The cinema of Korea encompasses the film industries of North Korea and South Korea, as well as the historical film industries of the Korean Empire and Korea during the Japanese occupation. While both countries have relatively robust film industries today, only South Korean films have achieved wide international acclaim. North Korean films typically portray Juche ideology or revolutionary themes.
South Korean films enjoyed a "golden age" during the late 1950s and 1960s, but by the 1970s had become generally considered to be of low quality. Nonetheless, by 2005 South Korea became a nation that watched more domestic than imported films in theatres. This was partially a result of laws placing limits on the number of foreign films able to be shown per theatre per year. It has been noted that Korean movies have consistently outperformed foreign films with very few exceptions in the Korean box office.
Early period
thumb|A 1919 advertisement for the kino-drama [[Righteous Revenge, which is sometimes considered to be the first Korean film]]
American traveler and lecturer Burton Holmes was the first to film in Korea as part of his travelogue programs. In addition to displaying his films abroad, he showed them to the Korean royal family in 1899.
Korea's first film studio, Dongdaemun Motion Picture Studio, was opened in 1903.
Righteous Revenge, a 1919 kino-drama (stageplay with a film backdrop) is widely considered the first Korean film, although this label is disputed. It premiered at Dansungsa, on the same day and just after the premiere of the companion documentary film Panoramic View of the Whole City of Gyeongseong. The anniversary of its release is celebrated as Korean Film Day in South Korea.
For the next few years, film production in Korea consisted of kino-dramas and documentaries. As with the first showing of a film in Korea, the first feature film produced in Korea also appears to be unclear. Some name a filming of Chunhyang-Jeon () in 1921 (released in 1922) as the first Korean feature film. The traditional story, Chunhyang, was to become Korea's most-filmed story later. It was possibly the first Korean feature film, and was certainly the first Korean sound film, color film and widescreen film. Im Kwon-taek's 2000 pansori version of Chunhyang brought the number of films based on Chunyang to 14. Other sources, however, name Yun Baek-nam's Ulha ui Mengse ("Plighted Love Under the Moon"), released in April, 1923, as the first Korean feature film.
In 1925, the German priest Norbert Weber captured footage of Korea in order to document Korean culture in case it was wiped out by Japanese colonization. He then returned to Bavaria and edited the footage into a feature-length documentary, Im Lande der Morgenstille (), as well as five other short films. The documentary aired until the 1930s in Germany and Austria and was largely forgotten about until it was rediscovered in the late 1970s by South Korean researchers. The film has since been digitized and is now available for free online.
The golden era of silent films (1926–1930)
thumb|A film poster for [[Arirang (1926 film)|Arirang]]
Korean film studios at this time were Japanese-operated. A hat-merchant known as Yodo Orajo established a film company called Choson Kinema Productions. After appearing in the Choson Kinema's 1926 production Nongjungjo, the young actor Na Woon-gyu got the chance to write, direct and star in his own film. The release of Na's film, Arirang (1926) is the start of the era of silent film in Korea. Hidden or subtle messages could be magnified through the common use of a live narrator at the theater, a tradition known as byeonsa (benshi in Japanese). The tradition of byeonsa was imported from Japan and provided an economical and entertaining alternative to translating intertitles. When Japanese authorities were not present, the narrators could inject satire and criticism of the occupation into the film narrative, giving the film a political subtext invisible to Japanese government censors. The byeonsa operated as "a narrator that introduces the characters and the setting, and explains the physical actions and psychological dilemmas during silent film screenings." The byeonsa also functioned "as a cultural intermediary during the Korean audience's film-viewing experience, and utilized his narration to complement censorship or technological limitations during the silent film period." Some of the more popular byeonsa were better-paid than the film actors.
The success of Arirang inspired a burst of activity in the Korean film industry in the late 1920s, causing this period to become known as "The Golden Era of Silent Films". More than seventy films were produced at this time, and the quality of film improved as well as the quantity.
Another important director of this period, Shim Hun, directed only one film, Mondongi Tultte (먼동이 틀 때; At Daybreak). Though the reviews for this film were as strong as those for Arirang, Shim died at the age of 35 while directing his second film, based on his own novel, Sangroksu (상록수; The Evergreens).
The later silent era (1930–1935)
thumb|[[Na Woon-gyu and Moon Ye-bong in A Ferry Boat That Has No Owner]]
The first half of the 1930s saw a decline in the domestic film industry in Korea. Censorship and oppression on the part of the occupying authorities played a part in reducing the number of films produced at this time to only two or three per year, and some filmmakers fled Korea for the more robust film-industry in Shanghai at this time.
Imported films largely replaced domestic films, although with Korean General Law No. 40 of 1933, the Japanese mandated that all foreign films distributed in Korea should be imported through Japan. Some of the films from Japan were popular, but the film reels were often so heavily used that the image was of low quality. Narrators could nevertheless make even worn-out movies interesting to audiences.
Perhaps the most important film of this era was A Ferry Boat That Has No Owner (1932), directed by Lee Gyu-hwan (1904–1981) and starring Na Woon-gyu. Increasing governmental censorship meant that commentators have called this the last pre-liberation film to present a significant nationalistic message.
Early sound era (1935–1945)
Korea's first sound film was Lee Myeong-woo's 1935 Chunhyang-jeon.
Korea was one of Japan's first and most important centers of colonial film production. Japanese-sponsored shorts, newsreels, and feature films heavily promoted cultural assimilation to colonized Korean audiences. To this end the Korean Colonial Cinema Unit (朝鮮総督府キネマ) was established to produce and distribute a mixture of films that promoted Japanese culture and customs as well as the supposed benefits of modernization under the Japanese.
Sound films in Korea faced much harsher censorship from the Japanese government than previous silent films. The loss of the byeonsa narrators with the coming of sound film meant that anti-authority messages could no longer be inserted without the knowledge of censors. Japanese film censors replaced American and European films with Japanese films as part of the larger colonial project to culturally colonize Korea. Suicide Troops of the Watchtower (望楼の決死隊, 1943) was one of several propaganda features that promoted the Japanese colonial notion of naisen ittai or "Japan and Korea as one body."
Although Japanese film production in Korea began in the early 1930s, total mobilization and consolidation of the Korean film industry under the Japanese would not begin until after Japan's full-scale invasion of China in 1937. Film was an important way by which the Japanese maintained colonial control in Korea through the promotion of assimilationist policies. For example, in 1941 Japan's Shochiku Studios together with the Japanese-sponsored Korean Military Information Division co-produced the film You and I (君と僕). The film was directed by Hae Yeong, a Korean who had worked extensively in the Japanese film industry using the name "Hinatsu Eitaro". You and I promoted the "volunteer" enlistment of Koreans into the imperial Japanese Army and carried as a subplot the interracial marriage between a Japanese woman and a Korean man. After the film was completed, Hae went to Java in Indonesia where he continued to make documentaries for the Japanese. After the war, he changed his name to Dr. Huyung, married an Indonesian woman with whom he had two sons, and produced three important Indonesian films. Before his death in 1952, he told a close friend, "If I returned to Japan now there wouldn't be any jobs for me and if I returned to Korea, I'd most likely be branded a Japanese collaborator."
Cinema of South Korea
thumb|The cast of [[Parasite (2019 film)|Parasite, which won four Academy Awards and became the first non-English language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture]]
The golden age of South Korean cinema in the mid-20th century produced what are considered two of the best South Korean films of all time, The Housemaid (1960) and Obaltan (1961), while the industry's revival with the Korean New Wave from the late 1990s to the present produced both of the country's highest-grossing films, The Admiral: Roaring Currents (2014) and Extreme Job (2019), as well as prize winners on the festival circuit including Golden Lion recipient Pietà (2012) and Palme d'Or recipient and Academy Award winner Parasite (2019) and international cult classics including Oldboy (2003), Snowpiercer (2013), and Train to Busan (2016). Parasite won several awards at international film festivals, including four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film, becoming the first non-English-language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.