Cinema of Korea

The film industries of North and South Korea, along with the historical cinema of the Korean Empire and the period of Japanese occupation, make up Korean cinema as a whole. Today, both countries have active film sectors, but only South Korean productions have gained significant global recognition.

Cinema of South Korea

North Korean movies generally focus on Juche ideology or revolutionary stories. South Korean cinema saw a "golden age" in the late 1950s and 1960s, but its quality was widely seen as poor by the 1970s. However, by 2005, South Korean audiences were watching more domestic films than foreign ones in theaters, helped by regulations that restricted how many foreign films could be shown per theater each year.

Early period

Early period

The first person to film in Korea was American traveler and lecturer Burton Holmes, who included the footage in his travelogue programs. He showed these films to the Korean royal family in 1899, in addition to screening them abroad. Korea’s first film studio, Dongdaemun Motion Picture Studio, opened in 1903. There are competing claims about the country’s first movie theater.

Dansungsa, which opened in Seoul in November 1907, is widely considered the first. Yet a 2021 article in The Hankyoreh argues that the Incheon-based Ae Kwan Theater, originally opened as Hyŏmnyulsa in 1895, holds that title. The first Korean film is often considered to be Righteous Revenge, a 1919 kino-drama (a stage play with a filmed backdrop), though this label is disputed. It premiered at Dansungsa on the same day and just after the documentary Panoramic View of the Whole City of Gyeongseong.

The anniversary of its release is celebrated as Korean Film Day in South Korea. For the next few years, Korean film production consisted of kino-dramas and documentaries. The identity of the first Korean feature film is also unclear.

Some point to a 1921 filming of Chunhyang-Jeon (released in 1922) as the first. The traditional story of Chunhyang later became Korea’s most-filmed story, and this version was possibly the first Korean feature, sound, color, and widescreen film. Im Kwon-taek’s 2000 pansori version of Chunhyang brought the total number of films based on the story to 14. Other sources name Yun Baek-nam’s Ulha ui Mengse (Plighted Love Under the Moon), released in April 1923, as the first Korean feature film.