Korean Transnational Cinema and the Renewed Tilt Toward China 1

From the perspective of the international aspects of cinema, or more specifically the “internationalization” of the film industry, transnational flows among companies and practitioners, stories and ideas, location and production services, and co-investors—as well as audiences and their fan practices—have long characterized the global film business. Once upon a time, most of these people, things, and services flowed toward the US, because “Hollywood” spelled the dream destination for industry workers and aspiring actors alike. However, with the general decline of the working environment in the US film industry since the 1990s, and the global industry’s transition to digital production, distribution, and exhibition in the early-to-mid-2000s, there has been a sharp diverting of these flows away from Hollywood toward new centers of transnational cultural production, also known as global media capitals. ² Korea (Seoul and Busan) and indeed China (Beijing, Shanghai, and many other first and second tier Chinese cities) are now among the growing list of global media capitals into which transnational cultural production is flowing. In particular, China has become the new and largest wild frontier, a stimulating environment where film companies and practitioners are now heading in droves. ³ As we showed in Chapter 8’s discussion of CJ Entertainment’s increasing interest in China since the late 2000s and N.E.W.’s cementing of ties with Chinese investors in late 2014, developments in the Chinese market are central to the changes now sweeping across the Korean film industry.