ABSTRACT
In 2002, Wayne State University Press published one of the first collections of scholarly essays in English on South Korean cinema: Im Kwon-Taek: The Making of a Korean National Cinema, edited by David E. James and Kyung Hyun Kim. Until then, only a smattering of book chapters and journal articles had been published on the origins of Korean cinema and the ways in which the complexities of Korean culture were reflected by its filmmakers. Few other treatments of the subject have achieved a depth and breadth to rival this study of master filmmaker Im Kwon-taek, his films, and his audiences. 1 The insightful analyses and reference materials in Im Kwon-Taek provide a roadmap to take us beyond such milestones as Lee and Choe’s The History of Korean Cinema (1998) and Hyangjin Lee’s Contemporary Korean Cinema: Identity, Culture, Politics (2000), two important works which provide a historical overview with the latter offering close readings of films from both North and South Korea.
