, South Korean movie workers responded to the reduction by staging mass rallies in protest. According to Kim Hyun, "South Korea's movie industry, like that of most countries, is grossly overshadowed by Hollywood. The nation exported US$2 million-worth of movies to the United States last year [2005] and imported $35.9 million-worth". One of the first blockbusters was
Kang Je-gyu's
Shiri (1999), a film about a North Korean spy in
Seoul. It was the first film in South Korean history to sell more than two million tickets in Seoul alone.
Shiri was followed by other blockbusters including
Park Chan-wook's
Joint Security Area (2000),
Kwak Jae-yong's
My Sassy Girl (2001),
Kwak Kyung-taek's
Friend (2001),
Kang Woo-suk's
Silmido (2003), and
Kang Je-gyu's
Taegukgi (2004). In fact, both
Silmido and
Taegukgi were seen by 10 million people domestically—about one-quarter of South Korea's entire population. South Korean films began attracting significant international attention in the 2000s, due in part to filmmaker
Park Chan-wook, whose movie
Oldboy (2003) won the
Grand Prix at the
2004 Cannes Film Festival and was praised by American directors including
Quentin Tarantino and
Spike Lee, the latter of whom directed the remake
Oldboy (2013). Director
Bong Joon-ho's
The Host (2006) and later the English-language film
Snowpiercer (2013), are among the highest-grossing films of all time in South Korea and were praised by foreign film critics.
Yeon Sang-ho's
Train to Busan (2016), also one of the highest-grossing films of all time in South Korea, became the second highest-grossing film in
Hong Kong in 2016. '', the first Korean film to win the
Palme d'Or and
Academy Award for Best Picture In 2019, Bong Joon-ho's
Parasite became the first film from South Korea to win the prestigious
Palme d'Or at the
Cannes Film Festival. At the
92nd Academy Awards,
Parasite became the first South Korean film to receive any sort of
Academy Awards recognition, receiving six nominations. It won
Best Picture,
Best Director,
Best International Feature Film and
Best Original Screenplay, becoming the first film produced entirely by an
Asian country to receive a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture since
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, as well as the
first non-English-language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Park Chan-wook's
Decision to Leave and
Hirokazu Kore-eda's
Broker each won an award at the
2022 Cannes Film Festival. While
Song Kang-ho became the first South Korean actor to win
Best Actor at the same festival. == Highest-grossing films ==