Seoul Searching: Culture and Identity in Contemporary Korean Cinema

*Korean cinema as industry, art form, and cultural product.* Seoul Searching is a collection of fourteen provocative essays about contemporary South Korean cinema, the most productive and dynamic cinema in Asia. Examining the three dominant genres that have led Korean film to international acclaim—melodramas, big-budget action blockbusters, and youth films—the contributors look at Korean cinema as industry, art form, and cultural product, and engage cinema’s role in the formation of Korean identities. Committed to approaching Korean cinema within its cultural contexts, the contributors analyze feature-length films and documentaries as well as industry structures and governmental policies in relation to transnational reception, marketing, modes of production, aesthetics, and other forms of popular culture. An interdisciplinary text, Seoul Searching provides an original contribution to film studies and expands the developing area of Korean studies. “This book contributes significantly to the growing body of literature on contemporary Korean cinema.” — Korean Studies “…offers a succinct, well-written overview of the ways in which cultural policies in shifting government regimes have influenced the management of film as a cultural commodity. A theoretically informed examination of representations of modernization.” — CHOICE “Students and scholars are hungry for good critical material on South Korean films, and this book is a welcome contribution to this quickly growing area in film studies.” — Corey K. Creekmur, coeditor of Cinema, Law, and the State in Asia Frances Gateward is Professor of Film Studies at Ursinus College. She is the editor of Zhang Yimou: Interviews and coeditor (with Murray Pomerance) of Where the Boys Are: Cinemas of Masculinity and Youth.