ABSTRACT
The international film festival, which seems to have landed in South Korea by accident in the mid-1990s, is a historical product. Technically, film festivals in South Korea were a hybrid and indigenous cultural movement that appeared at the crossroads of the Korean democratic movement in the 1980s and the global situation in the post-Cold War era in the 1990s. From the 1980s’ film movement to the establishment of an art house cinema in the 1990s and the Busan International Film Festival in 1996, these developments did not emerge as parallel events, but rather as a culmination of epic tensions. The main purpose of this article is to expand on previous discussions that had never shown much interest in how the international film festival combines global and local aspects. The change in the domestic international film festival, which has continued since the 2000s until recently, clearly illustrates the evolution of cultural politics by presenting a ‘glocal’ (both global and local) social agenda and exploring practical strategies for solidarity and coexistence beyond exclusion and discrimination.
