Over the past two decades, South Korean cinema has continued to garner international attention. Its development is at one point cinematic and at the same time political, as its evolution has been accompanied, and at times, spurred on by internal politics and social interventions. Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite is a recent example of South Korean cinema intertwining cinematic temperaments with social issues, but he is actually building off previous South Korean cinematic conventions and contributing to a cinematic lineage that speaks for the South Korean people—all while still enthralling international moviegoers. Class issues take the forefront within Parasite as a motivating factor, but there is a multifaceted and complex history to class issues in South Korea.

Only within recent history has South Korea developed what the rest of the world would consider a middle class. The middle of the 20th century saw Korea split in two by war, with the North becoming a totalitarian state that exists to this day. After the war, the South was ruled by a despot disguised as a democratic leader, until social upheaval caused a succession of political shifts. Only then did a genuine democracy take shape where a truly free market could develop. This major shift began in the late 1970s and ended in the mid-1990s. The new found freedom at the beginning of the tech boom allowed South Korea to develop its economy and ultimately claim a place in international financial markets. As can be witnessed in the movie Parasite as well as numerous other contemporary South Korean films, the newly created middle class and all of the social entrapments that surround class distinction needed to be dealt with almost immediately.

The result was a population struggling with a newfound financial prowess that made unreasonable demands on the people at the bottom of the workforce. Instead of the steady development that could be seen in many other countries, South Korea was faced with all the pressures, stresses, and identity issues of their individual country while rapidly growing into new freedoms. Cinema became a major centerpiece during these struggles.

Joint Security Agency (2000) — *Joint Security Agency* (2000)

Historically the South Korean film industry grappled with censorship. Directors were controlled by the government, and they were forced to create works that could loosely be referred to as propaganda. The majority of films made between the ending of the Korean war in the mid-1950s and the social revolution of the 1990s were period pieces depicting the grandeur of pre-20th century feudal Korea, dramas that gave the South Korean military a positive image. The South Korean government would heavily edit any movie that was publicly displayed, sometimes changing the entire story of the movie to fit their own needs.

Directors weren’t allowed to use too attractive of an actor or actress to play a North Korean character. To contribute to the perplexities faced by South Korean directors, if a director was too good or their work too influential as propaganda, they stood the chance of being abducted by the North Korean government, as was the case with Shin Sang-Ok, who was kidnapped in 1978 and forced to make films for the North Korean government.

South Korean directors were able to bypass censors by examining topics and genres related to the South Korean experience, such as the Japanese occupation of the peninsula before and during World War II. Park Chan-Wook’s The Handmaiden (2016) provides a notable depiction of this occupation. Depictions of families or loved ones being separated by powers greater than themselves were also permissible, and were used at times as an analogy to the results of The Korean War. Enslavement and occupation were also observable elements in 2003's Oldboy, also by Park Chan-wook, and there are certainly elements of self-inflicted entrapment within Parasite.

Another important film in the South Korean struggle against censorship is Chilsu and Mansu from 1988, by Park Kwang-Su. The movie was publicly funded, as the director literally put ads in the local paper seeking financial backers. The movie centers around two billboard painters and their experience of social strife in the face of the economic and political climate, issues and themes that the government censors would never have permitted. In order to bypass the censors and have his film viewed, the director took advantage of the fact that 1988 was also the year of the Olympics in Seoul. Park Kwang-Su knew that the South Korean government didn’t want the rest of the world to view their methods of suppression and censorship, so he made sure that the opening for the film coincided with the publicity surrounding the games. The South Korean government had no choice but to allow the film to publicly debut.

Chilsu and Mansu (1988) — *Chilsu and Mansu* (1988)

South Korean art was simultaneously pulling from a vast and illustrious history, and combating an overwhelming political ideology which sought to conform its population. While the directors of the time worked diligently, the true experience of the Korean people needed to be told without filters. After the shift during the mid-1990s all of this changed. Bong would not be forced to deal with the governmental dictations that his forebears were forced to grapple with in order to create Parasite, but he had a new critical eye examining it: South Korean moviegoers and international markets.

The liberation of cinema in South Korea in the mid-1990s allowed for a proliferation of different genres, filming methods, and topics to be explored. Foreign interest from movie production studios bolstered film output, and the culture quickly became obsessed with cinema. It is rumored that film critics in South Korea are hounded on the street similarly to movie stars in the U.S. South Korean cinema was suddenly exposed to the international film world and a highly consumptive and critical population. It was no longer a question of what the government would allow, but what lived up to the standards of a highly cinematically literate population that was struggling to find an identity on film. This newfound freedom allowed them to explore their identity and the people of South Korea were adamant that the directors get the story right. It was a case of the people defining their own values on screen. Several South Korean film historians and critics refer to one movie as a defining moment in this evolution:

Lee Chang Dong's Peppermint Candy (1999) is about a businessman who inexplicably loses control after years of work stress and class pressure. Peppermint Candy is shot with a non-linear narrative structure where supporting information and motive are given in reverse, similar to Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000), and Gaspar Noé's Irreversible (2002). This new movement that Lee’s film announced would be referred to as Korean New Wave, or Hallyu—the Chinese word for Korean Wave.

Hallyu themes centered on issues of contemporary life, where businesses were inherently corrupt, and there was a powerful social and bureaucratic hierarchy within every institution. Justice and equality were neither expected nor offered from these institutions, and individuals had to seek it at their own expense. Police chiefs and school principals abused their underlings. Police beat suspects unmercifully, and the rich upper class did as they pleased. Even so, everyday life was carried on. Endangering your status, position, or job was an introduction to living on the streets.

It is arguable that Hallyu wouldn't make international waves til Park Chan-Wook's 2003 Oldboy. Internationally lauded and awarded, Oldboy was the anchor in Park's "Vengeance Trilogy," also including Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005). Park's success with this trilogy would allow him to make an all-English movie for the Western market, Stoker (2013), as well as several other Korean language films. Bringing further international attention to Hallyu, Oldboy would be remade for the U.S. market by Spike Lee in 2013.

This interplay between Eastern and Western cinema is not without precedent. Film historians, for instance, would quickly reference the relationship of the works of Japan's Akira Kurosawa and Italy's Sergio Leone—Leone's A Fistful Of Dollars (1964) being an almost exact remake of Kurosawa's samurai classic Yojimbo (1962), only shot in Italy and set in the Western U.S. during the cowboy era of the pre-20th century. The fantastical elements of the cowboy and samurai mythologies, time period, and landscapes lent themselves to imaginative interpretations and appreciation within their target audiences, and they were both international successes. U.S. director Walter Hill would go on to make another version with Bruce Willis as a prohibition era gangster in a Texas borderland town in 1996, titled Last Man Standing.

While there are numerous examples of back and forth between Asian cultures and the rest of the world in the latter half of the 20th century, such interplay did not exist between Korea and the West; South Korean cinema in the 1950s started out directly emulating U.S. cinema, but developed differently as censors completely re-edited movies to fit governmental needs. South Korea also had no native film festivals. Starting in the 1980s, several South Korean films were awarded at international film festivals and competitions, but still there was little public interaction with cinema of other countries besides the U.S.

As the two countries had been allies during the Korean War and the U.S. maintained a sizable military force on the peninsula, the subject matter, tone, and attitude were considered acceptable for the population to consume, and the native censors largely accepted foreign content from the U.S. South Korean filmmakers, however, still had much catching up to do once the veil of censorship was lifted; the films of certain countries were never permitted, and certain, more extreme, films remained banned until after the revolution.

While it would be plausible to say that the South Korean population simply had U.S. values forced upon them through U.S. cinema, after the rise of Korean New Wave and Hallyu, South Korean directors were able to define their own reality and develop works that represented their own identity. In regards to cinema surrounding the development of discrete cultural identities, this can be witnessed nowhere better than within post-revolution South Korean movies about the North and South divide.

Joint Security Area (2000) — *Joint Security Area* (2000)

Joint Security Area, or J.S.A., is a film by Oldboy director Park Chan-Wook from 2000 about a shooting that takes place along the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. At one point it was the most-viewed movie in South Korea. The film closely examines the lives of several North and South Korean soldiers and explores the events that lead up to the shooting. The movie does a surprisingly humane job of treating the North Koreans as moral people with feelings, dreams, and aspirations, while also drawing out the inequalities, injustices, and abhorrent elements that exist in the South—even with greater financial and material means. Potentially even more important, the films treats individuals in North Korea as compatriots, merely separated from the South due to circumstances out of their control. Park successfully highlights important national values within a people that the media and government continually display as fearful enemies.

2013’s Red Family by Lee Ju-Hyoung is about a group of North Korean spies disguised as a family living in South Korea. Their neighbors are highly dysfunctional, in debt to loan sharks, and heavy drinkers. By the end of the movie, the North Korean spies are not only friendly with the problematic neighbors, but actually envy them for being able to openly communicate with each other. The North Korean spies similarly help the dysfunctional family overcome their problematic ways and come together as a family unit. Thus, we see the potential strengths of those who live in the South and those who live in the North more clearly defined; the middle class in the South have material means, while Northerners maintain a moral fiber which connects them to the values of traditional Korean society that the Southern middle class has gravitated away from.

Kim Ki-duk's 2016 The Net depicts a North Korean fisherman who accidentally drifts into South Korean waters and is abducted by South Korean authorities. The film finds him consumed with the idea of returning to his family in the North. During one of his escape attempts, he comes across pimps beating up a prostitute. The main character saves the woman, then has a meal with her. She explains that she has family and a child, but that the competitive job market brought her to the city, where she was only able to find work as a call girl. She drank too much and took on further debt with loan sharks to make herself comfortable while she lived an unpleasant life. Again, we see the similar theme of humanizing those from the North while drawing out the problems of the South.

The South Korean officials try multiple avenues of convincing the main character to stay in the South or betray the North. After trickery, bribery, and coercion are exhausted, he is severely beaten. And after finally released, he is subsequently tortured and beaten by his own government as well. Kim Ki-duk made a powerful statement with this movie by equating the North and the South in a manner that condemns both governments, while highlighting the strength of character of all Koreans, a compassionate observation that’s one of the most endearing and important elements in post-revolution Korean cinema and Hallyu.

Korean New Wave has allowed South Koreans to create their own cinema, one that represents their values, customs, history, and experiences with their own voices. These are experiences bolstered by interaction with the rest of the world in a manner that was not previously available to them. What is fascinating about South Korean cinema, is how well it exports.

Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite won an Oscar because its themes are universal and transmittable within our contemporary age. The movie’s sympathetic and sardonic view of class issues is one that can perhaps be seen in any industrialized country -- innumerable people struggling under a system that doesn’t support them. But Parasite maintains a discrete Korean identity. Consider the man held hostage willingly in the bomb shelter and the historical context of Japanese occupancy. Families are torn apart by a system which pressures and seeks to control them, similar to the results of the Korean War. What is so satisfying about Parasite, and Korean New Wave in general, is its empathy for its characters—characters whose psychological breaks from their attempts to lead better lives, lead them to commit horrible acts, just like in the original Hallyu film Peppermint Candy.

Class Issues and Identity in South Korean Cinema