Jung Ji-youn - Bong Joon-ho

In 1995, as the 100th anniversary of the birth of film was being celebrated in Europe, Korean cinema was also experiencing a special moment. Just in that year, an unprecedented number of weekly and monthly magazines specializing in film were appearing in Korea, and the ability of these magazines to capture the public became undeniable. Cine 21, a film weekly in excess of 150 pages, boasted the highest sales in the Korean magazine market, while the monthly KINO, which had formed a journalistic relationship with Frances Cahiers du Cinma and Positif and Great Britains Sight and Sound, was selling more than 30,000 copies a month in this tiny country. The publication of film journals would continue steadily on through 2000; just a few years later, more than five film magazines with 150 to 200 pages of articles about film were being made in Korea every week. A few of the magazines, such as Cine 21 and KINO, were printing not simple film

As was vividly revealed in the situation of film magazines, a strange atmosphere was forming in Korea in the mid-1990s. Just a few years before, in the 1980s, Korea cinema was going through a qualitative and quantitative dark age, with no real film history to speak of. There had been an appearance of Korean New Wave directors such as PARK Kwang-su and JANG Sun-woo, but they were unable to capture popular interest. Commercial films from Hollywood dominated the theaters, while Korean films were almost totally ignored. Then, in 1995, the 100th anniversary of the birth of film became an important event in Korea as well, and an atmosphere of cinematic culture began to form among the public soon after, centering on film magazines. Some film critics enjoyed popularity equal to that of directors and actors, and Western art house films with names that were difficult even to pronounce for Koreans, such as Abbas Kiarostamis Where Is the Friends Home? and Andrei Tarkovskys The Sacrifice, were drawing over 100,000 viewers even when shown in single theaters, without any real publicity. Cinephiles were all over the place, private cinemas began to appear, and film departments began popping up in four-year educational institutions. Film figures who had studied in places like the United States and Europe returned home and also began to really establish themselves in Korean film circle around this time.

The main players in the new New Wave (New Korean Wave) of Korean film started appearing en masse in the late 1990s. In 1996, HONG Sang-soo made his debut with The Day a Pig Fell into the Well and KIM Ki-duk made his with Crocodile. LEE Chang-dong, an award winner at Cannes recently for Secret Sunshine, made his debut the same year with Green Fish. Then, in 1998, E J-yong made his debut with An Affair, KIM Jee-woon his with The Quiet Family and IM Sang-soo his with Girls Night Out, while 1999 saw the debuts of JUNG Ji-woo (Happy End) and KIM Tae-yong (Memento Mori: Whispering Corridors 2). In 2000, IM Kwon-taek was invited to Cannes for Chunhyang, and PARK Chan-wook, who had already made two feature films that were miserable commercial failures, came back with the box office whirlwind of Joint Security Area. That same year saw RYOO Seung-wans debut with Die Bad and, at long last, BONG Joon-hos debut with Barking Dogs Never Bite.

Barking Dogs Never Bite, 2000

With the exceptions of IM Kwon-taek, an old veteran of Korean film, and KIM Ki-duk, who received almost no formal education in Korea but filled his works with a stunning energy and originality, the remaining directors all shared certain characteristics. Most of them had received formal education in Western or Korean film schools and were cinephiles demonstrating their experience of having viewed a vast and diverse range of films. Most of all, they were the beneficiaries of a cultural diversity somewhat removed from the political gloom of modern Korean history. They had the freedom of no longer needing to talk about politics, labor, class or liberation through film. (Directors from the generation of PARK Kwang-su and JANG Sun-woo, appearing in the late 1980s, had all participated in social movements during their university days and could not be free from the social obligations of film.)

BONG Joon-ho appeared at precisely this point in time. But it wasnt easy for him. His debut was the biggest commercial failure out of all of the debuts mentioned above, and it was scarcely even mentioned by critics. This is somewhat odd, since BONG was already known to the public before making his feature film debut with Barking Dogs Never Bite. His short film Incoherence, made in 1994 as a graduation project at the Korean Academy of Film Arts, was shown at various independent short film festivals that year and praised enthusiastically by Korean audiences, even earning invitations to some overseas film festivals. His debut was highly anticipated, along with those of other stars of the independent world like E J-yong, JANG Joon-hwan, Daniel H. BYUN and KIM Tae-yong. But the film was a huge flop. In BONGs own words, the film met with something even more terrifying than criticismit was totally ignored.

But at the end of that year, Cine 21 printed a feature article entitled Im Sorry, Movie in its year-end special edition, giving new attention to Barking Dogs. In KINO as well, the film critic HUH Moon-yung said that he had underrated the film, and he wrote the following: In my first encounter with it, I found the film dubious. The humor was somehow familiar, not original, and the characters were distinctive but not appealing. These are the most agonizing moments. Like it or not, you have to have a sense before you write for it to be enjoyable, and I couldnt get that sense. Only later did I realize what I hadnt gotten. In Barking Dogs Never Bite, warmth and coldness, laughter and fear, cynicism and tolerance, and the realistic and the dreamlike all coexist. These contradictory elements are not all vaguely connected together, but rather create an original chord under the direction of the cartoon generations distinctive imagination and sensitivity. I had failed to hear that chord.