Hallyuwood: The Ultimate Guide to Korean Cinema
Written by Bastian Meiresonne
Published by Black Dog & Leventhal
Available for purchase here

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Podcast Director

Korean cinema has arguably never been hotter than it has in the last few years. Since its boom into wider awareness in the 2000s up to Bong Joon-ho's Oscar wins for Parasite in 2020, it has never been easier to watch Korean films, so I was really excited to dive into this hefty tome. Ultimately, I enjoyed the reading experience, but it was not what I was expecting. When Hallyuwood describes itself as "The Ultimate Guide to Korean Cinema", the word cinema is referring more to the industry or the art form than it is to the films themselves.

I grew up in an age where film guides were still reasonably prevalent. You could find compilations of reviews from specific critics, or divided up by era or sub-genre. This is what I was expecting from Hallyuwood: a comprehensive guide to Korea's cinematic offerings that would perhaps give me better or more insight into the cultural differences from what I'm familiar with, and as always, I was hoping to maybe be exposed to a filmmaker I'd never heard of before. Who among us isn't looking to find a new fave at every turn?

That is not exactly what Hallyuwood is. It still manages to do those things, but along with the occasional film summary, this book is most concerned with providing an insightful and thorough history of the Korean film industry. A history that is genuinely fascinating. Above, I mentioned the Korean film boom of the 2000s; it's not as if they weren't making movies before then. In the book's introductory chapter, author Bastian Meiresonne casually drops that Korea has produced over 8000 films since 1919, and one of the main reasons they weren't more widely available was an ongoing struggle against censorship under Japanese occupation.

Hallyuwood is presented in chronological order, first divided up by eras: “1903-1919 The Origins of Korean Cinema”, “1961-1971 The Golden Age of Korean Cinema”, “1992-1998 The Dawn of Renewal”, and so on. Each era is likewise chronological with the occasional diversion for brief overviews of a filmmaker, examinations of socio-political changes, or other relevant asides. For instance, the Byeonsa–Korean narrators that accompanied foreign silent films, added because rural audiences had no cultural context and could not read the intertitle cards–became so ubiquitous that certain Byeonsa became stars in their own right.

This structure necessitated a lot of doubling back to check on the names of stars, filmmakers, studio heads, government officials, and the like as their individual stories evolved over each cinematic epoch, giving Hallyuwood a more academic feel than the guide book I was expecting. But the experience overall is incredibly rewarding. Learning of all the times censorship guidelines changed, usually to protect a government from criticism, and the ways in which filmmakers circumvented or outright battled them, I felt inspired.

I recently reviewed the documentary Scala!!! about the Scala Cinema in London (1978-1993). Learning of that theater’s importance with regards to the underground film scene, concurrent with my reading this book and learning about groups like Jangsangot-mae–a film collective who led an eight year legal battle that ended in the dissolution of the censorship board, directly leading to another boom era in Korean film– felt like a call to action. As the kids say "Let this radicalize you." Film at its best is an art form built on expression and we should always stand and fight for it as such. What better way to champion an art form than to learn as much about it as you can?

During the period I was reading Hallyuwood, I watched Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden (2016), which opens with text explaining that the subtitles for Japanese dialogue would be one color, and those for Korean dialogue, another. Normally, I'd have presumed this was perhaps for clarity, but this book helped me understand better the societal implications that this adds to the ethnic dynamics already present in the film.

If you're interested in learning more about Korean cinema beyond a simple listicle of modern stand-outs, Hallyuwood is for you. This deep examination of cultural roots and artistic struggles put so many films and filmmakers on my To Watch list (the book even has a list of Selected Film Titles in the back, to get you started!) and as described above, has already enriched my viewing experience! The world is an enormous place that only gets more complex the longer you look, and being well-informed is the best way to understand what it is you're seeing.

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