After a long tunnel of slump, Korean movies this year successfully appealed to many movie viewers. According to the Korean Film Commission (KFC), Korean movies possessed 60% of its market share in the movie business, and got a term of ‘new Renaissance’. Moreover, for the first time in history, Korean movies managed to exceed 100 million viewers in one year.
Many movies are being released every year, but the movies that brought audiences over 10 million were only 5 until this year. However, 2 movies this year exceeded 10 million, which were <The Thieves> and <Masquerade> having 12.98 and 12.12 viewers respectively according to KFC. Meanwhile, melodrama <A werewolf boy> and <Architecture 101> also made a big hit, by inspiring viewer’s emotion of love and their old memories, while recording over 7 million and 4.1 million viewers. Not only these movies, this year Korean movies made a hit in many genres. <Dancing Queen> (4 million viewers), <All about my wife> (4.58 million), and <Gone with the wind>(4.9 million) were a genre of comedy. While <War against crime: Golden age of bad guys> (4.68 million), <Deranged)(4.5 million)>, and <Unbowed>(3.41 million) got a decent evaluation by having philosophy on their movies. Not only appealing the viewers into the cinema, but director Gi-Duk Kim got an award of Leone d’oro in the Venice International Film Festival with the work <Pieta>. Leone d’oro is the award that goes to the best movies.
However, despite of wide range of development, the ‘darkness’ of Korean movie industry still existed. Still the most of the movies that made a box office hit were made by huge distributors like CJ, Lotte, or Showbox. While for an independent films or art films that were filmed with a low budget were like getting a blood from a stone to procuring the screen in the theater. As a result, these films were played like once in a day, while <Pieta> also had a failure in the domestic cinemas, only having a 0.6 million viewers. Compared to the <Masquerade> and <The Thieves>, which were screened over 20 times a day, major distributors are blocking the development of these small industries, while violating audience’s right to watch. Of course, major distributor’s huge investment and marketing are one of the factors of Korean movie Renaissance. However, in order to develop continually, there should be a way to develop fairly.
