Korean filmmaker Joon-ho Bong's 2006 The Host was one of the best monster movies of the past decade, arriving in American movie houses at the tail end of a particularly fecund period for Korean movie imports. That same year, Chan-Wook Park concluded his vengeance trilogy--the spring 2005 American art-house success of his 2003 Oldboy saw his 2002 Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance receive a limited American release later that same year--with his Lady Vengeance. And at the Tae Guk Gi, director Je-gyu Kang's populist epic about the Korean War, made a quiet splash via DVD at the tail end of 2005 after winning a handful of awards at film festivals and becoming the then-highest-grossing movie of all time in South Korean.
All of this activity represented a commercial success of a Korean new wave that first started popping up at film festivals and on DVDs in the late 1990s. Readers of international cinema magazines started noticing titles such as Hong Sang Soo's The Day a Pig Fell Down the Well (which won Rotterdam's Gold Tiger in 1997), Park Ki Yong's 1997 Motel Cactus, Sun-Woo Jang's 1998 Timeless, Bottomless, Bad Movie, Lee Myung-sae's 1999 Nowhere to Hide, Je-gyu Kang's 1999 Swiri, Yoon-Hyun Chang's 1999 Tell Me Something, Chang-dong Lee's traumatizing 2000 Peppermint Candy, and Chan-wook Park's 2000 Joint Security Area started to pique curiosity in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Soon, all-region DVD imports of Ki-duk Kim's ethereally shot and psychological stark movies entered American stores, such as 1998's Birdcage Inn and 2000's The Isle, the latter including a grisly scene of fishhook eating that sometimes invades sleep to this day.
Even with such a rising world cinema reputation, many Korean film still don't make it to a secondary market such as Baltimore, which is why the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution's Office of Cultural Affairs' Lovers and Liars: Contemporary Films from Korea is such a welcome spring free film series gift. Every Thursday from March 5 through April 9, a Korean movie screens at 7:15 p.m. at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution's Mountcastle Auditorium (725 N. Wolfe St., click for directions).
March 5 Barking Dogs Never Bite, directed by Joon-ho Bong (click for trailer).
March 12 The King and the Clown, directed by Jun-ik Lee.
March 19 Forbidden Quest, directed by Dae-woo Kim.
March 26 Driving With My Wife's Lover, directed by Tai-sik Kim (click for Korean trailer).
April 2 Secret Sunshine, directed by Chang-dong Lee (click for Korean trailer).
April 9 Show Must Go On, directed by Jae-rim Han (click for Korean trailer).
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