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Local detail, universal appeal: Parasite’s “Best Picture” win & trends in South Korea-US film exchange

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Local detail, universal appeal: Parasite’s “Best Picture” win & trends in South Korea-US film exchange

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Local Detail, Universal Appeal:
Parasite’s “Best Picture” Win & Trends in South Korea-US Film Exchange

By

Donald Collins

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(EAST ASIAN AREA STUDIES)

December 2020

Copyright 2020 Donald Collins
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ..............................................................................................................................iii
List of Figures & Tables .......................................................................................................................iv
Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................v

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................1
Chapter 1: The Tale of Chungmuro .......................................................................................................6
Korean Film Under Japanese Occupation (1910-1945) ............................................................7
Postwar Film Industry & Park Chung Hee (1960s-70s) .........................................................11
Korean New Wave & New Korean Cinema (1980- early 2000s) ..........................................14
Tensions Between Chungmuro & Hollywood (1989) ............................................................16
The Cultural Promotion Agenda (1994- ) ...............................................................................18
The Blacklist (2012-2018) ......................................................................................................22
Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................23
Chapter 2: Bong Joon Ho & Parasite...................................................................................................26
Early Life & Influences ..........................................................................................................28
Bong & Genre .........................................................................................................................30
Early Short Films (1994) .......................................................................................................34
Feature Films (2000-2009) .....................................................................................................35
Transnational Collaborations & Crossovers (2013-2017) .....................................................37
Art Cinema Tendencies ...........................................................................................................40
Introducing Parasite ................................................................................................................42
Key Themes & Formal Elements ...........................................................................................46
Depictions of South Korean Social Issues .............................................................................49
Parasite & Chungmuro: Looking to the Future ......................................................................51
Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................53
Chapter 3: Parasite in America ….......................................................................................................56
Mr. Bong Goes to Hollywood (Again) ...................................................................................57
Winning Awards, Hearts .........................................................................................................58
Parasite & American Social Issues .........................................................................................62
The People of the United States Vs. Subtitles .........................................................................64
Korean Culture in America: Organic & Strategic Growth ......................................................67
Hallyu ......................................................................................................................................69
Conclusions .............................................................................................................................72
Conclusion ...........................................................................................................................................75
Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................79

iii
Acknowledgements
As often exhausting and challenging as the project of this thesis has been, I’ve learned so
much, met so many incredible people through my studies at USC, and look forward to continuing
this research. Thank you to my committee members Professors Joshua Goldstein, Brian Bernards and
Rhacel Parreñas for their support and feedback, as well as Grace Ryu and the East Asian Studies
Center, my fellow TAs Adam, Tiara and Steve, and Professors Gloria Shin, Kathryn Page-
Lippsmeyer, and Satoko Shimizaki. Thank you to the wonderful friends who provided me feedback
and encouragement (or film recommendations) every step of the way: Matt, Kassie, Jacqueline,
Chris, Kayla, Skylar, Tom, Angela, Rán and Joyce. Thank you to my mom, Mary Collins, for her
unconditional support of every strange, new direction my life takes, and to my grandmother, dad, and
extended family.
I am especially grateful for all the incredible Korean language teachers I’ve had over the last
few years, in particular Hyejoo Back at Wesleyan, Helen Chung and Sophie Ahn at USC, and Eun-
young Kim and Seohyun Kim at Kyung Hee University. Studying Korean as your student has been a
total joy- I promise I’ll get better!

iv
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Dansungsa Theater (est. 1907) in the 1950’s ...............................................................8
Figure 2 Na Un-gyu (1902-1937) ...............................................................................................8
Figure 3 Direct Distribution Protestors (1990) .........................................................................16
Figure 4 Busan International Film Festival 2017 (BIFF) .........................................................21
Figure 5 Parasite (2019) storyboards .......................................................................................29
Figure 6 The Host (2006) frame – causing a spectacle .............................................................31
Figure 7 Snowpiercer (2013) frame –Evans, Song & Go .........................................................38
Figure 8 Parasite frame – semi-basement ................................................................................42
Figure 9 Parasite poster – “Act like you own the place” .........................................................44
Figure 10 Parasite frame – bunker .............................................................................................45
Figure 11 Parasite frame – storm ...............................................................................................46
Figure 12 Parasite frame – stairs ................................................................................................46
Figure 13 Parasite frame – smell ................................................................................................48
Figure 14 Admissions Trends of Korean & Foreign Films, 2009-2018 .....................................53
Figure 15 Parasite wins the 2020 “Best Picture” Oscar .............................................................59
Figure 16 Korean American population by state, 2016 ..............................................................67
Figure 17 Crowds at New York KCON, 2019 ............................................................................71

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 National Tracking Poll, Parasite responses ...............................................................65
Table 2 National Tracking Poll, subtitle responses ................................................................ 65
Table 3 Characteristics of the Korean Wave by Period ...........................................................70
v
Abstract

South Korean director Bong Joon Ho’s latest feature Parasite (2019) achieved unprecedented
success in The United States for a Korean film, becoming the first “foreign language” feature to
win “Best Picture” at the Academy Awards. Parasite represents a return to Bong’s art cinema-
leanings, and an additional return from transnational projects to a distinctly localized type of
Korean filmmaking. Korea’s long, fraught history with the US government and Hollywood
provides context for the political and socioeconomic commentary and use of Hollywood genres
in Bong’s work. The director uses self-described “local” detail to craft realistic, complex
characters that in turn possess “universal” appeal.

Both young South Koreans and Americans in urban centers may find the problems facing
Parasite’s “poor” characters particularly resonant; debt, housing insecurity, job competition in
cities, a struggle for upward mobility and lack of access to education. The internal organic
growth of Korean diasporic populations in the US alongside the external strategic promotion of
Korean media and culture from the Korean government primed Parasite’s warm welcome in
America. Despite Americans’ longstanding notions of Hollywood movies’ superior quality, and
aversion to non-English language films, younger generations are demonstrating increased
receptivity to subtitled works and non-English-language media. The advent of streaming and
Millennial and Gen Z proficiency with social media both contributed to the online buzz
propelling Parasite’s rise, and to interest in other Korean media at large. While Parasite’s US
success does not suggest that American audiences have triumphed over their traditionally
xenophobic tendencies, the film’s splash presents opportunities for meaningful discussion about
the importance of crossover medias, forcing a moment of self-reflection on Hollywood, and
illuminating promising trends in the attitudes of younger generations towards non-English
language media.

Keywords: Bong Joon Ho, Parasite, New Korean Cinema, Korean Wave, Hallyu, Chungmuro,
Hollywood, Academy Awards
1
Introduction

This thesis endeavors to orient Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite (2019) within both his career
and within the history of South Korean cinema, identifying why and how this film achieved
commercial and critical success in the United States at this moment in time. Bong’s latest film is
not just the result of his dogged thematic explorations and well-practiced genre experimentation;
it is the commercial and creative product of an utterly unique national film industry. One of the
few cinemas able to hold its own against Hollywood at the domestic box office, the Korean film
industry (also called “Chungmuro”) was forged by the contrasting elements of severe
government censorship, and later, an expansive government-led cultural promotion agenda.
Many auteurs powering the New Korean Cinema movement grew up in an atmosphere
of political turmoil, exploring in their own works Korea’s national traumas and social ills.
Ultimately, I aim to provide a framework for understanding and explaining why this particular
film broke through critically and commercially in the US market in 2019. What relationship did
the Korean film industry have to Hollywood throughout filmmaking’s first century? Why was
Bong Joon Ho the best director to helm a breakthrough success for a Korean movie in the US?
And why was America ready, in 2020, to finally bestow its most prestigious award, the “Best
Picture” Oscar, to a non-English language film?
Bong Joon Ho is an ideal figure to guide us through these questions, speculations, events,
and ideas. A popular, award-winning South Korean auteur, Bong grew up in a family of artists,
and spent his college years in Seoul surrounded by political turmoil and democratic activism.
Influenced by both the Hollywood movies he saw on the US military’s TV channel (AFKN), and
by the East Asian directors he studied at his college film club, Bong developed a keen sense for
the workings of Hollywood genre filmmaking. Yet, while impacted by other directors past and
2
present, Bong undeniably possesses a unique style, and has made his own substantial
contributions to, and mark on, filmmaking; as he puts it, “It’s like you want to be influenced, but
you don’t want to be overwhelmed.”1 Through his career and self-reflective commentaries on his
own work, Bong evinces a deep understanding of Korean film history, Chungmuro-Hollywood
relations, and the role of genre mixing and hybridity in creating compelling narratives and
realistic characters with populist, “universal” appeal.
Bong’s seventh feature film Parasite (2019) follows the impoverished Kim family as
they con their way into the employment of the rich Park household in Seoul. Halfway through
the film, the discovery that the previous housekeeper’s husband is living in a secret bunker under
the Park’s house threatens the future of the Kim’s livelihoods. The subsequent vicious battle
between the Kims and the “basement people” sparks a chain reaction of madness and murder that
leaves the Kim’s daughter Ki-young (Park So Dam) dead, and patriarch Ki-taek (Song Kang Ho)
trapped in the bunker after having murdered their boss, Mr. Park. Unwilling to give up on his
dream of upward mobility and determined to one day buy the Park’s house and reunite his
family, Ki-taek’s son Ki-woo ends the film with a monologue about his renewed drive to be
successful. In addition to incorporating some of Bong’s most distinctive visual motifs (stairs,
basements, rain) and tonal elements (dark humor, jarring transitions), Parasite offers substantial
explorations of class divides, moral corruption and loss of empathy, and subtle critiques of
consumerism and the encroach of western capitalism.
Chapter 1 of this thesis examines the 1919 arrival of cinema as a technology and artform
in Korea, tracing the medium through major historical events on the peninsula, mapping its
different iterations under and outside political censorship. Additionally, I explore Hollywood’s
—————————
1 Bong in Klein (2008), 872-873.
3
early domination of the Korean box office and role propping up the Japanese censorship
apparatus, as well as early efforts within Chungmuro to channel Hollywood-style genres and
gloss. Chapter 2 introduces Bong Joon Ho, providing select cursory analysis of his early short
films and features, with a distinct focus on the director’s influences and favorite themes. I also
frame here the importance of genre in Bong’s work and in creating and sustaining successful
commercial film industries, before turning to Bong’s latest film Parasite, unraveling the plot,
key themes, and surveying its commercial and critical reception, including awards. The Kim’s
struggles with poverty in Parasite, motivating their schemes to get hired in the Park house and
keep the jobs at any cost, speaks directly to South Korean wealth and housing disparities, Seoul’s
overpopulation and outsize job competition, and the specter of rising household debt. Chapter 3
covers the parallel social issues (class, housing, debt) facing young Americans, particularly those
in New York and Los Angeles who sold out Parasite’s main US events and screenings and
spread the word on social media. Using recent statistics regarding Americans’ moviegoing
tendencies and attitudes towards foreign films, I frame Parasite’s Oscars win within a larger
youth-led movement to challenge Hollywood (and America’s) xenophobia towards non-English-
language pictures. Lastly, this chapter chronicles the ways in which Parasite benefitted from
Korea’s global pop culture aspirations, and the Hallyu (Korean wave) phenomenon in the US. In
addition to discussing the popularity of K-pop and K-dramas oft-associated with Hallyu, I want
to paint a larger picture of Korean culture’s impact on America via immigration, adoption, and
the growth of the Korean American population.
In remarking on the South Korean film industry, I use the common byword
“Chungmuro,” which refers to the part of Seoul that historically served as the center of film
production. Similar to the moniker “Hollywood,” “Chungmuro” no longer literally describes the
4
localized, physical place of all filmmaking, as studios have spread to other areas, but the title is
meaningful in that it evokes a national history of filmmaking. While certain US awards and
writings use the term “foreign language film,” unless responsibly framed, this problematically
suggests English is the only “American” language. Therefore, I assume the phrase “non-English-
language films” unless quoting otherwise. In Korea, the family name comes first (Bong Joon Ho
instead of Joon Ho Bong), so I will be using this method unless a person uses otherwise for
themselves. When I say “Korea” in regard to any histories after 1945, I am referring to “South
Korea,” the lower half of the Korean peninsula, divided by the US and USSR at the end of
WWII. Romanization of Korean words will be conducted according to the Revised
Romanization System, which, released in 2000, was developed by the National Korean
Language Academy to replace the longstanding (and still oft-used) McCune–Reischauer method.
While distinct Korean cultural elements of Parasite may be lost on a western audience
and elude direct translation, the current quality of life concerns of American millennials align
with those of the film’s protagonists, for many of whom access to success and stability seems
tenuous, distant, even impossible. Parasite became the fourth highest-grossing non-English-
language film in American history not because previous Korean films haven’t been worthy of
acclaim, but in large part because of an increased familiarity with, and taste for, Korean culture.
This was accomplished via strategic cultural promotion initiatives by the South Korean
government which culminated in the Hallyu or Korean Wave phenomenon of the 1990s, wherein
the world (in particular the West) became obsessed with Korean music, TV shows and films. But
such familiarity with Korean culture also happened organically through influxes of Korean
immigrants, Korean adoptees, a growing Korean American population, and via younger
generations’ overall embrace of transnational and “crossover” media, multiculturalism, and anti-
5
racist movements.
Operating on the premise that most Americans need substantial, explicit reasons to enjoy
a movie in a language other than English (born out in historical precedent and data), as
elucidated above, there are in fact very particular reasons Parasite may resonate with American
audiences at this moment in time. And as theaters slowly re-open when COVID-19 crises relent,
as another awards season approaches, as people continuously look to streaming services for
content, and as filmmakers across the world continue to produce excellent work, perhaps future
directors accepting “Best Picture” for subtitled work will employ that affectionate cliché:
“Parasite and Bong Joon Ho paved the way.”

6
Chapter 1:
The Tale of Chungmuro

When Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite swept the 2019 Oscars, becoming the first non-English
language film to win Best Picture in the award’s 92-year history, the knee-jerk audience reaction
was to suggest this moment was as big for Korean film as it was for the Academy Awards, that
Korean film was finally having its moment thanks to Hollywood recognition. Luckily, a number
of critics were quick to point out the truth; while such awards definitely contribute to global
prestige and visibility, they are as much a reflection of achievement as deliverance of it. As The
Washington Post’s Haeryun Kang asked, “is this really the moment Korean cinema finally made
it? Or is it just the first time Hollywood and the West decided to take notice?”2
In this chapter, I aim to provide an abbreviated examination of Chungmuro’s history,
defining the internal and external forces that shaped the contemporary Korean film industry over
the past century. The early influence and dominance of Hollywood on colonized Korea, the
repeal of government film censorship, and the centrality of cultural promotion to South Korea’s
globalization drive all played a direct role in making Parasite’s very existence- and domestic and
international success- possible. During filmmaking’s first century, the Korean industry both
weathered and reflected Japanese colonial occupation, the country’s division, post-liberation
government censorship, the Korean War, the people’s democracy (minjung) movement and a
financial crisis. Bong Joon Ho is keenly aware of this history, and of the long, turbulent
relationship between Chungmuro and Hollywood, particularly the latter’s longtime aggressive
encroachments on the domestic film market. A working knowledge of the above makes possible
—————————
2 Kang, Haeryun. “It’s not just ‘Parasite.’ Korean cinema has a deep, rich history.” The Washington Post. Feb 13, 2020.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/13/its-not-just-parasite-korean-cinema-has-deep-rich-history/ Accessed Jun
1, 2020.
7
an understanding of Bong’s uniquely Korean appropriation of “Hollywood-style” genres in his
films and provides context for his references to key political and cultural events.

Korean Film Under Japanese Occupation (1910-1945)
Japan’s colonial regime ruled the Korean peninsula from 1910 until surrender to the
Allied Powers in August 1945. While the Japanese protectorate employed a variety of tactics to
maintain control, varying from strict military rule to a more relaxed period of “Cultural Rule,”
Korean people languished under second-class citizenship in their own country, and bore a
relentless campaign to assimilate them as citizens of the Japanese empire.3 Filmmaking was no
exception, and all reels produced during this time were subject to an unpredictable and expensive
censorship process in order to gain the right to exhibition. Remarking on the complexity of
studying Korean films made during Japanese occupation, Dong Hoon Kim identifies “Joseon
cinema’s ambivalent nature as a hybrid cinematic entity at the critical intersection of colonial and
national cinemas.”4 National cinema, conceived broadly as the film product or output of a given
nation- “an imagined political community...both inherently limited and sovereign”-is particularly
hard to pin down within Korea’s turbulent modern history.5 The Peninsula was colonized, then
divided, then at war during the entire formative period of its cinema; borders literally moved and
were re-moved, identity assimilation (re: names, language, work) was coerced, then revoked.
Thus, the early “Joseon” or Korean national cinema operated as a pseudo-diasporic cinema on its
own soil. This forced the Korean film industry to acquire survival skills in the form of hybrid
leanings (incorporating Hollywood genre elements) and a keen eye for transnational media
—————————
3 Robinson, Michael. Korea’s Twentieth Century Odyssey: A Short History. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007. 43.
4 Kim (2017), 56.
5 Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso,
2006. Print. 6.
8
flows.
On October 27, 1919, over two decades after the Lumiere brothers developed and
patented their Cinématographe, the first Korean film, The Righteous Revenge (sometimes
translated as The Loyal Revenge), screened at the legendary Dansungsa Theater in Seoul (Fig. 1).
While there is controversy over whether it was truly a film in the traditional sense or a kino-
drama (film clips interspersed between live theater6) October 27 is nonetheless officially
designated “Korean Film Day.” 1926 witnessed what many scholars consider the most
significant early Korean film, Arirang. Taking its name from the multivalent Korean folk song,
Arirang was helmed by Na Un-gyu, “one of only a few artists that both North and South Korea
consider historically important,”7 who wrote, directed, and starred (Fig. 2). The film follows a
college student, Yeong-jin (Na) who is forced to return to his rural farming village when his
—————————
6 Junhyoung Cho, “A Brief History of Korean Cinema” in Lee, Sangjoon. Rediscovering Korean Cinema. Ann Arbor, Michigan:
University of Michigan Press, 2019. 34-64. 35; Frances Gateward, “Youth in crisis: National and cultural identity in New South
Korean Cinema,” in Lau, Jenny Kwok Wah. Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003.
7 Rhee, Jooyeon, and Un Na. “Arirang, and the Making of a National Narrative in South and North Korea.” Journal of Japanese
& Korean Cinema i.1 (2009): 27–43. Web. 32.
Figure 1. (left) Dansungsa theater (est. 1907) in the 1950s. Photo: The Korea Times. Figure 2. Celebrated Korean director
and actor, Na Un-gyu (1902-1937). Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

9
family approaches bankruptcy. A Korean rent collector (and Japanese collaborator) torments
Yeong-jin’s family and eventually tries to rape his sister. In the throes of a hallucination, Yeong-
jin kills the rent collector, and as a Japanese policeman escorts him over Arirang hill, the
villagers sing Yeong-jin’s favorite folk song.
Although no overt reference was made to the evils of colonial occupation, the film’s
villain was part of a “ruling class” who collaborated with the Japanese and tormented his fellow
Koreans,8 and the plight of Yeong-jin’s family spoke to the “class disparity and destitution in
rural Joseon.”9 Arirang’s massive success “confirmed the commercial potential of Korean
films,”10 and both the film and re-popularized folk song “took part in culturally forming Korea’s
new national identity in the colonial context.”11 Though he died young, Na Un-gyu was a driving
creative force in early domestic film production (at the intersections of “colonial and national
cinemas”), acting in and/or directing over forty films. His contributions are associated with the
emergence of a distinctly “Joseon” filmic identity, and often received overwhelming support
from Koreans at the box office. However, while Na received a rapturous Korean response to
Arirang, he failed to do the same in 1927 with A Hero of the Troubled Times, in which he riffed
on the Hollywood swashbuckler genre popularized by Douglas Fairbanks. Kim explains:
Unlike the urban audiences, who were familiar with the Hollywood genre conventions [A
Hero of the Troubled Times] relied on, the audiences in the remotest part of Joseon,
where film was not yet established as a regular cultural activity, were not able to take any
pleasure in Na’s experiment with a foreign genre.12
Na’s experimentation with Hollywood genre stylings indicated his keen attention to
America’s dominance in film production technical quality and reflected the impact of
—————————
8 Cho, 36.
9 Kim, Dong Hoon. Eclipsed Cinema: The Film Culture of Colonial Korea. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. 59.
10 Ibid.
11 Kim (2017), 65.
12 Ibid, 70.
10
Hollywood’s push into Asian markets. While perhaps mostly an urban phenomenon in 1927, by
1934, American films proliferated in Korean theaters at an estimated 62% of the market, and
Hollywood production companies Fox, Paramount and Warner Brothers all had direct
distribution offices in Seoul.13 Na’s writings and comments suggest he was well aware of the
seemingly indomitable edge Hollywood blockbusters such as Fairbanks caper The Mark of Zorro
(1920), D.W. Griffith’s romantic drama Way Down East (1920) or Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold
Rush (1925) possessed over domestic film efforts. Na believed, “Film must entertain people in an
interesting and exciting way,” and during his short career he tried to “imitate some features from
foreign films” to conjure the bigness audiences of Hollywood were used to, such as
incorporating over 800 extras.14 While mimicry was not an end in and of itself, Na knew tapping
into the existing demand for and familiarity with big pictures could help ensure success. This
early strategic intermixing of filmic elements (foreign Hollywood imports, domestic Korean
efforts, all impacted by Japanese oversight) foreshadowed the kinds of mass-appeal media
hybridity that would propel the Korean Wave to glory in the 1990s.
Hollywood’s presence in colonial-occupied Korea ran deeper than merely saturating the
peninsula’s film culture. Such a supply chain included paying distribution and censorship fees to
the Japanese government so movies could actually get to theaters; over 90% of feature films
submitted for censorship between 1926 and 1936 came from Hollywood (6,737).15 The money
American studios spent getting films censored for distribution in colonial Korea unsurprisingly
did not go into funding domestic Korean film production, but rather, into building a new state-of-
the-art censorship facility in 1933.16 Accordingly, Brian M Yecies identifies Hollywood as “an
—————————
13 Yecies, Brian M, “Systematization of Film Censorship in Colonial Korea: Profiteering from Hollywood's First Golden Age,”
1926-1936, Journal of Korean Studies, 2005, 10(1), 59-83. 66.
14 Rhee and Un, 28.
15 Yecies, 67.
16 Ibid, 60.
11
unintended ‘pro-imperial Japanese collaborator’” via the practical effect such business had on
“legitimizing Japanese colonial authority and financially supporting the occupation of Korea.”17
Korean protests and opposition to Japanese control hastened the closing of Korean film studios,
increased censorship, and birthed “the Choson18 film company LTD., which produced Japanese
propaganda.”19 While earlier Korean films received Japanese financial backing and oversight,
from 1938 to 1945 production of Korean films ceased, Hollywood was edged out as well, and
theaters only showed “Japanese epics and propaganda films.”20 Still, during the colonial period
Korea produced approximately 240 feature-length films, many of which, like Arirang, are
believed lost.21
Post-War Film Industry & Park Chung Hee (1960s-70s)
In August of 1945, following the United States’ nuclear bombing of the Japanese cities
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan unconditionally surrendered to the Allied powers, ending WWII
in the Pacific theater. Soviet and American forces moved in on the Korean peninsula, and 35
years of physical Japanese colonial occupation came to an end. But Korean liberation didn’t last
long. After the departure of the Japanese occupiers, the United States and U.S.S.R divided the
country in two along the 38th parallel, with the Americans steering the South, and Soviets the
North. During both Japanese occupation and the forced restructuring, cultural assets were
shuffled and lost; it was during this period that Arirang vanished.22 In the summer of 1950, North
Korea launched an attack on the South, and a devastating battle for control of the peninsula
ensued until stalemate in July 1953. The Korean War resulted in an estimated 111,000 South
—————————
17 Ibid, 61.
18 “Choson” here is a Romanized variant of “Joseon” or “Choseon.”
19 Gateward (2003), 119.
20 Ibid, 116.
21 James and Kim, 20.
22 Rhee and Un, 28.
12
Koreans dead23 and mass infrastructural and residential damage, setting the stage for continued
US military presence and decades of hot-cold inter-Korean relations. An updated border was
drawn between North and South Korea, the “Demilitarized Zone” (DMZ), which would serve as
a troubled buffer zone for political detente.
From 1962 to the early 2000s the South Korean economy experienced over eight points
of growth in Gross National Product (GNP) as the country’s third president Park Chung Hee
“applied his authoritarianism to the task of economic development.” 24 This feat often somewhat
pedantically referred to as “the Miracle on the Han,” was accomplished through a combination of
well-used US grants and loans, reliance on cheap Korean labor, guidance of entrepreneurs,
Park’s appeal to nationalism and repression of those who disagreed with his approaches.25 The
same year Park Chung Hee took presidency, 1963, he enacted the Motion Picture Law (MPL),
the governing legal text of the industry which survived six revisions until it was eventually
replaced by the Film Promotion Law in 1996.26 The original MPL effectively subjugated
Chungmuro to a new form of government censorship: “cultural control.”27 Despite this continued
censorship, during the late 50’s and throughout the 1960s Korea’s film industry began to recover
and entered its first “Golden Age,” producing around 200 films a year. Chungmuro developed a
strong domestic distribution system by establishing 6 regional markets,28 and produced mainly
primarily family comedies and melodramas; Park writes the “Melodramas of the 1960s had
wooed mainly female audiences, but those of the 1970s were aimed at males.”29 Studios began
—————————
23 Cumings, Bruce. The Korean War: A History. 1st ed. New York: Modern Library, 2010. Print. 21.
24 Robinson, 129-135.
25 Ibid.
26 Paquet, D. “The Korean Film Industry: 1992 to the Present.” New Korean Cinema: Breaking the Waves. Edinburgh University
Press, 2011. 32–50. Print. 46.
27 Park, Seung Hyung. “Film Censorship and Political Legitimation in South Korea, 1987-1992.” Cinema Journal xlii.1 (2002):
120–138. Web. 122.
28 Paquet, 36 and Gateward, 116.
29 Park, Seung Hyung, “Korean Cinema after Liberation Production, Industry, and Regulatory Trends.” Seoul Searching: Culture
and Identity in Contemporary Korean Cinema. Francis Gateward, ed. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007. Print. 20.
13
targeting such specific audiences, a practice later refined via the “planned films” of the 1990s,
wherein the success of a project was shored up by a prolonged pre-production period and
marketing plan. The “Golden Age” films of the 1960s, which included one of the inspirations
behind Parasite, Kim Ki-young’s classic The Housemaid, reached new heights in both box office
numbers and technical film quality.
Park Chung Hee instituted the yushin constitution in October 1972, which allowed him to
remain president for life. Soon thereafter, he revised the Motion Picture Law for a fourth time,
bringing the film industry under complete government control, forcibly centering it into a
handful of companies.30 This caused the immediate dissolution of 23 companies in a single year,
which halted the Golden Age and sparked what scholars consider the most depressed era of
Korean cinema, a microcosmic reflection of the political strife marking the nation’s own “lowest
point.”31 Kyung Hyun Kim summarizes that while one of Park’s aims was culling the
overcrowded studio market, “ironically the new system that sought to curtail the number of low
quality films ended up generating an alarming number of poor ones.”32
Park’s reign came to an end when he was assassinated at dinner by his own security chief
and director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), Kim Jae-Kyu. General Chun
Do-Hwan took power via military coup, but rather than liberate Koreans from the police state
they experienced under Park, Chun’s eight-year tenure as President continued to perpetrate state
censorship and violent crackdowns. Tensions escalated until they exploded: on May 18th, 1980,
pro-democracy student protesters in the mid-sized Korean city of Kwangju were massacred by
the Korean military, leading to a multi-day standoff with Kwangju’s citizens. Estimates of the
—————————
30 Park (2002), 122.
31 Gateward (2007), 23 and Park (2007), 16.
32 James and Kim, 27.
14
total fatalities of the uprising and onslaught vary widely; government tolls claim less than 200
dead, while many citizens and scholars believe the actual number may be as high as 2000.33

Korean New Wave & New Korean Cinema (1980- early 2000s)
The mid 1980’s brought about a respite from the long-standing suppression of free
speech by the government towards filmmakers, although new challenges emerged in the form of
US efforts to increase South Korea’s foreign film imports and further domestic political
upheaval.34 In June 1987, after president Chun Doo-Hwan chose the equally despised and
corrupt Roh Tae-woo as his successor, Koreans took to the streets protesting for legitimate
democratic elections, the memory of the 1980 Kwangju Uprising still fresh. While Roh did end
up winning the presidency, Koreans had nonetheless finally acquired a system of direct election
after years of military dictatorship, and the 386 Generation- Koreans who were politically active
in the 80s and born in the 60s- played a central role in both this victory and the advent of New
Korean Cinema. The Motion Picture Law underwent its fifth revision, which freed up
“regulations concerning production and opened the door for a new generation of producers to
enter the film industry.”35 Scholars agree this period in time marked a substantial shift in the kind
of films being made in South Korea, and the emergence of a “new” Korean cinema is traced to
these post-Kwangju Uprising, post-June democracy struggle, post-fifth-MPL revision years.
Current scholarship seems to concur that several waves of filmmakers and films actually
occurred in 1980s, 1990s and 2000s Korea, delineated by subtle generational shifts, although
“New Korean Cinema” (NKC) is a useful, though incomplete, catchall for the film output during
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33 Han, Chong-suk. "Kwangju Uprising." Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice. Eds. Gary L. Anderson and Kathryn G.
Herr. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2007. 812-813. SAGE Knowledge. Web. 19 Jun. 2020, doi: 10.4135/9781
412956215.n479.
34 Paquet, 44.
35 Ibid, 47.
15
this time. According to Francis Gateward, works associated with the NKC movement often
incorporate themes of “anti-United States and nationalist sentiments… gender issues, social
stratification, alienation in urban landscapes, the destruction of the family structure and
community, and a focus on youth and youth subcultures.”36 Darcy Paquet notes more technically
that changes to “governmental policy, sources of film finance, and evolving standards of
production”37 all contributed to the distinct qualities of New Korean Cinema, which was also
marked by box office successes and a new vanguard of directors,38 particularly those born in the
late 1950s and 1960s who had not come up through the old style of industry apprenticeships.
Films popularly associated with NKC incorporate a wide range of male-directed works,
including Park Kwang-su’s Chilsu and Mansu (1988), Jang Sun woo’s The Age of Success
(1988) Hong Sang-soo’s debut The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996), Lee Chang Dong’s
Peppermint Candy (1999), Bong’s Memories of Murder (2003) and Park Chan-wook’s first entry
in his famous “revenge trilogy,” Oldboy (2003).
Jinhee Choi identifies Korean film’s first “New Wave” as emerging in the tumultuous
80s, bridging “two diverging film practices: one epitomized by Im [Kwon Taek’s]
heritage/cultural films and the 386 Generation directors’ pursuit of commercially viable
cinema.”39 The dueling forces of arthouse or art cinema tendencies and commercial ones is
another hallmark of NKC, which has witnessed both Korean domestic films’ greatest box office
successes (like Kang’s Shiri) and first major recognition at international festivals (like Park’s
Oldboy and Im’s Painted Fire). But while the moment seemed liberated at a distance, the 1980s
and 90s Korean film industry was still stymied by very real problems, particularly those caused
—————————
36 Gateward, 120.
37 Paquet, 33.
38 Stringer, 6.
39 Choi, 165.
16
by the United States’ aggressive approach to expanding its own film empire.

Tensions Between Chungmuro & Hollywood (1989)
To contest both the filming and distribution of American films and the encroachment of
Hollywood branch offices on Korean soil, protestors undertook a variety of guerilla tactics
intended to scare, and then, harm. 21 of the audience members in a May 1989 screening of Rain
Man at one Seoul theater were, in fact, snakes. The anti-Hollywood demonstrators had included
several poisonous Korean salmosa vipers, and also placed bottles of hydrochloric acid in the
aisles, “with the idea that departing patrons would knock them over and suffer burns to their
clothes, shoes and possibly flesh.” 40 No one was injured, but private guards were temporarily
posted to theaters, inspecting movie-goers’ bags and sitting amongst them during films to watch
for misbehavior.
Tensions had begun brewing between the blossoming domestic Korean film industry and
the United States, which had long been frustrated by the former’s efforts to stymie the entry of
—————————
40 Jameson, Sam. “U.S. Films Troubled by New Sabotage in South Korea Theater.” The Los Angeles Times. June 19, 1989.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-06-19-ca-1754-story.html Accessed Jun 1, 2020.
Figure 3. "People of the Korean film industry resisting direct distribution (1990)."
Photo: Korean Film Archive.
17
Hollywood studios to the market. One California senator railed that the steep fees required to
successfully export a film to Korea, and the forbidding of non-Korean companies to distribute
there was “obnoxious” and “deserved a firm U.S. response.”41 To the dismay of many Korean
film industry professionals, in 1985 the Americans secured the U.S.-Korean Film Agreement,
which abolished limits on, and the taxing of, foreign film imports.42 Then in 1987 the Korean
National Committee (KNC) passed an amendment to the Motion Picture Law, permitting foreign
film companies to open branch offices in Korea.43 This allowed Hollywood to directly distribute
its own films rather than go through Korean companies, bypassing the entire existing system of
domestic distribution and the livelihoods dependent on it. The revision caused a massive uproar
among Koreans in the film business, and among other citizens who saw danger in a stronger US
presence in the entertainment industry and beyond (Fig. 3). While the new clause threatened the
wellbeing of the domestic distribution system, fortunately, the screen quota remained in place,
although the US would later gun (so far, unsuccessfully) to abolish it in the late 90s. According
to Park, “the number of imported films soared from 25 in 1985 to 405 in 1996,”44 and as
expected, Korea’s local distribution networks were no match for Hollywood’s bottomless coffer
and structural efficiency.
Tides began to turn five years after the KNC’s amendment, when in 1992, the industry
received a sudden infusion of cash as the private sector entered the movie-making business.
Electronics manufacturer Samsung was the first of the chaebols- an elite group of family-owned
conglomerates- to get in the game, providing a quarter (roughly $150,000) of the funding for the
—————————
41 Pagano, Penny. “South Korean Barriers Cited in Complaint: Studios Ask U.S. to Fight Trade Curbs.” The Los Angeles Times.
Sep 11, 1985. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-09-11-ca-7272-story.html Accessed Jun 1, 2020.
42 Paquet (2011), 35.
43 Berry, Chris. “'What’s Big About the Big Film?’: ‘De-Westernizing’ the Blockbuster in Korea and China.” Movie
Blockbusters. Taylor and Francis, 2013. 217–229. Web. 219; Kim and James, 33.
44 Park (2007), 22.
18
widely successful romantic drama A Marriage Story (Dir. Kim Ui-seok), an often-comedic saga
of one young couple’s ups and downs. The chaebol’s entry rapidly increased filmmaker’s
budgets, improved the quality of films and modernized the industry, allowing Korean titles to
channel the same Hollywood “bigness” Na Un-gyu had aspired to over half a century earlier.45 In
addition to its hands-off approach to censorship, the government also began conceptualizing
Korean film as a tool for national interests in a new way, finally making the leap from culture
control to culture promotion.

The Cultural Promotion Agenda (1994- )
Beginning in 1994, the Kim Young-sam administration began a drive towards
globalization. Explaining Kim’s segyehwa policy (segye literally means “earth” or “globe”),
Samuel Kim stresses the globalization envisioned was “Korea’s unique concept, encompassing
political, economic, social and cultural enhancement to reach the level of advanced nations in the
world”46 including the president’s prescient emphasis on “the promotion of the culture
industry.”47 Kim introduced the Basic Culture Industry Promotion Law in 1999 to promote film
and multimedia; thus, the very artform perceived for years as a threat to the stability and peace of
the Korean state was now valued as a key component of cementing Korea’s position on a global
stage. The power of Korean film, music and television to generate astronomical levels of interest
in visiting and learning about Korea manifested most potently in the 1990s phenomenon called
the Korean Wave or “Hallyu” (see Chapter 3). While Kim’s segyehwa drive was not very
successful during his time in office- his administration was plagued by accusations of corruption
—————————
45 Shin, Jeeyoung, “Globalization and New Korean Cinema,” in Shin, Chi-Yun., and Julian Stringer. New Korean Cinema. New
York: New York University Press, 2005. Print. 51-62. 54.
46 Kim, Samuel S. Korea’s Globalization. Oxford: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Print. 3.
47 Shin (2005), 55.
19
and low public approval- subsequent presidents took up the cause.
Via the segyehwa cultural promotion agenda, South Korea “elevated the economic status
of pop culture to that of an export industry” which would aspire past mere financial success to
cultural influence and diplomacy.48 In 2004, Joseph Nye coined the controversial, though still
widely used, term “soft power,” holding that pop culture can be a tool of diplomacy and
accomplish a country’s aims “through attraction rather than coercion.”49 Outside of the United
States, no country has had “soft power” invoked more regarding its culture industry in recent
years than South Korea. After the initial explosion of foreign interest in Korean music, TV and
film in the 1990s drove up interest in Korean goods, language and tourism, South Korea
continued to invest heavily in its culture industries and aspire to incorporate the most cutting-
edge technology. Chungmuro was at the forefront of such investments.
As a direct result of the relaxed censorship of the 1990s, financial backing from chaebols,
and then from venture capitalists and the Korean government, filmmakers experienced a
dramatic increase in both budgets and creative control, which allowed multiple genres of movies
to proliferate, and formal experimentation to begin in earnest. For the first time, a “full-service”
cinema began to take shape, one in which a “full range of modes of production and
consumption” co- existed, with both commercial and arthouse cinema models operating to
balance the ecosystem.50 The public had their choice of everything from dramas that tackled
pressing social issues, like Lee Chang-dong’s Peppermint Candy (2000), to action blockbusters
like Kim Jae-gyu’s record-breaking Shiri (1999) and feel-good romances such as Winter in
—————————
48 Chua Beng Huat. Structure, Audience and Soft Power in East Asian Pop Culture. HK: Hong Kong University Press, 2012.
Print. 9.
49 Nye, Joseph S. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. 1st ed. New York: Public Affairs, 2004. Print. x.
50 Berry, Chris. “Full Service Cinema: The South Korean Cinema Success Story (So Far).” In Texts and Context of Korean
Cinema: Crossing Borders, edited by Young-Key Kim Renaud, R. Richard Grinker, and Kirk W. Larsen, 7-16. Washington, DC:
George Washington University, Sigur Center Asia Paper, no. 17. https://www2.gwu.edu/~sigur/assets/docs/scap/SCAP17-
KoreanCinema.pdf. 7.
20
August (1998) and My Sassy Girl (2001).
Korea’s first major film festival, the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), had its
inauguration in 1996 and became a central player in encouraging domestic and foreign
investment in Asian films (Fig. 4).51 BIFF gives out $30,000 awards to films chosen as that
year’s “best,” as well as other monetary awards to directors; past recipients include filmmakers
and works from China, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Iran and Russia in addition to South Korea and
others. According to Soojeong Ahn’s thorough history of BIFF’s inception and impact, the
festival “self-consciously considered itself a significant agent in promoting Korean cinema to the
Western film market,”52 as most Korean films gained global recognition via participation on the
international festival circuit. Frances Gateward asserts BIFF has “overtaken both the Hong Kong
and Tokyo international film festivals to become the preeminent festival in Asia,”53 an
achievement that mirrors Korean films’ domination over HK and Japanese titles at their domestic
box office box office, and popularity in neighboring ones. A demonstration of the state’s new
cultural promotion stance and BIFF’s value to the reputation and spread of Korean film, the
government began financially backing the festival in 1999. Additionally, Busan invested in a
state-of-the-art complex to house BIFF and be used for other screenings and events year-round.
The result was the astonishing Busan Cinema Center, which won multiple architecture awards
and stands as a testament to the country’s investment in, and ambitions for, its film industry, as
well as that industry’s technological advancement.
The same year of BIFF’s inception, the beleaguered, six-times-revised Motion Picture
Law succumbed to its heir, the Film Promotion Law (FPL), whose very title evinced modernity
—————————
51 Ahn, SooJeong, and Ahn, S. The Pusan International Film Festival, South Korean Cinema and Globalization. Hong Kong
University Press, 2011. Web.
52 Ahn, 4.
53 Gateward (2007), 3.
21
and the spirit of segyehwa.54 The update included the establishment of a Film Promotion Fund,
and the repeal of red-tape measures inhibiting “international co-production and export of Korean
films,” thus expediting the globalization of the industry.55 Kim Dae-jung’s administration created
the Korea Culture and Contents Agency in 1999 to extend culture industry support from film to
the additional media of “animation, music and video games.”56 The Korean Film Council
(KOFIC) was remolded from its predecessor the Korea Motion Picture Promotion Corporation
(KMPPC); buoyed by government “support without control,” KOFIC provides independent
analysis of Chungmuro each year via reviews, reports, and up-to-date box office statistics, as
well as promote films and contribute to film-related policy making.57 However, while these
constructive, ambitious initiatives contributed to the Korean film industry’s relative stability
throughout the early 2000s and stoked the Hallyu phenomenon abroad, dramatic political events
would soon cast a pall over government-funded and led cultural promotion.
—————————
54 Paquet (2011), 44.
55 Shin (2005), 54.
56 Ibid, 55.
57 Ibid.
Figure 4. The 22nd Annual Busan International Film Festival at its home venue, the Busan
Cinema Center, in 2017. Photo: Business Wire.
22
The Blacklist (2012-2018)
On March 10, 2017, South Korea impeached a president for the first time in the country’s
history. Park Geun Hye, the first woman to hold the presidency and the daughter of former
military dictator Park Chung Hee, was removed after overwhelming evidence came to light of
wide-ranging corrupt practices and power abuses; an estimated crowd of 1.5 million marched in
Seoul demanding her resignation.58 But while some of the charges, such as a scheme to extract
millions in bribes from Samsung, were old news, Koreans were shocked to discover an extensive
behind-the-scenes network undermining and punishing Korean creatives for perceived anti-Park-
government views. A 2015 version of the Park Geun Hye government’s now infamous
“blacklist” contained over 9,000 names, “a Who’s Who of Seoul’s art scene” that included Bong
Joon Ho, Song Kang Ho, and Parasite’s executive producer Miky Lee.59 While publicly
supportive of South Korea’s art industries, Park Geun-hye had actually wielded the
government’s cultural promotion funding powers against those she perceived as hostile to her
power, “starving artists of state subsidies and private funding and placing them under state
surveillance.”60 For example, when the Busan Film Festival screened a documentary about the
2014 Sewol Ferry Disaster, highlighting inept government response, the festival promptly lost
half its government funding and was subject to retaliatory audits.61
While the blacklist cannot be entirely equated to earlier, more directly authoritarian
modes of film censorship, as Joowon Yuk writes, it shows “the reform of cultural institutions
—————————
58 Choe, Sang-Hun. “Protest Against South Korean President Estimated to Be Largest Yet.” The New York Times. Nov 26, 2016.
Web. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/world/asia/korea-park-geun-hye-protests.html Accessed Jun 20, 2020.
59 Jung, Ha-won. “From blacklist to blockbuster: Bong Joon-ho bounces back at Cannes.” Asia Times. May 18, 2017. Web.
https://asiatimes.com/2017/05/blacklist-blockbuster-bong-joon-ho-bounces-back-cannes/ Accessed Jun 20, 2020.
60 “South Korea court jails ex-culture minister over artist blacklist.” The Straits Times. Jan 23, 2018. Web.
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/south-korea-court-jails-ex-culture-minister-over-artist-blacklist Accessed Jun 20,
2020.
61 Yuk, Joowon. “Cultural Censorship in Defective Democracy: The South Korean Blacklist Case.” International Journal of
Cultural Policy, Culture and Politics in Korea: the consequences of statist cultural policy 25.1 (2019): 33–47. Web. 39.
23
cannot guarantee artistic autonomy from political power, without fundamental changes in the
larger political system.”62 The exposure of the blacklist horrified Koreans, some of whom
thought such “fundamental changes” had already come to pass; middle-aged and older citizens
still vividly remember life and censorship under Korean military dictatorships, or even that of the
Japanese colonial protectorate. While Park was sentenced to 25 years for her crimes, and many
other high-ranking officials around her saw jail time, the uneasy peace between Korea’s
democratic government and culture industries was shattered. "It was a such a nightmarish few
years that left many South Korean artists deeply traumatized," Bong remarked.63

Conclusion
Alongside India’s “Bollywood,” Chungmuro is the only major commercial film industry
to be developed (from conception) under the censorship of an occupying power. Early Korean
directors like Na Un-gyu incorporated hybrid elements and approaches to both please Korean
audiences, Japanese censors, and compete with Hollywood imports. Constantly subjected to
fluctuating political censorship both under the Japanese colonial regime and subsequent domestic
military dictatorships, then later mobilized as a culture wing of South Korea’s globalization
drive, Korean cinema was uniquely literate in “the transnational” as regards to media. As Will
Higbee and Sohee Lim write, “the transnational” differs from globalization in that it moves
beyond merely describing border-crossing political, cultural and economic exchanges of any
sort, instead “more attuned to the scale, distribution and diversity of such exchanges and their
impact at a local level as well as an understanding that they may have effects within and beyond
—————————
62 Ibid, 45.
63 “Korean director Bong makes leap from government blacklist to Cannes contender.” The Straits Times. May 17, 2017. Web.
https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/entertainment/korean-director-bong-makes-leap-from-government-blacklist-to-cannes
Accessed Jun 20, 2020.
24
the nation-state. “64 The hyper-attentiveness so required for “Joseon cinema” to pass censors and
be commercially viable forced Korean filmmakers to be keenly attune to transnationality in
filmmaking, as obstacles and influences presented both in and outside of Korean borders.
These statements should not be interpreted as lionizing the effect of censorship of
Chungmuro, nor suggesting that the Korean film industry is now “liberated.” Even such a
cursory look at Chungmuro’s history makes plain the Korean government’s recent commitment
to allowing and funding its artists’ creative freedom is imperfect at best, rife with opportunities
for corruption. While state-of-the-art facilities like the The Busan Cinema Center testify to
Korean film’s technological advancement and national symbolic value, particularly after
Chungmuro became a government project, such shiny objects should not distract from the truth;
for years the Korean government aggressively censored filmmaker’s freedom of expression.
Such censorship did not necessarily mean financial weakness however, and during the 1960’s
and 70’s a Golden Age of Korean film prevailed despite the often-subpar quality of its products.
The subsequent widely touted New Korean Cinema movement came about as a direct result of
political and social activism of young Koreans in the 1980s, who protested police brutality,
contested government censorship at all levels, and demanded direct elections. While not
necessarily always overtly political in nature, NKC films accessed painful memories of the
peninsula’s recent past alongside portrayals and explorations of distinctly modern Korean issues,
including shifting family values, rural and urban divides, youth cultures, anti-American
sentiment, cohesive national identity and more.
Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, discussed in the following chapter, is not merely the result of a
single filmmaker’s hard work, nor even that of a production team or studio; it is also the result of
—————————
64 Higbee, W. and Lim, S. H. (2010), ‘Concepts of transnational cinema: towards a critical transnationalism in film studies’,
Transnational Cinemas 1: 1, pp. 7–21. 12.
25
a decades-long battle for the Korean film industry’s creative freedom. In the 1980s Chungmuro
finally emerged out from under government censorship- experienced during both Japanese
occupation and Korean regimes- allowing filmmakers to openly process personal and national
traumas for the first time. The industry’s history with censorship also can’t be separated from its
history with Hollywood; the US dominated Korea’s early film culture and helped subsidize the
“censorship apparatus”65 under Japanese occupation. Hollywood disrupted Korean distribution
networks by establishing branch offices, and actively campaigned to remove protective
measures- screen quotas and import fees- designed to give Korean films a fighting chance in
their home market. Over time, the dominating presence of American movies engrained particular
conceptions of genre in early Korean filmgoers and inspired the country’s first directors, like Na
Un-gyu, to go bigger with budgets and spectacle. Indeed, the same remixing of Hollywood
genres Bong Joon Ho is currently famous for was already well underway a hundred years ago.

—————————
65 Yecies, 2.
26
Chapter 2:
Bong Joon Ho & Parasite

A popular South Korean filmmaker active since the 1990’s, Bong Joon Ho is often
associated with his “schizophrenic”66 use of film genres, dark humor, a visual palette of greens,
greys and browns, collaborations with actor Song Kang Ho, depictions of class divides, on-foot
chase scenes, and a fascination with “ordinary” people hustling on the margins of society. His
features Memories of Murder (2003), The Host (2006) and Parasite (2019) all set box office
records upon their release, proving thoughtful and provocative filmmaking can also be
commercially viable. Before assessing in Chapter 3 how and why Parasite resonated with
American audiences in 2019 and became the first non-English language film to win the Academy
Award for “Best Picture,” it’s important to contextualize it in relation to Bong’s filmography and
evolution as a director, and within the dramatic arc of Korean film history. Parasite’s impressive
artistic and formal elements, as well as its unprecedented success in America, did not occur in a
vacuum and are the result of decades of growth and change in Korea’s film industry and the
country’s well-laid cultural promotion groundwork. In this sense, while I do refer to Bong as an
“auteur” and centralize his vision and personality, I also purposefully want to undercut the
concept by demonstrating the external factors that made his film possible.
Bong’s latest film represents a return to his art cinema-leanings, and, despite English-
speaking press obsessions with de-localized “universality,” an additional return from
transnational projects (with foreign production houses and talent) to a distinctly localized type of
Korean filmmaking. It was this return- despite his most recent films Snowpiercer (2013) and
—————————
66 Bong in Lim, 41. Bong often uses the word “schizophrenic” or” schizophrenia” in regard to his filmmaking, connoting
contrasting, unpredictable and jarring tonal elements in his work.
27
Okja (2017) being dominated by English dialogue- that resonated most with American audiences
and had the biggest box office haul. Additionally, while Parasite presents a feel-good moment
for Chungmuro, it is still just one part of the Korean film industry’s overall health in 2019. The
Korean Film Council’s (KOFIC) yearly report warns of an overall imbalance in the domestic
market and offers suggestions on how the country might produce more “fresh” films with
Parasite’s level of technical quality and insight.
Throughout his career, Bong has always been open to transnational collaborations,
producing “crossover”67 films in multiple languages with diverse casts of talent. His charming
and bittersweet “Shaking Tokyo” was one-of-three shorts in the 2008 Japanese anthology film
Tokyo! and both Snowpiercer and Okja feature Korean, British and American actors, with
substantial amounts of dialogue in both English and Korean. Bong has directed seven feature
films: Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), Memories of Murder (2003), The Host (2006), Mother
(2009), Snowpiercer (2013), Okja (2017), and Parasite (2019). He has also directed seven
shorts: White Man, Memories in My Frame, and Incoherence in 1994, as well as Sink and Rise
(2003), Influenza (2004), Shaking Tokyo (2008) and Iki (2011), not all of which are covered in
this thesis. While Bong served as a writer and/or producer on a small number of projects outside
the above, I am focusing exclusively on work he directed. As laid out later in this chapter,
Bong’s monster movie The Host and dystopic action drama Snowpiercer are his prior features
that possess the most narrative and thematic relevance to Parasite, re: class themes and lead
performances by Song Kang Ho (both films), and contemporary political and social commentary
(The Host). Accordingly, introducing and analyzing these films is prioritized over most other
projects. In the following sections on Bong’s genre stylings, influences, and signature themes, I
—————————
67 Khorana, Sukhmani. Crossover Cinema: Cross-Cultural Film from Production to Reception. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Print. 3. The concept of “crossover cinema” is discussed further on page 37 of this thesis.
28
map select early works and features in order to better explicate how the director became one of
the world’s preeminent commercial auteurs, and why his work resonates so deeply both in and
outside of Korea.

Early Life & Influences
Bong Joon Ho was born in South Korea’s southern, inland city of Daegu on September
14, 1969. When he was a third grader, his family moved to Seoul, where Bong is still based
today. The director is the youngest of four in a family of literary and creative types; his
grandfather was respected novelist Park Taewon, his father a graphic designer, his sister and
brother are professors of fashion design and poetry respectively, and his only son also aspires to
a film career. 68 In a 2009 article highlighting the family’s “culture DNA,” Bong remarked fondly
of their artist father, Bong Sang Gyun, “He told me to do whatever I wanted to do [in life]. He’s
a cool and humorous guy.”69
Although not pursuing design or illustration professionally like his father, Bong loved
reading manga in his youth, and cultivated his own drawing skills by making comics. He later
brought this skill into his filmmaking by personally crafting detailed storyboards for all his
projects.70 In fall 2019, Plain Archive published a massive compendium of Parasite’s script and
over 300 pages of Bong’s storyboards (Fig. 5). Explaining his need to draw out each scene
himself, Bong explains, “I’m always very nervous in my everyday life and if I don’t
prepare_everything beforehand, I go crazy. That’s why I work very meticulously on the
—————————
68 “ 아버지 화실이 어린 시절의 놀이터.” “Dad’s studio is a playground.” Joongang Ilbo. Feb 15, 2009. Web.
https://news.joins.com/article/3493420 Accessed Apr 25, 2020.
69 Ibid.
70 Diffrient, David Scott. “Directors: Bong Joon Ho.” Balmain, Colette (Ed.). Directory of World Cinema: South Korea. Bristol,
UK: Intellect Books, 2013. Print. 23-27.
29
storyboards.”71 Bong’s hands-on approach to multiple levels of the filmmaking process- writing,
storyboarding, directing- originated his nickname “Bongtail” (Bong plus “detail”).
In addition to reading manga in his youth, Bong Joon Ho watched a lot of TV, and he
particularly enjoyed the late-night movies on the US Armed Forces Korea Network (AFKN). In
her 2012 article “The AFKN Nexus: US Military Broadcasting and New Korean Cinema,”
Christina Klein explicates the impact watching AFKN had on Bong Joon Ho and directors of his
generation, many of whom openly credit the channel with introducing them to western films and
film genres. One of the ways the US troops72 in South Korea accessed and consumed the
homeland was through AFKN-TV, which provided a buffet of American films (mostly) outside
the jurisdiction of Korean censors. AFKN played everything from Hollywood classics to “low-
—————————
71 Raup, Jordan. “Bong Joon Ho on Family and Class in Parasite, Collecting Films, and Memories of Murder.” Film at Lincoln
Center, Filmlinc.org. Nov 19, 2019. Web. https://www.filmlinc.org/daily/bong-joon-ho-on-family-and-class-in-parasite-
collecting-films-and-memories-of-murder/ Accessed Jun 6, 2020.
72 In the 1960’s and 70’s, 50,000 to 60,000 troops were stationed in South Korea year-round. Today that number is closer to
28,500. Source: Kane, Tim. “Global U.S. Troop Deployment, 1950-2005. Center for Data Analysis (CDA), CDA06-02, The
Heritage Foundation. May 24, 2006. Accessed May 15, 2020 at https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/global-us-troop-
deployment-1950-2005 and Choudhury, Saheli Roy. “Trump signals he wants South Korea to pay more for US military presence
there.” CNBC. Apr 21, 2020. Web. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/21/trump-signals-he-wants-south-korea-to-pay-more-for-us-
military-presence-there.html Accessed Jun 25, 2020.
Figure 5. Storyboards and notes by Bong for Parasite. In this scene, the Kim family gets drunk
in the Park's house while the latter is on a trip. Source: Plain Archive (2019), Korean ed.
30
budget films, B-movies, exploitation films”73 and more, although there were obviously no
Korean subtitles for the “shadow audience.”74 The absence of direct translation made watching
AFKN a “highly mediated and imaginative process”75 for viewers like Bong, who may not have
understood what was being said in dialogue, but could interpret the other non-verbal languages
on screen, the ways directors made meaning with camera angles, editing, and music.
Bong attended Seoul’s prestigious Yonsei University, earning a degree in sociology and
co-founding a film club where he experienced his first significant exposure to great East Asian
auteurs. Klein writes, “Nurtured by the radical political environment [of the 1980s], he
developed a taste for the modernist aesthetics of Taiwanese directors Edward Yang and Hou
Hsiao-hsien, the social satires of Japanese director Shohei Imamura, and the psychologically
inflected genre films of Korean director Kim Ki-young.”76 After finishing his mandatory two
years of military service and his sociology degree, Bong enrolled at the newly established
Korean Academy of Film Arts, and his formal film training began in earnest.77

Bong & Genre
Speaking with Lim Youn-hui in 2005, Bong evoked the Sampoong disaster- a Seoul
department store collapse that killed 502 and injured hundreds more78- as evidence of the chaotic
realities that result from extreme events both in our world and the ones he puts on screen. He
articulates a thesis statement of sorts for his approach to filmmaking:

—————————
73 Klein, Christina. “The AFKN Nexus: US Military Broadcasting and New Korean Cinema.” Transnational Cinemas 3.1 (2012):
19–39. Web. 32.
74 Ibid, 19.
75 Ibid, 29.
76 Klein (2008), 877.
77 Diffrient (2013), 24.
78 Park, Tae Won. “Inspection of Collapse Cause of Sampoong Department Store.” Forensic Science International 217.1-3
(2012): 119–126. Web.
31
Catastrophe is frightening and tragic, but at the same time, it accompanies some comical
conditions. I was very shocked and sad when I heard that the Sampoong Department
Store collapsed. But it was funny how the thieves in town flocked into the store after the
accident stealing golf clubs and luxury goods out of their import section. When an
extreme catastrophe like that takes place, tragedy and comedy always come together. It’s
inevitable, because people are out of control.79

In describing the incorporation of multiple tones in his works, Bong Joon Ho repeatedly
points to a prevailing truth; life itself is filled with random, contrasting, and overlapping
emotions. These attributes are on display in all his films, which can move from comedy, to
action, to heartbreaking melodrama at the drop of a hat. In Memories of Murder, detectives
arriving to investigate the site of a brutal killing slip and fall down the wet hillside, eliciting
automatic laughter. In The Host, after the Park family has just tragically lost their youngest
member to a rampaging river monster, they interrupt the solemnity of the memorial service with
a slapstick display of grief, writhing on the floor and throwing punches at reporters (Fig. 6). In
Snowpiercer, a vicious fight between rebels and the military police comes to a total stop as the
New Year arrives, and everyone jovially well-wishes their foes. As David Scott Diffrient puts it,
—————————
79 Lim, Youn-hui. Bong Joon-Ho: Mapping Reality Within the Maze of Genre. Seoul: Korean Film Council in association with
Cine21, 2005. Print. 41.
Figure 6. The Park family (Bae Doona, Byun Hee-bong, Song Kang Ho and Park Hae-il)
cause a spectacle at the memorial for those killed by the Han River monster in The Host.
32
the range and unpredictability in Bong’s films makes watching them “an always-entertaining, if
occasionally exhausting, activity.”80 Bong himself has stated his aim to “overwhelm the audience
for the entire running time of the film… That’s my entire goal as a filmmaker.”81
Bong consistently frames or re-frames discussions of genre within a distinctly Hollywood
context. Rather than being ahistorical and stateless, most popular commercial genres such as
comedy, horror, western or action were franchised and popularized by Hollywood movies,
whose approach to these genres then became the dominant mode. And accessing these genres,
whether to reproduce, subvert or otherwise, means accessing the spill and dominant presence of
Western culture. Chapter 1 outlined the arrival of Hollywood films to the Korean peninsula in
the early 1900s, Hollywood’s role in bankrolling Japanese colonial film censorship, Korean
directors’ use of Hollywood-style genres to attract audiences, and the tense back-and-forth
between Chungmuro and Hollywood regarding foreign film distribution in Korea. Accordingly,
Korean filmmakers coming into their own in the 1990s and 2000s grew up in a post-censorship
film culture, but one that was a “psychological colony of Hollywood films,”82 which had
saturated the Korean market on and off since 1916. In a 2020 lecture to film students at the Dong
Ah Institute of Media Arts, Bong referenced both the dominance and limitations of Hollywood
genres when responding to a question about why he is constantly called a “genre-defying”83
director:
The genres we know were invented in the United States…The birth of the film noir genre
is rooted in the darkness of the Prohibition era, and the expansion into the West created
the Western genre. American film genres are based on American history. So in a sense, as
someone living on the opposite end of the globe, we shouldn’t feel pressured to follow
them. I don’t consciously make an effort to defy the genre, I bring the stories or emotions
—————————
80 Diffrient (2013), 25.
81 “Bong Joon Ho Wants to Overwhelm the Audience During the Entire Movie.” Golden Globes, YouTube. Jan. 5, 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MTzBj206-I
82 Cho in Lee (2019), 54.
83 While often translated as “genre-defying,” the descriptor applied to Bong in Korean “ 장르 파괴자" (jangleu pagoeja) literally
means “genre destroyer.”
33
and apply them to the realities of Korea and I think that process in itself ends up breaking
some rules involved with the genre.84

Genre greatly impacts the formation and operation of commercial film industries,
especially those modelled after Hollywood. Following Hollywood’s lead in the 1920s and 30s
allowed Chungmuro to gain a foothold at the domestic box office by replicating the bigness of
American blockbusters. The “planned films” of the 1970s perfected the model of producing
single-genre movies engineered for mass appeal. Then, increased financial support from the
chaebol in the 1980s and 90s allowed the Korean film industry to make Hollywood-style pictures
with “crisp and seamless” narrative flow and “high production values.”85 Global film, TV, and
music industries thrive on labeling, sorting, and target-marketing media by genre, and the advent
of streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu have only increased the reliance on categories.
Bong Joon Ho admits that his filmmaking style is not conducive to such straightforward
advertising campaigns, conceding, “The marketing team always suffers; they always ask me ‘so
what genre is this movie?’”86
Indeed, a cheeky, minimalist approach to US marketing by Parasite’s indie distributer
NEON was quietly credited as contributing to the film’s post-Cannes success in America. NEON
piqued viewers’ interest by playing directly to the film’s genre-ambiguity, teasing its tonal
mutation and revealing tantalizingly few plot details.87 Bong oversaw the cutting of the US
trailers, which didn’t include content from Parasite’s second half.88 Explaining their decision to
—————————
84 Dong Ah Institute of Media Arts (DIMA), “Special Lectures by Director Bong Joon-ho, the winner of the 92nd Oscar,” 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeiiHZx-BjM
85 Grant, Barry Keith. Film Genre: from Iconography to Ideology. London: Wallflower, 2007. Print. 7.
86 “Parasite - Bong Joon Ho, Song Kang Ho, and Park So Dam Q&A.” Landmark Theatres, YouTube. Oct 20, 2019.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thH76Ju2hts
87 “Parasite [Official Trailer] – In Theaters October 11, 2019.” Aug 14, 2019. NEON, YouTube. Web.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isOGD_7hNIY
88 D’Alessandro, Anthony. “‘Parasite’ Crosses $11M, On Its Way to Potential $20M: How NEON Turned The Bong Joon-Ho
South Korean Pic Into A B.O. Success.” Deadline. Nov. 10, 2019. Web. https://deadline.com/2019/11/parasite-bong-joon-ho-
box-office-marketing-success-1202781944/ Accessed Jun 2, 2020.
34
highlight the film’s unpredictability, NEON’s Chief Marketing Officer Christian Parkes
explained, “Bong is the master magician, and he pulls the reveal just as you think the film is
going in one direction, it pivots.”

Early Short Films (1994)
Bong Joon Ho’s earliest short films, White Man and Incoherence, both released in 1994,
use dark humor and surreal imagery to call out moral corruption in Korean society. In the former,
a salaryman finds a severed finger on his way to work, but rather than seek its owner or call for
help, toys with the digit all day before eventually tossing it to a dog. The film’s title (sometimes
interpreted as “white collar”), alongside its incorporation of TV advertising and images of
middle-class consumption, evoke the looming military and economic presence of the United
States on Korean soil. White Man ultimately suggests the security of a white-collar job and the
comforts it provides (apartment, car, things) are fundamentally shallow, contributing to a
collective loss of empathy, and even humanity.
The immorality- or troubling moral neutrality- in White Man is extended upwards to the
figures steering Korean society at large in Incoherence. In Bong’s four-part, half-hour short film,
three middle-aged male leads act wickedly towards women and the working class. In the film’s
fourth chapter, the misbehaving protagonists- a professor, an editorialist, and a prosecutor-
appear on a TV roundtable to hypocritically champion “a more conservative Korean
society.”89 Both of these early short films center around absurd characters who are indifferent to
or scornful of their fellow human beings, lacking empathy and self-awareness.
As framed in Chapter 1, Bong Joon Ho’s emergence as a young filmmaker aligned with
—————————
89 Jung (2008), 20.
35
the Korean film industry’s unprecedented opening up after decades of censorship. Since he was
born in 1969, Bong was also formed as a student, citizen and filmmaker by the traumatic
historical events plaguing Korea during his youth: US military presence and the still-fresh
memories of the Korean War, Park Chung Hee’s and Chun Do-hwan’s military dictatorships,
rampant political corruption and the deadly 1980 Kwangju Uprising and 1987 June democracy
protests. Young directors began using the new tools available to them to process these
experiences for the first time on film, and this more-liberated class of creatives played a central
role in the New Korean Cinema movement of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Features Films (2000-2009)
Bong’s first feature film Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000) flopped at the box office and
premiered to lukewarm critical reception, but his sophomore effort Memories of Murder
skyrocketed him to domestic fame and planted the seeds for his future international popularity.
The 2003 crime thriller was a box office hit (despite being made for less than $3 million dollars),
ambitiously evoking traumatic national experiences through the lens of a small-town police
investigation. Based on a real series of ten murders90 and set in the 1980s, Memories follows two
detectives- one a local and the other a city slicker from Seoul- as they desperately try to stop a
serial killer’s rampage in a rural Korean town. Like the investigators who descend into the
basement to torture the innocent men they arrest, the film progressively descends into darkness
and despair despite its leads’ genuine intentions to stop the crimes. In one line that eerily mirrors
the twisted mentality of South Korea’s own leadership at the time, a detective tells his captive, “I
only beat you up because I care about you.”
—————————
90 Go Seong-min. ' 살 인 의 추억 ' 화 성 연 쇄 살 인 사 건 유 력 용 의 자 는 수감 중인 50 대 남성… 사건 발생 33 년 만 에 특정.” The Chosun Ilbo.
Sep 18, 2019. Web. https://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2019/09/18/2019091803062.html Accessed Jun 9, 2020.
36
While Bong’s short films White Man and Incoherence took aim at immorality and
antipathy in middle and upper-middle class Seoul, Memories of Murder critiques the direction of
modern Korean society by exposing the trickle-down dysfunction of bad political leadership. The
backdrop to Bong’s seemingly straightforward crime story is the 1980s unrest between the
people’s democratic (minjung) movement and the military dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan, who
took power by coup after Park Chung Hee’s 1979 assassination, and later stoked the 1980
Kwangju Uprising. To borrow from Christina Klein, Bong uses the “surface crime” of the serial
murders to expose the “deep crime” of the Korean government “repressing the democratic
aspirations of its own people.”91 Of this Bong has similarly stated that “the social atmosphere of
the time, the incompetence of the time, stood in the way of finding the Killer.”92
Bong’s subsequent “monster movie” The Host (2006) was perceived as equally, if not
more, political than Memories, although its satire and social criticism hit a different target. A
highly anticipated project, The Host became the country’s biggest domestic box office hit ever
upon release, solidifying Bong as a major voice in New Korean Cinema, and as a serious
contender on the international festival circuit.93 The Host follows the chaotic misadventures of
the Park family as they try to rescue their youngest member Hyeon-soo from the clutches of a
sewer-dwelling monster in Seoul. As revealed in the film’s very first scene, an American military
base is responsible for creating the creature, having knowingly dumped toxic waste into the Han
River.94 This opening information both subverts the typical narrative customs of a monster
movie- which often obscures the monster’s origins until much later- and also introduces us to the
—————————
91 Ibid.
92 Bong in Lim, 23.
93 Lee, Nikki J.Y. “Localized Globalization and a Monster National: The Host and the South Korean Film industry.” Cinema
Journal 50.3 (2011): 45–61. 47.
94 This is based on a true story from 2000, when US military employee Albert McFarland ordered the dumping of formaldehyde
into the Han River. He was brought to court but served no jail time and kept his job, causing outrage among Koreans.
37
film’s real villains: American military and political interference on Korean soil, and Korean
complicity. As noted by Nikki J.Y. Lee, The Host “is more concerned with social and political
issues than with spectacle,” limiting the monster’s screen time in favor of character building and
narrative complexity.95
After his tightly plotted return to small town Korean dysfunction in the haunting thriller
Mother (2009), Bong moved on to transnational collaborations with substantially larger budgets,
and big ensemble casts incorporating Western movie stars. However, both Snowpiercer (2013),
produced through the now-defunct Weinstein company, and Okja (2017), produced through
Netflix and Brad Pitt’s Plan B, incorporated Bong’s signature themes alongside Korean actors,
language, and/or settings. Neither of these crossover projects had widespread theatrical release-
Snowpiercer was limited, and Okja was only streaming- yet via their “multiple cultural
affiliations”96 and online Netflix accessibility, both attracted wide audience bases and substantial
media coverage in both Korean and English-language press.

Transnational Collaborations & Crossovers (2013-2017)
Sukhmani Khorana defines as a “crossover” film as one that manifests “a hybrid
cinematic grammar at the textual level” due to its crossing of cultural borders at multiple stages
of conceptualization, production, distribution and reception.97 “Crossover cinema,” then, can be
framed as a progression of “transnational cinema,” in that the former accounts for an
increasingly globalized film industry without over-relying on national borders or identities. This
reflects and forwards a concept of the transnational explicated by Higbee and Lim as “a subtler
—————————
95 Lee, 54.
96 Khorana, 5.
97 Ibid, 3.
38
means of understanding cinema’s relationship to the cultural and economic formations that are
rarely contained within national boundaries.”98 While many of Bong Joon Ho’s films can be
considered crossovers, it is his recent features Snowpiercer (2013) and Okja (2017)99 which most
potently exemplify the concept. Both films were transnational collaborations with American
production companies (The Weinstein Company and Netflix/Plan B respectively) with hybrid
English/Korean dialogue and casts incorporating American, British and Korean actors, including
top stars like Chris Evans and Jake Gyllenhaal, who exert a big draw on Western audiences.
However, a crossover film does not necessarily need to involve multiple countries or audiences
at every stage of the process (conceptualization, production) like Snowpiercer and Okja; Parasite
is a crossover film via its widespread impact with global audiences (distribution, reception), of
which America is merely one.
Due the bloody trail its characters leave behind on their path to upward mobility and class
liberation, Snowpiercer (2013) holds particular relevance in any discussion of Parasite within
the context of Bong’s larger body of work. Loosely adapted from the 1982 French graphic novel
Le Transparceniege, Snowpiercer takes place on a dystopian earth, frozen over and rendered
uninhabitable after an ill-fated climate experiment. Survivors circle the icy planet in a massive
locomotive on a looping track, where everyone has their “place” in a rigid social order among
the cars. Curtis (Chris Evans) launches a rebellion from the impoverished tail section to take over
the engine room at the front of the train, recruiting engineer Namgoong (Song Kang Ho) and his
daughter Yona (Go Ah-Sung) to help open the doors between cars along the way (Fig. 7).
Despite its over-the-top villainy (courtesy of Tilda Swinton) and unabashedly blunt allegories,
—————————
98 Higbee and Lim, 9.
99 Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, both of Bong’s big crossover films/transnational collaborations were made during Park
Geun-hye’s presidency, a period of time when his name appeared on the government’s artist “blacklist.” Bong has admitted he
went relatively unscathed professionally, due to his high name recognition and ability to get private backing.
39
Snowpiercer offers a taught, provocative investigation into cycles of oppression and the often-
fatal costs of breaking them. Joshua Schulze observers that Snowpiercer’s “approach to narrative
manages to criticize globalization from a distinctly Korean perspective,”100 accomplished
through the presence of the two Korean characters, who face abusive treatment at the hands of
the white male rebels but wield increasing influence on the protagonist’s conceptions of power
and liberation. Bong cast Evans against type to both access and subvert his reputation for playing
likable heroes, most notably “Captain America.” Curtis eventually comes to support
Namgoong’s plan of leaving the train entirely and attempting to rebuild humanity in the tundra;
in the penultimate scene, the latter points to the door of the train and says in Korean, “You might
take it as a wall. But it’s a fucking gate.” Arguably such a practice of transmuting and
reconceptualizing seemingly insurmountable obstacles into opportunities marks the entirety of
Korea’s modern history, and indeed that of Chungmuro.

—————————
100 Schulze, Joshua. “The Sacred Engine and the Rice Paddy: Globalization, Genre, and Local Space in the Films of Bong Joon-
Ho.” Journal of Popular Film and Television: Korean Popular Cinema and Television in the Twenty-First Century 47.1 (2019):
21–29. 26.
Figure 7. Left to right: Chris Evans, Go Ah-sung, and Song Kang Ho in Snowpiercer (2013)
40
Art Cinema Tendencies
While Snowpiercer and Bong’s sixth feature Okja (2017) both contained majority
English dialogue, western movie stars, binary villains and elaborate action scenes- elements
considered a draw for commercial audiences- as a character-driven project Parasite excels by
being the exact opposite. By filming in Korean, in Korea, with a Korean cast, Bong is in self-
professed top form, able to transmute the “local” detail informed by his own experiences into
deeply human, relatable characters who subsequently attract “universal” interest.
At first glance, it may seem that a film like Snowpiercer, with its big symbols and
metaphors, would create a more widely accessible narrative about wealth disparity and social
mobility. But Bong himself argues that it is his use of local detail that actually makes his films,
particularly Parasite, more relatable:
I think we become the most detailed and meticulous when we describe the people around
us. Reaching this theme of the rich and poor with such Korean details makes the story
even more universal. So the more local and Korean the story is, the more universal it
ultimately becomes.101

This approach hinges on an element often ascribed to the realm of art cinema; creating
“real” characters, situations and environments. David Bordwell argues that “art cinema” is a
valid mode of film practice and “distinct branch of the cinematic institution,”102 identifying its
three hallmarks as realism, auteurship103 and ambiguity.104 “Arthouse” or “art films” often evoke
in the imagination independent or experimental work, films screening at festivals or in limited
—————————
101 “How I Wrote Parasite — Writing Advice from Bong Joon-Ho.” Behind the Curtain, YouTube. Feb 21, 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv_DzVn6CcM
102 David Bordwell. “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice.” Catherine Fowler (Ed.). The European Cinema Reader.
London: Routledge, 2002. Print. 94-102. 94.
103 The ascription of “auteur,” a literary term, to filmmakers, originated from the writers behind the iconic French journal Cahiers
du Cinema in the 1950’s; film critic Andrew Sarris popularized their approach in the US, and further explicated it via his own
writings. The auteur (historically almost always the male director) is credited as the film’s primary driving creative force, one
who “imposes his personality on his film.” Fallbacks of this approach include over-mythologizing, glossing over flops, flattening
complex processes of creative production, collaboration and influence.
104 Bordwell, 94-95.
41
release, or those which appeal only to true cinephiles. Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express
(1994), Kim Ki-duk’s 3-Iron (2004) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who
Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) are all recent examples of Asian art cinema films. In art
cinema, characters possess psychological depth and “their effects on one another remain central”
to the work, although their motives and goals are unclear, their actions often inconsistent.105 And
while art cinema itself possesses the above shared formal elements and approaches, ultimately
the director’s “authorial code manifests itself as recurrent violations of the norm.”106 In Bong’s
case, this code appears in his “schizophrenic” use of genre to “overwhelm” the audiences of his
films; in the tradition of art cinema, the auteur becomes “a genre unto himself.”107
However, while Bong’s work taps directly into art cinema tradition, it eschews total
categorization in this mode, and not only because his films are wide release, commercial hits, or
in the case of some, have substantial budgets. His characters may be psychologically complex
and often morally ambiguous, but they also have distinct traits and identifiable drives. Rather
than passively glide or float through life, Bong’s characters chase and search with single-minded
intention; to catch a killer, stop a monster, get rich etc. In creating the worlds of his films, Bong
emphasizes real locations, such as Seoul’s waterfront or the rice fields and back alleys of a rural
town, but he also builds fantastical sets and CGI creations suited to blockbusters, such as the
elaborate train cars in Snowpiercer or Okja’s animated “superpigs.” But despite these deviations
from Bordwell’s explication, Bong’s work often aligns with the art cinema practice of having
“open-ended” endings that “lack a clear-cut resolution.”108
—————————
105 Ibid, 96.
106 Ibid, 98.
107 Erlich, David. “‘Parasite’ Review: Bong Joon Ho Delivers a Brilliant and Devastating Electric Shock of Economic Anxiety.”
IndieWire. May 21, 2019. Web. https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/parasite-review-bong-joon-ho-1202143634/ Accessed Jun 9,
2020.
108 Bordwell, 99.
42
The same attention to everyday rural and urban Korean environments, characters’ moral
greyness, ending ambiguity, and direct confrontation of social issues present in Bong Joon Ho’s
earlier works shines through potently in Parasite. But Bong didn’t just return from transnational
collaborations to Korean ones; he returned from Hollywood budgets to an indie-level budget,
from feature projects with many sets and locations to one with very few. The precipitous decline
in budget (from Okja’s $50 million to Parasite’s $11.8 million)109 was not just limited to the
practical needs of the film- which featured a small cast and limited locations- but also a
conscious pivot away from glossier, Hollywood-style filmmaking to one more informed by art
cinema practice. Factors contributing to this move include Bong’s desire to retain as much
creative control as possible, his preference for producing “smaller, less time-consuming, but
denser movies” which also received wide theatrical (not just streaming) release, and the necessity
for a more Korea-grounded exploration of his favorite ideas and commentaries. With Parasite,
Bong achieved all the above, although he likely could not have known the film would be
instrumental in carrying the domestic box office the year of its release, nor that it would elevate
the international profile of Korean film to staggering new heights.

Introducing Parasite
Parasite is a tale of two families, rich and poor, living in Seoul. The poor family, the
Kims, live in a stinkbug infested semi-basement, where they scrounge for Wi-Fi signals and pick
mold out of the last bread loaf. The rich family, the Parks, live in a big, sleek, modern house on
one of Seoul’s many residential hilltops, with a fully stocked fridge and a Mercedes Benz in the
garage. Where the Parks want for nothing, the Kims want for everything. Husband Ki-taek (Song
—————————
109 “Gisaengchung (2019),” The Numbers. https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/gi-saeng-chung-(South-Korea)-(2019) Accessed
May 22, 2020.
43
Kang Ho) and wife Chung-seok (Jang Hye-jin) are both unemployed, as are their college-aged
children Ki-woo (Choi Woo-sik) and Ki-jung (Park So-Dam). With no professional connections
or extended family resources to help them, the Kims get by one odd-job at a time, hustling
forever towards an uncertain future. However their fortunes change overnight when Ki-woo’s
impressive school friend Min-hyuk (Park Seo-joon) arrives with a mysterious gift and a job offer
(Fig. 8); he gives the family a “scholar’s rock”110 for good luck, and he asks Ki-woo to replace
him as the English tutor for rich high schooler Park Da-hye (Jung Ji-so). Ki-jung helps her
brother forge a college degree to conceal his true station in life, and Ki-woo begins work at the
Park’s house as “Kevin.”
His pupil, Da-hye, is the sixteen-year old daughter of busy tech mogul Nathan Park (Lee
Sung-kyun) and anxious, impressionable housewife Choi Yeon-gyo (Cho Yeo-jung). While Da-
hye spends most of her time studying, her little brother Park Da-song (Jung Hyeon-jun) is
allowed full run of the house, playing “Indian” and making bizarre paintings. The Park’s daily
life is held together by their older housekeeper Moon-gwang (Lee Jung-eun), who cooks, cleans,
—————————
110 Scholar’s rocks or stones- suseok in Korean, gonshi in Chinese, and similar to Suiseki (viewing stones) in Japan- are naturally
occurring rocks of various sizes and shapes deemed to be unique or visually pleasing. Confucian scholars would collect and
display these rocks for inspiration. The scholar’s rock in Parasite serves as the “metaphorical” object of the Kim’s aspirations to
wealth and upward mobility. It exerts undue influence on Ki-woo, who at one point conspires to use it as a murder weapon,
representing the all-consuming, even evil, direction his desire for success has taken.
Figure 8. Ki-woo's friend Min-hyuk arrives at the Kim's semi-basement apartment with a
scholar's rock and a job offer.
44
and keeps the property in order. Ki-woo instantly leverages his position as tutor “Kevin” to get
his sister Ki-jung aka “Jessica” hired as Da-song’s art therapist; she in turn sabotages the driver
and gets their father hired in the role; he then ousts the housekeeper, whom his wife replaces.
Thus, the entire Kim family retains employment by the Parks, who are none the wiser as to their
new hires’ relation or true identities.
Much of Parasite’s English-language film promotional materials displayed the Kims
standing in or outside the Park’s house with the tagline “Act like you own the place” (Fig. 9).
Midway through the film, the family is doing exactly
that, drinking and making a mess at the house while the
Parks are away (depicted in storyboard, Fig. 5). But after
a sudden burst of lightening, the doorbell rings and ex-
housekeeper Moon-gwang returns to retrieve something
she “forgot” in the basement. The Kims soon discover
Moon-gwang’s husband, Geun-sae, has been secretly
living in a bunker under the house for four years to
escape debt collectors. The ensuing struggle, wherein
both families “fight each other for their invisibility”111
and right to parasitism of the Parks, culminates with
Moon-gwang mortally injured and her husband tied up. The former succumbs, sparking a
bloodbath at Da-song’s birthday party that results in the boy having a seizure, Ki-woo being
critically injured, and the deaths of Ki-jung by Geun-sae, Geun-sae by Chung-seok, and Mr. Park
by Ki-taek, before the latter successfully flees to the bunker (Fig. 10).
—————————
111 Kim, Young-jin. “A Review of Korean Cinema in 2019: The Enormous Success of Parasite, and the Shadow of Polarization.”
Korean Cinema 2019, Vol. 21. Korean Film Council (KOFIC). 10. https://www.koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/publications/books.jsp
Figure 9. The Kim and Park families in one of
NEON’s US posters for Parasite.
45
Bong’s last, hyper-direct exploration of class tensions was Snowpiercer, wherein the poor
members of the tail section fought their way to the front of the train. Despite obvious differences
in genre and language, Parasite and Snowpiercer are both ultimately about characters launching
high-stakes bids to escape the lower class and achieve a better quality of life. Along the way, the
true extent of the forces working to keep people in their “place” become clear, and both Curtis
and Ki-taek are driven to madness with grief and frustration at their seeming inability to stop the
cycle. The rich and powerful in Snowpiercer are categorized neatly as supervillains with no
redeeming qualities, whereas the wealthy Park family in Parasite, while spoiled and out of
touch, are decent, even “nice,” people. By writing Mr. Park as a kind father and cordial
employer, Bong leaves the audience with complex, ambiguous emotions towards the character’s
death. Yet, in the specific details of Mr. Park’s behavior towards Ki-taek, Bong shows how
classist and privileged attitudes are often subtle; they persist through microaggressions and pile
up over time. It is this collected lifetime of marginalization and shame that causes Ki-taek to
murder his boss, who has become the object of the former’s anger and hopelessness.
While Ki-taek has given up on escaping poverty, his son is not ready to abandon the
dream. After recovering from his head injury, Ki-woo realizes his father’s bunker predicament
and pens an elaborate open letter (here, narration suddenly appears for the first time in the film)
Figure 10. Parasite ends with Ki-taek beginning a new secret life in the bunker, having
retreated there after murdering Mr. Park.
46
detailing his redoubled drive to become rich and buy the house one day so their family can
reunite. While this may seem like pseudo-hopeful note, we need only look to Snowpiercer to
understand why this ending is not as happy as it seems. By seeking to replicate the formula of his
former employer Nathan Park’s success, Ki-woo is merely ensuring the survival of the us-versus-
them status quo that leaves many, such as his own family, stuck in an underclass. In pursuing
upward trajectory via a corporate, industrial-capitalist model, Ki-woo has chosen to aim for the
metaphorical engine room rather than explore ways to get off the train, that is, to truly
understand and break the cycle of his oppression. Perhaps the ultimate speculation of Parasite is,
in a global economy shaped by neoliberalism, “What alternative does he have?”

Key Themes and Formal Elements
Among Bong’s particularly salient visual signatures in Parasite are stairs, dark lower
levels, and water. Often these elements are employed for the respective purposes of evoking
aspirations of social mobility, harboring secrets or danger, and signifying tonal shifts or
emotional turmoil. Bong lulls the audience into a sense of security in the film’s first hour, which
is filled with both dark and slapstick humor, playing out like a dramedy. However, after a raging
thunderstorm heralds the return of ex-housekeeper Moon-gwang at Parasite’s halfway point, the
Kims discover Geun-sae in the ominous secret bunker, and the film mutates into a thriller with
moments of horror. In addition to Parasite, most of Bong’s films feature sudden and torrential
downpours; he uses water to signify major tonal shifts, disorient and exhaust characters, and
heighten emotional stakes (Fig. 11). In Memories of Murder, the killer initially only strikes on
rainy nights. In The Host, the poisoned Han River and sewers are the source of the monster that
abducts and later kills Hyeon-seo. And in Parasite, a brutal storm heralds the bunker’s
47
discovery, as well as flooding the Kim’s semi-basement apartment. The relentless wetness and
running up-and-down on set lead Song Kang Ho to declare that he would “never be in a film
with this many staircases ever again, and also not a film with this much rain and water.”112
The ubiquity of stairs in Parasite (Fig. 12) is integral to the film’s portrayal of class
relations, and representative of Bong’s obsession with people and objects falling or “rolling
down” to lower levels, with characters’ final destination usually being the darkest, lowest one.
Among things that literally fall in Parasite: the Kim family trips and falls into the secret bunker,
Moon-gwang suffers a fatal push-and-fall into the cellar, and the scholar’s stone falls down the
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112 “Bong Joon Ho & Song Kang Ho on the Phenomenon of Parasite.” Film at Lincoln Center. Jan 2, 2020. YouTube. Web.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dcwt8IsMNU
Figure 12. Ki-woo follows Yeon-gyo to his first lesson with Da-hye. The set of the Park’s
house was constructed from scratch, and Bong storyboarded with the help of a 3D model.
Figure 11. Ki-taek, Ki-young and Ki-woo flee the Park's house into a raging storm. Their
semi-basement floods, and the miserable family spends the night in an evacuation center.
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bunker steps into Geun-sae’s murderous clutches. More symbolically, the Park house’s hilltop
location and myriad staircases signal the family’s vast wealth, the allure of upward mobility, and
the omnipresent reality that, at the end of the workday, the Kims must literally descend back to
their semi-basement life. Bong referred to Parasite during production as a “staircase movie,”113
explaining that “The structure of the house is directly tied to the narrative.”114 An extension of
Bong’s longtime preference for “falling” and lower levels is the significant amount of time
characters in Parasite spend hiding in low places. While characters in all Bong’s films hide at
various points, usually their forays into basements, tunnels, closets or ditches are short-lived. But
in Parasite, the Kims hide under tables and beds, and indeed in the bunker for ever-escalating,
humiliating periods of time. This not only accentuates these lower-class characters’ invisibility,
but also the ways in which society conspires to trap them in their lowness.
A similar conclusion is evoked through repeated reference to the Kim family’s smell,
which marks their otherness and inferiority as members of the lower class (Fig. 13). “Smell
really reflects your life,” Bong remarked in November 2019, “It shows if you're struggling. What
kind of work you do.” Discussing or acknowledging another’s (non-perfumed) smell is therefore
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113 Jung, E. Alex. “The House that Parasite Built (From Scratch). Vulture. Feb 4, 2020. Accessed Jun 21, 2020.
https://www.vulture.com/2020/02/how-bong-joon-ho-built-the-houses-in-parasite.html
114 Behind the Curtain, YouTube (2020).
Figure 13. Mr. Park, dressed in stereotypical “American Indian” regalia for his son’s birthday,
recoils in disgust at the smell of Geun-sae.
49
interpreted as out-of-bounds behavior, a larger character or value judgement, a moment “when
the final pieces of [someone’s] self-worth are being destroyed."115 The “boiled rag” smell
attached to both the Kims and basement people, and repulsive to the Parks, proves as inescapable
as the cycle of poverty itself. Indeed, it is Mr. Park’s recoiling at this smell that is the final straw
of Ki-taek’s humiliation, spurring the latter to stab his employer in the heart.

Connections to South Korean Social Issues
While the dynamic between families in Parasite embodies a rich-vs-poor story archetype
recognizable to all (universal), the movie speaks to uniquely Korean social disparities (local).
The universality of this archetype and its distinct localized manifestation reflect the changes to
“the broader social structure of society amid neoliberal globalization”116 during the 1980s, which
saw re-structuring of the global monetary system, an increase in labor outsourcing, smaller
countries moving towards protectionist, export-oriented growth models, rises in real estate prices
and compounded poverty. South Korea’s capital Seoul, the site of the Kim’s semi-basement
apartment and the Park’s hilltop house, has increasingly struggled with overpopulation and its
attendant concerns; 2018 figures reflect that approximately 10 million of Korea’s 51.6 million117
residents live there, around 20% of the total population. As of 2015, South Korea’s overall
population density was measured at 509 (people per square mile or PPSM), while Seoul’s was a
staggering 16,364,118 nearly 12,000 PPSM higher than the country’s second-most populous city,
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115 Nulf, Jenny. “Upstairs, Downstairs: The Metaphors of Parasite.” The Austin Chronicle. Nov 1, 2019. Web.
https://www.austinchronicle.com/screens/2019-11-01/upstairs-downstairs-the-metaphors-of-parasite/ Accessed Jun 23, 2020.
116 Dal Yong Jin. “The Power of the Nation-State Amid Neoliberal Reform: Shifting Cultural Politics in the New Korean Wave.”
Pacific affairs 87.1 (2014): 71–92. Print. 72.
117 “Population, total- Korea, Rep.” The World Bank, 2018, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?locations=KR.
Accessed June 20, 2020.
118 “Population density by Population Census.” Korean Statistical Information Service (KOSIS), 2016.
https://kosis.kr/eng/statisticsList/statisticsListIndex.do?menuId=M_01_01&vwcd=MT_ETITLE&parmTabId=M_01_01&statId=
1962001&themaId=#SelectStatsBoxDiv Accessed June 10, 2020.
50
Busan. The high population density and over-education of many young Koreans has resulted in
unparalleled levels of job competition. One 2017 article in The Korea Times highlighted the
outsize competition in jobs considered menial and not requiring a degree; 66 people applied for
four janitorial openings in Seoul, over a third of whom had college degrees.119 Parasite makes
one very direct reference to this phenomenon, which motivates the Kims’ often ruthless
behavior. Toasting the culmination of his family’s employment efforts, Ki-taek extols, “In an age
like ours, when an opening for a security guard attracts 500 university graduates, our entire
family got hired.” Neither of the Kim children Ki-woo or Ki-jung can afford to go to college, a
further disadvantage to them in the job market.
Overall, the wealth disparity has grown in South Korea in recent years, with the top 20%
earning around seven times more than the bottom 20%; in 2018, the latter’s monthly income was
a mere $1,167 dollars.120 The Kim’s semi-basement apartment illustrates a distinct housing
situation in South Korea; semi-basements are often-dank and in disrepair, and living in one is
heavily stigmatized. As of 2015, there were over 380,000 semi-basement apartments in Seoul,
with the majority of those living in them belonging to the lower 30% of the income bracket.121
But while the Kim’s plotline revolves around transcending their semi-basement poverty and
perennial unemployment, that of the “basement people,” the Park’s housekeeper Moon-gwang
and her husband Geun-sae, directly centers the epidemic of Korean household debt. Geun-sae is
hiding in the bunker to escape loan sharks from whom he borrowed to float his various now-
bankrupt small businesses. In 2019, Financial Services Commission (FSC) Chairman Choi Jong-
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119 Lee Han soo. “University graduates face fierce competition to become janitors.” The Korea Times. Jun 17, 2017.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2017/06/281_231364.html Accessed May 26, 2020.
120 Lee. Wooyoung. “South Korea’s income gap continues to grow as domestic economy slows.” UPI. Nov 22, 2018.
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2018/11/22/South-Koreas-income-gap-continues-to-grow-as-domestic-economy-
slows/9281542870360/ Accessed Jun 20, 2020.
121 Ock Hyun-ju. ‘Seoul to improve living conditions in semi-basement apartments depicted in ‘Parasite.’” The Korea Herald.
Feb 18, 2020. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20200218000706 Accessed Jun 10, 2020.
51
ku warned that household debts in Korea were rising at a dangerous pace, with 2018 totals
indicating $44,000 in debt per family on average122:
According to the Bank of Korea, the nation's household debt hit a new record of 1,514
trillion won ($1.34 trillion) at the end of September last year. Household debts accounted for
97.5 percent of the nation's gross domestic product in 2017, far higher than the OECD
member countries' average of 67.3 percent.123

The rise of household debt not only reflects the impact of unemployment due to over
competition and resulting difficulty filling practical needs, but also a consumer culture attached
in part to the spill of US industrial capitalism and a “legacy of Western modernity” in South
Korean economics as well as “cultural structures, symbols, and expressions” 124 that encourages
spending at all costs. As illustrated by Bong in his earliest short film White Man, the
accumulation of devices and material goods, regardless if such goods are actually desired or not,
operates as a status symbol, proof of middle or upper-class attainment. In Parasite the ability to
order specialty items from America is a point of pride for Yeon-kyo; when Mr. Park asks his
wife if their son’s teepee will leak in the rain, she replies confidently, “We ordered it from the
U.S., it’ll be fine.”

Parasite & Chungmuro: Looking to the Future

The Korean Film Council (KOFIC) releases an annual report cataloguing domestic films
and box office statistics and offers analysis on Chungmuro’s performance. KOFIC’s very
existence exemplifies the active role the South Korean government has taken investing in, and
monitoring the health of, the country’s media industries. But while Parasite’s international
—————————
122 Lee, Suh-yoon. “Average Seoul household debt over $44,000. The Korea Times. Jul 8, 2019. Web.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/04/281_271912.html Accessed Jun 10, 2020.
123 Jhoo Dong-chan. “FSC chief warns of ballooning household debts,” The Korea Times. Jan 27, 2019. Accessed Jun 10, 2020.
Web. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/biz/2019/12/367_262749.html Accessed Jun 10, 2020.
124 Lau, 1.
52
acclaim led headlines to declare “Korean Filmmakers Are Having Their Moment”125 and
journalists to argue the film’s Oscar win lent international credibility to “Korea’s status as a
cultural juggernaut,”126 KOFIC’s 2019 report portrays no such blind confidence. In the
publication’s opening essay, Kim Young-jin delivers a franker view of the industry’s status,
asserting that Parasite was an outlier both in terms of artistic quality and box office success. Kim
explains that after Bong’s film began raking in ticket sales in its home market “the ‘crisis of
Korean cinema’ became a hot topic... because there were no mainstream movies comparable to
Parasite.”127 Even Parasite’s star Song Kang Ho remarked that “in Korea films like this are very
rare, you don’t really see a lot of them.”128 South Korea’s box office net in 2019 was highly
imbalanced, coming from just two Korean outliers- Parasite and the action/comedy Extreme
Job- alongside a handful of foreign blockbusters like Frozen II and Avengers: Endgame. As Kim
explains:
“[In] 2019, the number of local and foreign movies that took in 3 to 5 million viewers
came to 8, falling significantly from 22 in 2017. In addition, the introduction of the 40-
hour work week and minimum wage system to Korean film sets pushed production costs,
making it more difficult to reach the break-even point. This extreme polarization in the
popularity of films resulted in moviegoers flocking to a small number of films, forcing
others to divvy up a limited market share.”129

In 2019 Korean films came out on top, but barely; they accounted for 51% of all box
domestic office admissions (Fig. 14).130 Americans take for granted the commercial supremacy
—————————
125 Kiang, Jessica. “Korean Filmmakers Are Having Their Moment in Awards Season.” Variety. Jan 31, 2020. Accessed May 23,
2020. Web. https://variety.com/2020/film/uncategorized/parasite-bong-joon-ho-oscar-korean-filmmakers-are-having-their-
moment-in-awards-season-1203488692/ Accessed May 23, 2020.
126 Kim, Sohee and Jihye Lee. “Shock ‘Parasite’ Oscar Showcases Korea’s Soft Power.” Bloomberg. Feb 10, 2020. Accessed
May 24, 2020. Web. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-10/shock-oscar-for-parasite-showcases-korea-s-
growing-soft-power Accessed May 24, 2020.
127 Kim (2019), 11.
128 Film at Lincoln Center, YouTube (2020).
129 Kim (2019), 11.
130 Ibid.
53
of our film industry. In the United States, it's rare for non-English-language films to even register
in the national filmgoing consciousness. As of February 2020, Parasite is the fourth highest-
grossing non-English language film in American history ($44.49 million), the all-time record set
by Ang Lee’s 2000 wuxia masterpiece Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ($128.1 million).131

Conclusions
In his first 25 years of filmmaking- from White Man to Parasite- Bong directed movies
which distinctly lean towards, and incorporate, established Hollywood genres (crime thriller,
monster movie, action, sci-fi etc.), but reject neat categorization in them. Although touted
foremost as a director, Bong’s distinct narrative and visual styles are informed by his active role
—————————
131 McClintock, Pamela. “Box Office: 'Parasite' Heads for Huge $50M-Plus in U.S. After Historic Oscar Win.” The Hollywood
Reporter. Feb 18, 2020. Web. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-parasite-heads-huge-50m-us-oscar-win-
1279671 Accessed May 22, 2020.
Figure 14. Source: KOFIC, Korean Film Industry: Status & Insight 2018 report. Note that
while overall admissions have a slight downward curve (though 2020 sales were up) the
edge Korean films have over foreign ones (mostly Hollywood) has narrowed in recent years.
54
in writing/co-writing his own scripts and drawing his own detailed storyboards for each project.
The aforementioned attention to multiple stages of the creative process cement Bong’s position
as a commercial auteur whose personality and vision are readily intelligible by audiences of all
his movies, despite an individual film’s variation in language, cast, or plot. The director’s keen
observation of Korea’s social and political upheaval during his youth and college years allow
him to capture with nuance the attitudes and frustrations of lower- and middle-class Koreans, and
the extremely marginalized. Incorporating critiques of US military presence, corruption among
elites, loss of empathy in corporate and capitalist society, and portraying the ruthlessness of, and
hopelessness endemic to, poverty, Bong delivers flawed, sometimes-infuriating characters who
nonetheless possess “strange charm”132 and relatable, tangible psychological states. This
emotional and thematic depth channels art cinema-style film practices which emphasize realism,
ambiguity, and the cohering presence of authorial vision.133
As Bong prepared to move on from his two big-budget, transnational collaborative
features Snowpiercer (2013) and Okja (2017), he would make calculated steps to ensure his next
project would be more “local” and allow him total creative control; minimal locations, detailed
set pieces, an entirely Korean cast including Song Kang-Ho, final cut privilege and theatrical
release. The resulting return to Korea-centered filmmaking and tighter-budget, character-driven
storytelling played to Bong’s strengths as a director and writer, reminding popular audiences and
critics why they loved Memories of Murder and The Host, and simultaneously impressing
Bong’s creative growth. Made on his lowest budget in 17 years, Parasite is by far Bong’s leanest
use of his signature motifs (stairs, basements, water), themes (class tensions, poverty,
consumerism) and tones (dark humor, satire, jarring transitions between genres). The result is a
—————————
132 Behind the Curtain, YouTube (2020).
133 Bordwell, 94-95.
55
film as distinctive, dark, and mesmerizing as the hilltop house in which it takes place, with
powerful crossover appeal.
The directorial mastery on display in Parasite paired perfectly with America’s increasing
interest in Korean media and culture, and the film’s themes speak to young Americans’ worries
about wealth disparity, debt, housing affordability and job competition. These same issues were
responsible, to varying degrees, for the domestic Korean popularity of the film as well,
highlighting similarities in the sociocultural, educational and economic experiences of young
Koreans and Americans contributing to the crossover success of their medias. Such parallel
socioeconomic experiences originated in large part from the neoliberalism sweeping the global
economy in the 1980s, which in turn fashioned the Korean government’s dynamic approach to
its cultural industries,134 culminating in the success of Hallyu. Accordingly, American audiences
were primed to receive and embrace a formally excellent film from Korea with an eye on social
issues becoming more relevant each passing day.

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134 Dal, 79.
56
Chapter 3:
Parasite in America

Parasite has wide appeal due in part to Bong’s use of “local detail” to create compelling
characters, whose humanity in turn makes the film more engaging and accessible to non-Korean
viewers. However, the problems plaguing the Kims on screen are also reflections of real social
ills in contemporary South Korea, and Bong uses Parasite to continue his explorations of
marginalization, class tensions, and the encroach of western industrial capitalism in his home
country. Cultural references and inside-jokes add depth to each level of the film if understood in
their original context, but these elements don’t substantially detract from a non-Korean speaking
person’s understanding of plot, characters and themes. In fact, while non-Korean US viewers
might not understand Ki-taek’s quip about the 38th parallel or recognize the melody Ki-jung uses
to memorize her fake identity, they may be all too familiar with the central obstacles facing the
Kim family.
Especially for Parasite’s millennial and Gen Z135 audiences in New York and Los
Angeles, where the film premiered and where Bong did the majority of his Q&A events, young
people have rarely been more aware of income inequality and social immobility. These younger
generations possess first-hand experiences with crippling personal debt, overpriced education,
and over-crowded metropolitan job markets. The American democratic candidates Bernie
Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang all brought wealth disparity to the forefront of
national consciousness, and millennials have become more politically active in challenging
longstanding systems of oppression that contribute to generational poverty. The above factors,
combined with younger Americans’ high rate of moviegoing and higher likelihood of watching
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135 Consensus usually identifies “millennials” as those born 1981-1996, meaning in 2020, adults aged 24-39. Generation Z is
categorized as those born between 1997-2012, meaning polled adult members are currently 18-23. Source: Pew Social Trends.
57
non-English language/subtitled films, present both conscious and unconscious contributing
motivations to seeing, enjoying and/or connecting with Parasite.

Mr. Bong Goes to Hollywood (Again)
Parasite made its US Premiere in three theaters on October 11, 2019; at Los Angeles
venues The Landmark Theater and ArcLight Hollywood, and New York’s IFC Center before
screening at Lincoln Center a few days later. The first tickets in New York in particular were hot
items, as IFC’s biggest screen only had 200 seats; IndieWire had joked “If You Want to See
‘Parasite’ This Weekend, You’ll Need to Fly to Los Angeles.”136 Four months later, Parasite had
gone from showing at a few indie venues to playing in over 2000 locations. It netted $44.5
million in ticket sales in the US and secured its spot as America’s fourth highest-grossing
“foreign language” film of all time.137 The jump resulted from a dark horse marketing plan from
Parasite’s indie US distributer NEON, word-of-mouth and social media recommendations from
those at early screenings, buzz generated by the film on the international festival circuit, and
subsequent outstanding critical reception from major outlets like The New York Times, The Los
Angeles Times, The A.V. Club, TIME, RogerEbert.com, Variety, and Rolling Stone, which simply
declared “Bong Joon Ho delivers his masterpiece.”138
In his participation at sold-out events and Q&As, Bong channels a distinctive warmth and
personal style. The commercial auteur is a character with a presence in the public consciousness,
an ambassador for their own work and, occasionally, the entire film output of their home
country. Bong’s black-rim glasses and mop of wavy dark hair are now widely recognizable to
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136 Brueggemann, Tom. “If You Want to See ‘Parasite’ This Weekend, You’ll Need to Fly to Los Angeles.” IndieWire. Oct 11,
2019. Web. https://www.indiewire.com/2019/10/parasite-sold-out-new-york-los-angeles-1202180813/ Accessed May 31, 2020.
137 McClintock.
138 Travers, Peter. “’Parasite’ Review: Bong Joon Ho Delivers his Masterpiece.” Rolling Stone. Oct 8, 2019. Web.
https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-reviews/parasite-movie-review-bong-joon-ho-895779/ Accessed Jun 3, 2020.
58
cinephiles, similar to Martin Scorsese’s bushy eyebrows or David Lynch’s white coif. Especially
as a Korean director communicating mostly through an interpreter (usually Sharon Choi), Bong’s
easygoing demeanor and facilitation of smooth discussion requires tremendous social energy and
personal charisma. That is to say, for the part of “representative Korean director,” Bong is well-
cast. A vocal, online English-speaking fan base of the director grew rapidly following Parasite’s
US release. Calling themselves the “Bong Hive,”139 these particularly devoted netizens began
creating and sharing Bong memes and content, and after Parasite’s Oscar win, major news
outlets and celebrities joined in, blowing up the #BongHive hashtag.

Winning Awards, Hearts
Parasite’s extensive “best of” award collection began on May 25, 2019, when the film
premiered at Cannes and took home the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, a first for a Korean
film. In November came Korea’s own Blue Dragon Awards, where Parasite and its cast swept
most categories, including “Best Film,” “Best Director,” and “Best Actress” for Jo Yeo-Jeong.
Then in January, the movie left the Golden Globes with “Best Foreign Language Film,” and its
cast received the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) award for best performance. But the most highly
publicized post-Cannes win came on February 9, 2020, when Parasite nabbed “Best Picture” at
America’s Academy Awards. It was the first time in the show’s 92-year history that a film not-
in-the-English language won the Oscar.
Viewership for major American awards shows, from The Golden Globes to the Emmys to
the Oscars, has been plummeting overall in recent years. 26.3 million people tuned in to the 2020
Academy Awards (The Oscars), a 20% drop in viewership from the previous year, yet still the
—————————
139 The name “Bong Hive” is a play on the name of Beyoncé’s fandom, the “Bey Hive.”
59
highest among all other American awards shows.140 The precipitous decline in viewership can be
attributed to a myriad of factors, including possible failure to fully account for streaming
audiences, and the general public’s lack of interest in what these often-unfunny, insular
spectacles have to offer. The Academy Awards in particular has struggled to remain relevant,
attract younger audiences, and shake off its reputation for being a self-congratulatory event
designed by and for white Hollywood elites. In January of 2015, after the Academy extended all
20 of its acting nominations to white men and women, Twitter user April Reign created the
hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, calling out what Black director Ava Duvernay (Selma, 13th) termed the
show’s “decades-long absence of diversity and inclusion.”141 While #OscarsSoWhite sparked
wide-scale callouts of the Academy’s (and other Hollywood institutes’) exclusionary practices,
the movement was geared broadly towards acknowledging the performances and work of
creatives of color making English-language films. Indeed, when Parasite won, film critic Walter
Chaw hastened to point out this was not the same as Asian American representation- citing the
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140 Thorne, Will. “Oscars viewership sinks to new low with 23.6 million viewers.” NBC News. Feb 10, 2020. Web.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/oscars-viewership-sinks-new-low-23-6-million-viewers-n1134131 Accessed Jun 22, 2020.
141 Ugwu, Reggie. “The Hashtag that Changed the Oscars: An Oral History.” The New York Times. Feb 6, 2020.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/movies/oscarssowhite-history.html Accessed Jun 8, 2020.
Figure 15. Jane Fonda presents Bong Joon Ho and his team the 2019 Academy Award for
Best Picture. Source: The New York Times, Noel West.

60
overlooking of Chinese-American family dramedy The Farewell- explaining, “The victory of
“Parasite” is a stunning moment that may not also be a watershed moment.”142
While Parasite’s win didn’t remedy years of failure to recognize work by American
directors of color and/or women directors, it signaled Hollywood may finally be ready to
confront its xenophobic and ethnocentric practices of both othering “foreign films,” and
artistically overvaluing its own cinematic output. Indeed, certain high-profile reactions to
Parasite’s win underscored how deeply engrained American’s racism and xenophobia is towards
Asian people, and towards non-English-language films. Although he hadn’t seen the movie,
President Donald Trump complained about it at his February campaign rally: “By the way, how
bad were the Academy Awards this year, do you see? And the winner is, a movie from South
Korea. What the hell was all that about?”143 One female member of the Academy (an actress
who wouldn’t put her name on record) spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about her voting
choices, stating right off “I want an American to win Best Director” (Bong won). Of Bong’s film
she backhandedly expressed: “Parasite is beautifully done, but it didn't hold up the second time,
and I don't think foreign films should be nominated with the regular films.”144
The relegation of “foreign films” to their own separate category away from the “regular”
ones is both strategically othering and a reflection of lazy complacency. It serves multiple
purposes, among them; ensuring Hollywood films will receive the totality of the awards
recognition box office “bump”; making Hollywood feel good about its pedantic uplift or
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142 Chaw, Walter. “‘Parasite’ Won, but Asian-Americans Are Still Losing.” The New York Times. Feb 10, 2020.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/10/opinion/parasite-oscar-best-picture.html Accessed Jun 22, 2020.
143 Johnson, Ted. “Donald Trump Attacks Oscars For Giving Best Picture To ‘Parasite’; Neon Trolls Back with Tweet.”
Deadline. Feb 20, 2020. Web. https://deadline.com/2020/02/donald-trump-parasite-oscars-1202865073/ Accessed Jun 1, 2020.
144 Anonymous, as told to Scott Feinberg, “Brutally Honest Oscar Ballot: 'Irishman' ‘Was Boring,’ Tarantino ‘Amazing,’ ‘I Want
an American Director to Win.’” The Hollywood Reporter. Feb 4, 2020. Web. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/brutally-
honest-oscar-ballot-irishman-was-boring-tarantino-amazing-1275576/item/best-original-screenplay-2020-brutally-honest-ballot-
1-1276084 Accessed Jun 20, 2020.
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acknowledgment of a single non-English language film; enabling Academy members to remain
in their viewing comfort zones; and creating the false impression of inclusivity at awards shows
designed only to honor American and British films.
Hollywood has a longstanding pattern of taking up a non-English-language film annually
as its critical darling: see Guillermo Del Torro’s fantastical Spanish-language feature Pan’s
Labyrinth in 2006, Asghar Farhadi’s Iranian drama A Separation in 2011, or most famously,
Taiwanese director Ang Lee’s 2000 wuxia masterpiece Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Often
this “darling” film is fetishized as an “international” gem and becomes a trendy must-see.
Especially in New York in Los Angeles, the hype surrounding Parasite rose so high that young
people who had never before seen a Korean film in theaters (or elsewhere) were compelled to,
lest they be perceived as behind on the times. This peer pressure contributed to the initiation of a
generation of young Americans to Bong’s films, leading to his fervent English-speaking fanbase,
the “Bong Hive,” and articles proclaiming “Why ‘Parasite’ Is the Film Everyone’s Talking
About,”145 or “10 Reasons Why You Need To Watch Parasite.”146 Additionally, as millennials
and Gen Z are the biggest social media users,147 this younger generation of fans was instrumental
in spreading the word about Parasite online; individuals used their SNS to recommend and
promote the film to friends and followers, as well as produce viral memes and campaign vocally
for its Oscars recognition. Internet access and proficiency was also important once the film went
to streaming (exclusively on Hulu), as more adults who saw the film did so through streaming
rather than in theaters, and this was especially true for Americans under 40.148 Within its first
—————————
145 Bernstein, Paula. “Why ‘Parasite’ Is the Film Everyone’s Talking About.” Fortune. Oct 15, 2019. Web. https://fortune.com/
2019/10/15/parasite-movie-bong-joon-ho-box-office-academy-awards/ Accessed Jul 3, 2020.
146 Schube, Sam. “10 Reasons Why You Need To Watch Parasite.” GQ. Feb 10, 2020. Web. https://www.gq.com.au/enter
tainment/film-tv/10-reasons-why-you-need-to-watchparasite/image-gallery/e47d6284aa844fe77247801de28e5e61 Accessed Jul
3, 2020.
147 Pew Research Center: 90% of those 18-29 use some type of SNS.
148 National Tracking Poll, 173.
62
week of release on Hulu in April, Parasite set the record for most-streamed independent or
foreign film, and then became the site’s second-most-viewed film ever.149

Parasite & American Social Issues
Young Americans attending screenings of Parasite in metropolitan centers or streaming
it online are likely not undertaking deep, conscious consideration of the wealth disparity, debt,
and housing insecurity permeating American society when deciding to see the film. However,
such issues undoubtedly effect the lives and psyches of the US public and contribute to
Parasite’s timeliness and acute relatability for American audiences. In this sense, Parasite
centers social issues which not only appeal to South Koreans but also to Americans, for whom
the Kim’s struggles may be too close for comfort, or for the more privileged viewers, at least
familiar topics. Bong Joon Ho identified a likely culprit behind Parasite’s warm global reception
when he concluded, “Essentially, we all live in the same country... called Capitalism.”150
The Harvard Youth Poll, which examines biannually “the political opinions and civic
engagement of young Americans ages 18 to 29,” found in its most recent Spring 2020 report that
millennials continue to be reform-minded, concerned about health care, housing costs, and
student loan debt.151 63% of those surveyed expressed concern about housing access and
affordability.152 Using 2015 data, the Urban Institute’s “Millennial Homeownership Report”
Found that 37% of Americans aged 25 to 34 owned homes, eight percentage points less than
—————————
149 Sharf, Zack. “‘Parasite’ Has Monster Streaming Debut and Sets All-Time Hulu Records in One Week.” IndieWire. Apr 15,
2020. Web. https://www.indiewire.com/2020/04/parasite-streaming-record-hulu-most-watched-1202225107/ Accessed Jun 4,
2020.
150 “Bong Joon-ho Discusses PARASITE, Genre Filmmaking And The Greatness Of ZODIAC.” YouTube, uploaded by
Birth.Movies.Death., 16 Oct. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXuXfgquwkM&fbclid=IwAR09ptKpv-ML1kgHgCR
RyWlvDZR2Ffj5-5LTcHYy_V0gNxbg8b4PCOmPk9g
151 “Harvard Youth Poll (HYP) 39th ed. Spring 2020.” Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics (IOP), 2020. https://iop.harv
ard.edu/youth-poll/harvard-youth-poll. Accessed May 31, 2020.
152 Ibid.
63
previous generations had (Gen X and baby boomers) when in that same age bracket.153 Behind
headlining factors of delayed marriage rates and race, rises in educational debt and rent also
played a role. HYP reported 57% of their 2,546 participants carried some form of life-impacting
debt, with higher prevalence among black Americans (66%), college graduates (64%), and urban
dwellers (62%).154 Back further in 2016, when the democratic primary pitted Hilary Clinton
against Bernie Sanders, the IOP found Sanders- a self-described “democratic socialist” with a
long track record of progressive activism- very popular with millennials, who are more critical of
capitalism than older generations. Taken collectively, data indicates that Americans under 30 are
more likely to identify with liberal ideology, be impacted by educational and personal debt,
troubled by housing costs, and have less certain prospects of housing ownership than their
parents.
The very same age brackets more likely to be liberal-leaning or city dwellers are also the
most avid group of filmgoers. 18 to 24 (Gen Z) and 25 to 39-year-olds (millennials) are the most
significantly overrepresented at the US box office; the former accounts for 9% of the population
but 13% of moviegoers, and the latter 21% of the population, but 25% of all moviegoers.155 Yet
to suggest that younger Americans’ substantial film attendance signifies equally substantial
interest in and attendance of non-English language films would be misguided. As expanded upon
in the following section, there are indications that Millennials and Gen Z are more likely to
watch subtitled films (and Parasite specifically), but overall Americans remain overtly resistant-
to-neutral when it comes to watching movies in languages other than English. Bong Joon Ho
took a good-natured shot at a central component of this resistance during his Golden Globes
—————————
153 Choi Jung et al. “Millennial Homeownership: Why Is It So Low, and How Can We Increase It?” Urban Institute. July 2018.
https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/98729/2019_01_11_millennial_homeownership_finalizedv2_0.pdf.
Accessed May 31, 2020.
154 Ibid.
155 Ibid.
64
acceptance speech for “Best Foreign Language Film.” In what LA Times critic Justin Chang
described as a “perfectly barbed sentence,”156 Bong advised the awards audience in Korean
(interpreted by Sharon Choi), “Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will
be introduced to so many more amazing films.”157

The People of the United States Vs. Subtitles
The 2020 National Tracking Poll (NTP) from Morning Consult surveyed 2200
Americans, investigating their consumption of and attitudes towards non-English-language films
including the recent features Portrait of a Lady on Fire (France, 2019), Roma (Mexico/ US,
2018) and Parasite.158 90% of those surveyed reported not having seen Parasite either in theaters
or via streaming. 22% of 18 to 22-year-olds (Gen Z) and 15% of 23 to 38-year-olds (Millennials)
reported having seen Parasite; by contrast, only 10% of Gen X and 4% of Baby Boomers saw
the film. In addition to coming from a younger generation, Liberal or Independent political
affiliation, getting a post-graduate education, having lived abroad, learned another language,
identifying as an atheist, and being Black and/or Hispanic were among the categories most
positively correlated with seeing Parasite. Categories most negatively correlated with seeing the
film included living in rural locations, being a homemaker, unemployed or retired person, voting
for Donald Trump, practicing Evangelical Christianity, being white, and unsurprisingly,
considering oneself “not a fan” of movies in general. And while streaming plays an ever-growing
role in Americans’ consumption of all media, it has an outsized effect on non-English-language
—————————
156 Chang, Justin. “‘The 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles’: Bong Joon Ho rightly calls out Hollywood myopia.” The Los Angeles
Times. Jan 6, 2020. Web. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2020-01-06/golden-globes-parasite-foreign-
film-oscars Accessed Jul 1, 2020.
157 "Parasite": Best Motion Picture, Foreign Language - 2020 Golden Globes, NBC YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=mX3obZ0lXoU
158 Morning Consult. “Crosstabulation results.” National Tracking Poll #200158 January 23-24, 2020. https://morningconsult.co
m/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/200158_crosstabs_FOREIGN_FILMS_Adults_v2.pdf. Accessed June 13, 2020.
65
film consumption in particular. 62% of adults report that they or their household subscribes to at
least one streaming service such as Netflix, HBO, or Hulu; the majority of those who saw
Parasite did so via streaming online, and this was especially true of younger viewers (Table 1).
As with much else, younger Americans were the most likely to be favorably minded or
neutral towards subtitles. However, a whopping 75% of respondents to the National Tracking
Poll said their dislike of reading subtitles was a contributing reason to their unfavorable opinion
of “foreign language films,” while only 19% said it had no bearing (Table 2).159 If watching a
non-English language title, a sound majority (59% of adults) cited a preference for audio
—————————
159 National Tracking Poll. 173.
Table 1
Table 2
66
dubbing over subs.160 Indeed, among those interested in media requiring translation or
interpretation for a given person’s consumption, an often-heated debate rages on over the virtues
of subtitles versus that of audio dubbing; a common argument holds that “true” cinephiles prefer
the more perceived-authentic experience of subtitles, which allow the actor’s full performance to
be showcased, and for more nuanced translations.161 Detractors argue listening to a foreign
language and/or reading for two hours is too exhausting, especially when they could just watch
an English language movie instead. When Hulu announced via Twitter Parasite’s streaming
debut, one user angrily tweeted, “no one wants to watch a movie that they literally have to read
to understand what’s going on,” to which the Hulu account rejoined, “if you don’t want to read
subtitles, you can always learn Korean!”162
In her Vox piece exploring the subtitle debate post-Parasite, Aja Romano remarks that
while pro-subbers often evince unpleasant “intellectual snobbery” towards those that reject subs,
it is important to acknowledge that “disdain toward subtitles has been systematically, culturally
ingrained in many moviegoers throughout the world by nationalist governments.”163 It was this
sentiment- that watching a non-English-language film is somehow un-American- that Donald
Trump spoke to when he disparaged Parasite’s Oscars win to his supporters. The presumption
too, that the most desired audience for non-English-language films in America is white English-
speakers, is false. Writing for Screen in 2015, John Hazelton posits, “The US market for foreign-
language films is really two markets: one for broad-appeal films aimed at diaspora audiences of,
—————————
160 Ibid, 81.
161 Most people read faster than they speak, meaning there is more space for nuanced translating in subtitles compared to in audio
dubbing. Anti-dubbers also point to dubs’ expensiveness, the proliferation of bad voiceover acting, and the loss of a key part of
an actor’s performance as proof of the method’s inferiority. Accusations of xenophobia towards those who prefer dubs is also a
major occurrence. It’s important to note both subtitles and audio dubbing truly have equal value; both allow those with visual or
auditory disabilities or processing disorders to enjoy films.
162 Hulu (hulu). “if you don't want to read subtitles, you can always learn Korean!” 8 Apr 2020, 11:25 AM. Tweet.
https://twitter.com/hulu/status/1247953608080949250 Accessed Jun 30, 2020.
163 Romano, Aja. “The debate over subtitles, explained.” Vox. Feb 20, 2020. Web. https://www.vox.com/2020/2/20/21134355/
subtitles-or-dubs-which-is-better-parasite-debate-history-anime Accessed Jun 30, 2020.
67
for the most part, Hispanic Americans, Indian Americans and other Asian Americans; the other
for specialised films aimed at an upmarket English-speaking arthouse crowd.”164 According to
this analysis, the substantial, growing presence of Koreans and Korean Americans in the US
offers a reliable “diasporic audience” for Parasite alongside demand for the film among the
“arthouse” crowd in New York, LA and other major US metropoles. Yet at the same time, taking
for granted the work’s exceptional quality, interest in Parasite was also bolstered by the rising
mainstream cultural literacy of non-Koreans on Korean media at large, especially among
younger generations.

Korean Culture: Organic & Strategic Growth
While hot-button social issues relevant to many young city-dwellers, whether in Seoul or
New York, contributed to Parasite’s appeal, Bong’s film also greatly benefitted from decades of
America’s growing familiarity with, and interest in, Korean media and culture. In the 1980s and
1990s, the world experienced an influx and subsequent obsession with Korean pop music and
TV dramas, referred to as “Hallyu” or the “Korean Wave.” But while the modern phenomenon
of Hallyu sparked a dramatic uptick in non-Korean people’s consumption of Korean media and
study of Korean language, the presence of Korean immigrants and Korean Americans in the US
had been going strong since the mid-1800s. In short, America’s cultural receptivity to Parasite
was primed by both long-term internal growth of Korean diasporic populations, and by more
recent external factors, namely strategic cultural promotion initiatives from the South Korean
government.
—————————
164 Hazelton, John. “Box office analysis: foreign-language films in the US in 2015.” Screen. Nov 13, 2015. Web.
https://www.screendaily.com/box-office/box-office-analysis-foreign-language-films-in-the-us/5096804.article Accessed Jul 1,
2020. Hazelton’s description of an “upmarket English-speaking arthouse crowd” appears to be a veiled signifier for upper-class,
urban white people.
68
The first wave of Korean migration to America began during the California Gold
Rush of 1849 and ending with the Immigration Act of 1924, which stopped immigration from
Asian countries. As explained by historian Ronald Takaki in his seminal history of Asian
Americans, Strangers From a Different Shore, the second wave of Korean immigration occurred
after the Immigration Act was replaced in 1965, leading to the “dramatic emergence of Koreans
as a very visible group in America…”165 In addition to Korean immigrants, subsequent
generations of Korean Americans, and mixed race households, Korean adoptees began arriving
in America post-Korean War, with numbers peaking in the 1980s; between 1953 and 2008,
109, 242 South Korean children were adopted into the US.166 2016 statistics indicate that 1.8
—————————
165 Takaki, Ronald T. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. NY: Penguin Books, 1990. Print. 435.
166 Kim, Eleana Jean. Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging. Durham N.C: Duke
University Press, 2010. Print. 21.
Figure 16.

69
million people of Korean descent live in America (Fig. 16), and Korean is now among the top
ten most commonly spoken languages in the country, reflecting a 300% rise between 1980
(266,280 speakers) and 2011 (1,137,235 speakers).167 The mass consumption of Korean media
sparked by Hallyu also opened a portal to Korean language learning, as US fans of Korean pop
music (K-pop) and Korean TV shows (K-dramas) sought ways to deepen their connection to, and
understanding of, Korean culture. According to the Modern Language Association’s 2016 final
report, from 2013 to 2016 Korean language enrollment in the United States increased by nearly
14%, from 12,256 to 13,936, the biggest leap among other surveyed languages.168 Consequently,
these language classes have become environments where Korean American identity formation
and articulation occurs alongside non-heritage student engagement with global citizenship via
consuming Korean media, learning Korean history, and practicing Korean language.

Hallyu
The Korean Wave or Hallyu phenomenon, born out of the South Korean government’s
strategic cultural promotion agenda and the country’s high output of quality media, saw the
world become obsessed with Korean film, music and television in the 1990s. Hallyu began in
earnest in Asia, which still has the majority of K-pop fans outside Korea, and indeed the term
“hallyu” was originated by Chinese journalists. By the mid-2000s the phenomenon, comprised of
several sub-waves, had arrived in America (Table 3). Subsequently, this sparked interest in
visiting and learning about Korea heretofore unprecedented in the West. By the mid-1990s, most
—————————
167 Ryan, Camille. “Language Use in the United States: 2011, American Community Survey Reports.” 2013. Web. 7. Retrieved
from https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2013/acs/acs-22.html Accessed Jun 23, 2020.
168 Looney, Dennis and Natalia Lusin. “Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher
Education, Summer 2016 and Fall 2016: Final Report.” 2019. Web. Retrieved from:
https://www.mla.org/Resources/Research/Surveys-Reports-and-Other-Documents/Teaching-Enrollments-and-
Programs/Enrollments-in-Languages-Other-Than-English-in-United-States-Institutions-of-Higher-Education
70
South Koreans and Americans had internet access, further compounding the spread of cross-
cultural media consumption. Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (2003) made a critical splash in the US,
and romantic K-dramas such as Winter Sonata (2004) and Coffee Prince (2007) gained cult
followings from Western audiences. Popular Korean musicians, notably Seo Taiji and later Rain,
mixed American hip-hop and rap beat stylings with Korean language lyrics and elaborate dance
routines.169 Eun-Young Jung writes that “interest in Korean popular music seems to be due to its
increasingly transnational and hybrid aspects,”170 and Crystal S. Anderson later echoed that
“Hallyu is a Korean cultural movement directed transnationally, it also represents a blending of
Korean and various other cultures— particularly American culture.”171 As part of a state-driven
cultural promotion agenda, Hallyu provided South Korea an opportunity to define itself outside
—————————
169 Kim, KH, and Choe, Youngmin. The Korean Popular Culture Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. Print. 300.
170 Jung, Eun-Young. “Transnational Korea: A Critical Assessment of the Korean Wave in Asia and the United States.” Southeast
Review of Asian Studies 31 (2009): 69-80. Print. 69.
171 Anderson, Crystal S. “HALLU.S.A: America’s Impact on the Korean Wave.” The Global Impact of South Korean Popular
Culture: Hallyu Unbound. Ed. Valentina Marinescu. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2014. Print. 111.
Table 3
71
its recent history of victimization. Youna Kim observes that while past “national images of
Korean society were negatively associated with…. the demilitarized zone, division and political
disturbances” these have now given way to “the vitality of trendy, transnational entertainers and
cutting-edge technology in a digital, cosmopolitan world.”172
Hallyu media’s hybridity- its mixing or blending of various cultural elements- is often
touted as what makes it so successful. Korean pop music in particular has proven an economic
juggernaut. Many K-pop songs, while featuring majority Korean vocals, have titles and choruses
in English, and bands collaborate with English-speaking artists (Ex: G-Dragon and Missy
Elliot’s “Niliria,” or Blackpink and Lady Gaga’s “Sour Candy”). K-pop stars or “idols” are often
required to have or practice proficiency in other East Asian languages as well as English. Groups
like EXO, Twice or BTS release and re-release songs and albums in Chinese or Japanese for
their East Asian fanbases and hold daylong “fanmeetings” on tours throughout Asia. The most
famous Korean music group, BTS, is responsible for $4.65 billion173 of the country’s GDP; in
2018, South Korean President Moon Jae-In awarded the band the Order of Cultural Merit for
their role inspiring interest and appreciation worldwide for Korean language and culture.174 As
argued by author Euny Hong in The Birth of Korean Cool, “Other countries have gone from rags
to riches in the last century, but among these, only South Korea has the cheek to set its sights on
becoming the world’s top exporter of pop culture.”
Much like the “planned films” of the 1990s, Hallyu media thrives on meticulous
development processes and target-marketing. In the past decade, conventions dedicated to
—————————
172 Kim, Youna. The Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and Society. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2017. Print. 4.
173 Abramovitch, Seth. “BTS Is Back: Music's Billion-Dollar Boy Band Takes the Next Step.” The Hollywood Reporter. Oct 2,
2019. Web. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/bts-is-back-musics-billion-dollar-boy-band-takes-next-step-1244580
Accessed Jun 10, 2020.
174Herman, Tamar. “BTS Awarded Order of Cultural Merit by South Korean Government.” Billboard. Oct 25, 2018. Web.
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/bts/8481640/bts-awarded-order-of-cultural-merit-by-south-korean-government
Accessed Jun 23, 2020.
72
sharing and celebrating (and selling) the media and culture of Hallyu sprang up in the US; 2012
in Los Angeles, and 2015 in New York. These Korean Wave conventions (KCON) are held over
2-3 days and feature a sea of booths representing Korean brands, from bakeries to skincare
companies, all passing out free samples (Fig. 17). The diverse crowd can play games, listen to
panels, and attend the final day’s concert, a separate ticket which features at least one major star
alongside up-and-comers. Accordingly, Valentina Marinescu diagnosed that the “key ingredients
of Korean cultural products’ success are cultural assimilation and economic opportunism.”175

Conclusion
In laying out the growing presence of Korean and Korean Americans in the US, I do not
intend to assert that merely being Korean makes one interested by default in Korean media or
Parasite in particular. Rather, that non-Korean’s increased familiarity with Korean people and
—————————
175 Ed. Valentina Marinescu. The Global Impact of South Korean Popular Culture: Hallyu Unbound. Lanham, Maryland:
Lexington Books, 2014. Print. 7.
Figure 17. “K-Pop fans attend the 2019 KCon New York on July 06, 2019 in New York City.”
Source: Noam Galai/ Getty Images. Billboard.
73
media, via organic growth of Korean populations in the US and the strategic influence of Hallyu,
may prime them to be more receptive to the film. In a moment when a Hollywood institution
like the Academy Awards is experiencing self-reflexivity and seeking to cast off a reputation for
racism and xenophobia, it’s telling that among excellent recent non-English-language features
(Pain and Glory, Foxtrot, Shoplifters) it was a Korean film that made history to win “Best
Picture.”
One factor in Parasite’s success in the US market may be that these young, liberal-
leaning Americans living in cities connect consciously or subconsciously with the film’s central
themes of debt, housing and job insecurity. These issues present substantial obstacles for
Millennial and Gen Z Americans, who on the whole have higher rates of debt and lower rates of
homeownership than their predecessors, and who often face increased job competition in
overpopulated urban centers. Additionally, mainstream political movements have galvanized
younger Americans against corruption and passivity among wealthy elites, spurring organized
efforts to call out and dismantle the racist and classist systems upholding intergenerational
poverty. America’s growing racial and ethnic diversity, along with the attendant rise of
languages other than English, may also contribute to younger generation’s willingness to engage
subtitled media; it doesn’t hurt that Millennials and Gen Z are the most overrepresented
demographics at the box office.
The question of whether one’s consumption of Hallyu media is not just a gateway to
Korean language learning, as is well-documented, but also a gateway to interest in other non-
English-language media at large presents a compelling topic in need of further research.
Additionally, the ubiquity of the internet and rise of streaming services in the 2000s created
unprecedented opportunity for Americans to access media from other countries, and in languages
74
other than English, with abundant subtitles and dubbing options. High levels of social media
usage by Gen Z and Millennials in particular contributed to widespread discussion about and
zealous endorsements of, Parasite. Additionally, this fervent online discourse via “Bong Hive”
tweets, memes, and news articles supplied a healthy degree of peer pressure, wherein netizens
saw Parasite to avoid being perceived as ignorant or behind on the times. Ultimately, while
Bong Joon Ho repeatedly thanked his Korean and international audiences for their support of the
film, he used his platform at the Golden Globes to challenge Americans to seek out other great
non-English-language films, to use their enjoyment of Parasite as a helpful boost up and over
that “1-inch barrier of subtitles.”

75
Conclusion
There is something fundamentally condemning and disheartening about feeling the need
to explicate and analyze American interest in a “foreign film.” While I believe there is great
significance in Parasite’s US breakthrough for Americans’ improved receptivity to non-English
language media and Korean media in particular, and that there is utility in identifying why
Parasite was the film to illuminate this, doing so also underscores how resistant to or conflicted
about some of America is to non-English-language media, and indeed, to our own
multiculturalism. Perhaps a better framing for a research question would be not “Why did
Parasite appeal to Americans?” but rather “Why are Americans usually so resistant to non-
English-language films like Parasite?”
The National Tracking Poll explored in Chapter 3 elucidates several likely culprits,
including perceptions that American films are of superior quality, dislike of subtitles, and
associating watching non-English-language films with pretentiousness. This resistance is also
evident in the recurrent usage of the term “foreign language film” in most popular criticism,
news, academic writing, surveys, polls and in titles of major awards; such a term suggests
Spanish, Mandarin, Korean and other languages are not “American” like English. The practice of
referring to non-English language features as “foreign” others these languages and subsequently
suggests their speakers are Others as well, despite the substantial, long-time presence of said
languages and speakers in the US. Although at first it may seem a stretch, the natural extension,
or final destination, of such othering is in fact a cultural normalization of indifference, disdain, or
violence towards perceived out-groups. It’s not insignificant that dislike of subtitles and low
rates of viewing polled “foreign films” were attributed to respondents with conservative or
76
rightwing political affiliations, those which typically espouse hardline or anti-immigrant
legislation, and push for aggressive US foreign policy agendas.
Parasite started a conversation among Americans, borne out in the US press and on
social networks, about the importance of pressing towards an open-minded relationship with
crossover medias. Parasite’s Academy Awards “Best Picture” win represents an important step
by the Hollywood establishment in confronting American’s myopic filmgoing tendencies and
ethnocentric uplift of white directors and white performers only. It launched meaningful (if
occasionally infuriating) online discussion about the importance and enjoyability of watching
non-English-language media. Indeed, being bilingual or studying another language, as well as
being a person of color is positively correlated with receptivity to subtitles, and overall, younger
generations seem to be turning the tides of “foreign film” receptivity in the affirmative.
Millennial and Gen Z experiences with personal and education debt, overall wealth disparity, job
competition in urban centers and rising housing costs may help explain Parasite’s high traction
with young Americans and South Koreans, who saw the above concerns reflected in the Kim’s
aspirations of financial stability and upward mobility.
While Hollywood has consistently campaigned for dominance in the Korean domestic
film market, South Korean film is now asserting its right for a presence in the American foreign
film market. Bong Joon Ho has shown a willingness to work enthusiastically alongside
international collaborators, and in English, as evident in his crossover films Snowpiercer and
Okja, and his producing role for Snowpiercer’s TNT, and Parasite’s future HBO, American TV
series. At the same time, one of his distinctive traits as an auteur is critiquing the “toxic spill” of
US industrial capitalism, interloping military occupancy, and pedantic political attitudes. While
at first glance Parasite appears to take a step back from such direct social criticisms, Bong’s
77
head-on confrontation of class disparities, status obsession, and mindless consumerism in Korean
society represents a return to localized filmmaking that, rather than prioritize “universality” or
US relations, unabashedly centralizes Korea in his work. However, it is this purposeful
localization that makes Parasite’s characters and situations so compelling and relatable; to recall
Bong’s statement, “the more local and Korean the story is, the more universal it ultimately
becomes.”
Parasite lives up to its diagnosis as Bong’s “masterpiece” (although arguably he has
several), presenting an a sharply detailed investigation of his favorite themes and motifs in which
no scene or shot is without purpose. Yet, in line with art cinema tradition, Bong still makes space
for ambiguities, presenting an ending that is positive on the surface, but unravels upon closer
scrutiny. Ki-woo’s letter detailing his re-doubled dream to climb the social latter leaves the
audience with a mixture of hope, sadness, and unresolved feelings about the Kims’ morality. In
keeping with his previous films, in particular Memories of Murder and The Host, Bong uses a
thunderstorm to herald a jarring change in genre, sewing together the film’s elements of drama,
comedy, thriller and horror into a high functioning Frankenstein-like creature, a “mutation.”
To assume that the appearance and employment of such Hollywood-style genres in East
Asian cinema is merely a one-sided result of cultural imperialism is to take away filmmaker’s
agencies and unfairly flatten the factors contributing to crossover cinemas. Bong’s ability to
access Hollywood genres while simultaneously poking fun at Hollywood stems from his deep
personal and professional knowledge of Korean film history and Chungmuro/Hollywood
relations. But while Parasite’s success on a global stage and at home gave the impression
Chungmuro was healthier than ever, KOFIC’s 2019 report portrayed how tenuous and
imbalanced Korea’s edge over Hollywood is at its domestic box office. Parasite offers a
78
promising implication that there is demand for complex films incorporating contemporary social
issues and morally ambiguous characters. As Kim Young-jin notes, Chungmuro should look to
invest in and uplift the work of women and/or queer filmmakers who provide such fresh
perspectives and can propel Korean cinema out of a long, majority male-director-dominated era.
In Bong’s 2013 Sci-Fi action film Snowpiercer, Namgoong (Song Kang Ho) tells Curtis
(Chris Evans) to stop perceiving the train’s exit door as a wall, and instead see it as a gateway.
Accordingly, Parasite’s Academy Awards win isn’t an endpoint, but rather an opening to many
more “wins,” of which festival prizes are just the most publicized and symbolic. Consuming
Korean media and forming positive associations with non-English-language media is a win for
everyone. It's a win for the prestige and economies of growing media production industries of
other countries, both commercial and arthouse/independent. It's a win for filmmakers and film
professionals who can take advantage of increased receptivity to and demand for crossover
projects to work with a wider talent pool, and to attract hands-off private funding. It’s a win for
people who are watching this media outside its native context, being introduced to different
cultures and languages, becoming curious about the world, and learning to appreciate new
perspectives. While Bong may have begun his oft-quoted award’s speech with a jab nudging
Americans to “get over the 1-inch tall barrier of subtitles,” his ultimate message was an
invitation; open your mind, listen to the buzz, support local independent theaters, head to the
library’s video section, seek out an ever-growing global streaming archive, and be “introduced to
so many more amazing films.”

79
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Creator Collins, Donald (author)

Core Title Local detail, universal appeal: Parasite’s “Best Picture” win & trends in South Korea-US film exchange

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program East Asian Area Studies

Publication Date 09/17/2020

Defense Date 09/15/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Academy awards,Bong Joon Ho,Chungmuro,hallyu,Hollywood,Korean Wave,New Korean Cinema,OAI-PMH Harvest,Parasite

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Bernards, Brian (committee chair), Goldstein, Joshua (committee member), Parreñas, Rhacel (committee member)

Creator Email dcollins@usc.edu,donaldcolls@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-375413

Unique identifier UC11666135

Identifier etd-CollinsDon-8962.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-375413 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-CollinsDon-8962.pdf

Dmrecord 375413

Document Type Thesis

Rights Collins, Donald

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA