Na Hong-jin’s latest feature Hope takes its title from the name of the village in and around which its action is set. Hope is a relatively small coastal community whose population is disproportionately made up of retirees and the elderly, and whose location is near the Demilitarised Zone between a South and North Korea still…
The Wailing first published by Little White Lies Though called The Wailing in English, Na Hong-jin’s third feature (after 2008’s The Chaser and 2010’s The Yellow Sea) was released in its native South Korea under the title Goksung, which is also the name of the village where its mysteries unfold. Small-town values propel events here. Amidst…
Korea Politicians: Corruption, cynicism and criminality at the LKFF 2016 contains capsules of Inside Men: The Original, A Violent Prosecutor and Asura: The City of Madness There’s something rotten in the state of Korea. Currently the incumbent President, Park Geun-hye – daughter of the military dictator Park Chung-hee who helped transform the country into an industrial powerhouse – is embroiled…
Text version of an introduction to a screening of Lee Seok-hoon’s The Himalayas that I gave at a screening put on by the Korean Cultural Centre UK on 4 Aug 2016. “Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?” This was the question that a New York Times journalist once asked of seasoned mountaineer George Mallory. It’s…
Veteran review for the ‘0th’ Edition of the London East Asian Film Festival (LEAFF 2015) “No police has ever touched one of the superrich,” team chief Oh (Oh Dal-su) tells his detective Seo Do-cheol (Hwang Jung-min) in Veteran. Still, Ryoo Seung-wan‘s eleventh feature carefully teases out the points of contact between these two otherwise disparate…