Yim Soon-rye Hopes the Academy Museum’s Series Will Bring More Attention to Korean Women Directors
The successful distribution of Korean media around the world has led to the celebration of brilliant filmmakers like Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho. However, if you ask an American cinephile or film critic to name one Korean woman director they would likely not be able to come up with an answer.
With its ongoing series “A New Wave of K-Cinema: Korean Women Directors,” The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is hoping to change that. Across the month of June, the Los Angeles museum is showing 10 contemporary Korean films made by women that “explore the complexities of diverse conditions, including the trauma of domestic violence, investigations into gender and class politics, humanity’s relation to nature and the environment, and love and friendship.”
Hyesung ii, who organized “A New Wave of K-Cinema,” told TheWrap it is a series she has had in mind since she began working at the museum. “As a Korean woman in film myself, programming this series is perhaps a way to represent what I feel close to and what I believe is underrepresented in the industry.”
The series launched last week with screenings of two films by Yim Soon-rye, one of the most celebrated auteurs in contemporary Korean cinema, with a discussion after. After almost three decades in the industry Yim has directed more movies than any other woman in Korean cinema history: 13, including two short films and one documentary.
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The Academy Museum’s series screened Yim’s 2001 feature “Waikiki Brothers” and her 2018 movie “Little Forest.” “Waikiki Brothers” follows a group of high school friends turned bandmates who struggle to find gigs and motivation to continue their music-making in 1980s Korea. “Little Forest” is an adaptation of a slice-of-life manga about a young woman who abandons the life she is supposed to want in Seoul to return to the rural town she was raised in.
Both are examples of Yim’s interest in telling authentic stories about ordinary Koreans, set away from the shiniest neighborhoods of Seoul or the idyllic, fictional small towns that feature in Netflix K-dramas. “I prefer to have the real locations, for the real settings to be in the film so it can relate and express reality to the audience,” Yim tells TheWrap through a translator.
With 2023’s “The Point Men,” Yim became the first women director to helm a mainstream blockbuster. The film, featuring Hwang Jung-min (who worked with Yim on “Waikiki Brothers”) and Hyun Bin (“Crash Landing on You”), tells a fictionalized version of the 2007 Korean hostage crisis and rescue mission in Afghanistan.
According to Yim, the process of directing a bigger budget feature is not substantially different from the process of making a lower-budget one, save for the “tremendous pressure” there is on the production to perform well. Yim notes this pressure may be intensified for her by the knowledge that there are still so few opportunities for women to direct mainstream films. “I also feel the burden for the movie to do well at the box office because of the other female directors who will come after me,” said Yim.
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With a budget of around $11 million, it cost more to make than all of Yim’s other films combined. Its release was delayed two years due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and it didn’t do particularly well at the box office, making around $13.5 million. Yim attributes the film’s lackluster showing to its release delay and the unrelatable subject matter.
Similar to the working conditions in the American film industry, there is a major gap in gender equality when it comes to the highest positions of creative control in mainstream Korean cinema. As a woman, it’s slightly easier to break into the film industry there as a writer or star than as a director or cinematographer. Male-centered networks and nepotism, stereotypes about women’s ability to manage big budgets, and the gendered responsibilities of marriage and childrearing all contribute to the rates of inequality.
A 2018 report from the Korean Film Council found that, out of 77 Korean commercial films released between 2009 and 2018, 28 percent were written by women and 24 percent starred women. Meanwhile, only eight percent were produced by women directors and a slim 2.6 percent were filmed by women directors of photography.
Later this year, Edinburgh University Press will be releasing the first comprehensive English-language book about Yim Soon-rye’s work as part of their “ReFocus: The International Directors” series. Edited by Molly Kim, the book includes seven essays and an interview with Yim. Kim recounts how, when she was first approached by the publisher, they were interested in her editing a volume on filmmaker Kim Ki-duk. “It was absolutely ‘no’ for me, for an obvious reason,” said Kim, referring to the late Korean director’s multiple sexual assault allegations. In a survey released by the Center for Gender Equality in Korean Film in 2021, almost three out of every four women working in the movie industry said they have experienced sexual violence or harassment.
“[The publisher] did not know about this and I explained to them what was going on with Kim Ki-duk,” said Kim. “They thanked me and offered two books on whichever Korean filmmaker I thought appropriate instead. I thought it was about time for a volume on a Korean woman filmmaker.” Kim remembers seeing “Waikiki Brothers” a long time ago and being blown away by the social drama. “Back then, I didn’t know much about the director Yim, but I immediately fell in love with the film,” said Kim. “It was so depressing, but I think l loved its poignant mood. I also loved the camera movement and cinematography, which is very slow and poetic.”
In studying Yim’s films for the book, Kim said she was impressed by the filmmaker’s ability to maintain the unique artistic sensibilities that made her early indie work so distinctive into her more recent, commercially viable fare. “We do need women filmmakers in the commercial sector,” said Kim, adding that she doesn’t see commercial cinema as less cinematic than arthouse work. “However, I thought she would have compromised, …her vision as an auteur and her identity as a female artist because this happens a lot when you work in [a] commercial film that is invested in by so many people. As I was working on her book, I found her voice as a woman and an artist even in the most expensive film project.”
Yim said this balance between films with mainstream appeal and films made for more niche audiences has made her career possible, in part because of how the success of films like “Little Forest” have helped make industry connections she might not otherwise have. The filmmaker has seen much change over the course of her nearly 30-year career and notes that the current conditions are difficult. While Korean movie theaters never fully shut down during the pandemic, the box office has yet to return to pre-pandemic numbers and many projects were delayed and have yet to be shown.
This makes major investors and distributors like CJ ENM, Lotte Cultureworks, and Megabox Plus M less willing to invest in new projects, said Yim, adding: “Because of that, the directors or staff are more likely to go to OTT (services like Netflix or Tving) because it’s offering better pay. This is a very difficult point in time for the Korean box office. I look forward to seeing how it’s going to unravel and hopefully how we get to a better situation.”
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Hallyu, or the Korean wave, has proven how successful Korean media can be outside of the domestic market, opening up more opportunities for storytellers to make and share their stories, both at home and abroad. With the “A New Wave of K-Cinema: Korean Women Directors,” Yim hopes U.S. viewers will grow more curious about the Korean women telling stories on the big screen.
“Due to COVID and the recent boom in Korean media, many people are enjoying Korean content,” said Yim. “However, if we take a look, it’s mostly media like ‘Squid Game’ and director Bong Joon-ho’s work. It’s very attentive towards male directors. I hope these screenings will open up a chapter for people to be exposed to the work of these Korean female directors.”
To learn about the upcoming films and events in the “A New Wave of K-Cinema” series, visit The Academy Museum’s site.
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