10 great South Korean films of the 2020s

Though it may have seemed as if Korean cinema was riding high with the major international success of Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite in 2019, the 2020s have been among the most difficult in its history. 2019 had, in fact, been a record-breaking year, with Parasite also performing well domestically alongside the smash-hit crime comedy Extreme Job, in which a police squad opens a fried chicken restaurant to spy on a drug trafficker only for the restaurant to become unexpectedly successful.

The industry was, however, hit much harder than most by the Covid-19 pandemic and has never fully recovered, despite cinemas largely having stayed open. While the major studios produced around 40 Korean-language films a year prior to 2020, by 2026 that number had halved, in part due to the industry largely relying on a backlog of unreleased films that has now begun to run out. A combination of rising ticket prices and a change in audience behaviour has resulted in a declining box office, while the entrance of Netflix and other streaming platforms has disrupted the industry by monopolising production capacity.

Attempts to fight back with big-budget cinema outings have largely backfired, as in the massive flop of web novel adaptation Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy (2025). Studios have been accused of playing it safe in opting for traditionally well-performing genres such as action comedies led by established stars, though these have largely failed to entice audiences looking for an experience they can’t get at home back to cinema screens.

Nevertheless, there is still plenty of interesting work being made both in the independent sector and in mainstream entertainment films, even outside of festival darlings such as Hong Sang-soo, Bong Joon Ho, and Lee Chang-dong, whose long-awaited follow-up to 2018’s Burning, Possible Love, is currently on release.

Director: Lee Sang-yong

The Roundup was an early post-pandemic box office success that capitalised on the growing popularity of Ma Dong-seok as an action star in films such as Train to Busan (2016) and Unstoppable (2018). A sequel to 2017’s The Outlaws, the film spawned a still-continuing franchise in which Ma’s old-fashioned, maverick cop slaps sense into criminals at home and, increasingly, abroad in various South-east Asian nations.

In this case, he heads to Vietnam to extradite a suspect who’s just turned himself in, only to stumble on a Korean serial killer who’s knocking off his fellow countrymen in a foreign country. Ma’s trademark mix of witty banter and serious action chops continues to provide a sense of cathartic entertainment as he effortlessly takes down bad guys who assume they’ll be able to circumvent the law and get away with their crimes.

Director: Shin Su-won

Shin Su-won’s independent drama Hommage heads in a different direction and demonstrates the ways in which Korean cinema has become more interested in its own history, as seen in other films such as Kim Jee-woon’s Cobweb (2023), which drew inspiration from the life of Kim Ki-young, director of South Korean genre classic The Housemaid (1960). Parasite’s Lee Jung-eun stars as a director, Ji-wan, who has just released her third film to only modest success. While feeling dejected about her career prospects, she’s offered an unusual job restoring Hong Eun-won’s 1962 melodrama A Woman Judge, starring the great Moon Jeong-suk.

Shin structures the film almost like a ghost story in which Ji-wan is haunted by the spectre of Hong, whose fall into obscurity echoes the precarious place of women in the Korean film industry. Through restoring Hong’s legacy, Ji-wan is able to affirm her own position as a female filmmaker, despite the hostility that surrounds her, while embracing the cinematic past.

Director: Park Chan-wook

Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave also plays with Korea’s cinematic history, drawing inspiration from the title song of Kim Soo-yong’s 1967 masterpiece Mist, in which a conflicted office worker becomes lost in the fog of memory after returning to his home town. A romantic noir, Park’s film follows a married policeman’s growing obsession with a woman he suspects of murdering her husband.

Painting romance itself as an ineffable mystery, Park plays with Hitchcockian tensions and noirish fatalism, in which truths, emotional and literal, are forever obscured as the leads dance around each other in a world in which the tiniest of gestures seems pregnant with meaning. Though darkly humorous, the film ends with one of the most twisted, and achingly tragic, confessions of love in cinematic history, though like the detective at its centre, you are unlikely to ever forget it or its enigmatic femme fatale.

Director: July Jung

July Jung came to international attention with her debut feature A Girl at My Door in 2014, but it wasn’t until 2022 that she was able to make her next film. Inspired by a real-life tragedy, Next Sohee once again stars Bae Doona as a police detective, this time investigating the death of a high-school student contracted out as a call centre worker as a kind of work experience placement she can’t graduate without completing.

One of many films examining life in “hell Joseon”, in which young people in particular feel hemmed in by the nation’s hyper-capitalistic and conformist culture, the film explores Sohee’s plight with quiet empathy as she finds herself betrayed and exploited by the adults around her. These adults deny all responsibility for her welfare while pushing her to the brink of despair through bullying and overwork.

Director: Lee Hae-young

Recent years have seen an increased interest in the independence movement towards Japanese colonial rule, with films such as Harbin (2024) topping the box office. The best among them may be Lee Hae-young’s 2023 historical thriller starring Lee Hanee and Park So-dam as resistance operatives brought in for questioning in regard to a botched attempt to assassinate the new Japanese resident-general.

Bringing in elements of a drawing-room mystery, the action kicks into overdrive when the truth is finally revealed and all hell breaks loose at the luxury hotel/state torture facility where the suspects have been taken. Notable for its queer themes in equating the realities of life in the shadows, the film is clear that the real ‘phantom’ of the title is the nation itself as it too survives in hiding, waiting for its eventual resurrection after the victory.

Director: Jang Jae-hyun

The horror genre has also gone from strength to strength in the 2020s, as evidenced by the success of Kwon Hyeok-jae’s Dark Nuns – a quasi sequel to Jang Jae-hyun’s 2015 film The Priests – that was one of the few films to break even in 2025. Jang’s Exhuma was, however, a runaway hit that topped the box office in its year of release and helped to revive the flagging industry.

Charged with investigating the mysterious illness of the infant son of a wealthy Korean-American family, a shaman, a geomancer and an undertaker find themselves digging into the past to undo an ancestral curse that, once again, links back to the colonial era and beyond. Conjuring an atmosphere of extreme dread flowing from a world of vengeful spirits and restless evil that exists beyond our understanding, Jang suggests that overcoming historical trauma isn’t as easy as moving a grave.

Director: Park Joon-ho

Though the inclusion of queer themes in a mainstream film such as Phantom may be more unusual given that Korea – amid pressure from conservative and religious lobbies – continues to lag behind other countries in terms of LGBTQIA+ rights, the independent sphere has been much more welcoming in recent years with films such as The Dream Songs (2022), Concerning My Daughter (2023) and Heavy Snow (2023).

3670 explores the ways in which its hero, as a gay North Korean man in the South, is marginalised twice over. Prevented from living as his authentic self, he is unable to disclose his sexuality to his North Korean friends and is largely dependent on religious organisations for support. Yet his friend the pastor’s son is even less free. Living amid a competitive, capitalistic culture, he is unable to achieve the full independence of adulthood. But without that culture, he also cannot buy freedom from his mother’s oppressive conservatism.

Director: Yoon Ga-eun

In some ways Yoon Ga-eun’s The World of Love deals with similar themes to Next Sohee, as the young woman at its centre finds herself constrained by what those around her think she should be, denying her a right to happiness or else refusing to believe that what she says of herself could be true. No one could suffer so much and remain so cheerful.

Yoon deliberately withholds the truth of whatever happened in Jooin’s past until it gradually begins to reveal itself. But, at the same time, she explores the complicated way society responds to sexual assault in her classmate’s prejudiced and patriarchal view that it necessarily “ruins” lives, as if denying agency or right of recovery to those who have experienced it firsthand. Jooin, by contrast, is focused on being simply herself in defiance of any labels others try to put on her.

Director: Jang Hang-jun

The King’s Warden was such a big hit on its release that some have credited it with single-handedly reviving the local film industry, selling 16 million tickets across its run and becoming the highest-grossing film in Korean history. Like Lee Joon-ik’s similarly themed The Book of Fish (2021), the film is inspired by real events and revolves around a man exiled to a remote village after falling foul of the ruling regime during the Joseon era.

In this case, however, the man is a deposed king, Hong-wi, who ascended to the throne as a child and has been usurped by his uncle. The domestic audience is already well aware of how this story ends, yet there’s a genuine poignancy that arises in the growing friendship between the former king and the villagers as they bond in a shared sense of futility while living under a corrupt authority.

Director: Ryoo Seung-wan

Ryoo Seung-wan is one of the most bankable directors of action movies working in the contemporary Korean film industry, well known for such films as The City of Violence (2006), Veteran (2015), The Battleship Island (2017) and Escape from Mogadishu (2021). Produced for Netflix, Humint returns him to the same territory as his 2013 spy drama The Berlin File.

Zo In-sung stars as a conflicted South Korean intelligence officer still reeling from the death of an informant when sent to Vladivostok to turn a North Korean overseas worker as part of an investigation into a drug trafficking network. After becoming embroiled in local intrigue, he finds himself teaming up with a North Korean agent. The film excels in the high-octane action sequences of its closing moments, but also finds genuine poignancy in the frustrated relationship between the North Korean officer and Zo’s informant, who is herself at the mercy of two indifferent regimes.

London Korean Film Festival runs 2 to 16 November, including screenings at BFI Southbank.

Possible Love is on Netflix from 6 November.