We’ve just had the Korean film blogathon – a global event lasting a week which elicited around 150 articles from bloggers around the world. Ten years ago, the only English language website covering Korean film was Darcy Paquet’s koreanfilm.org (or if there was more than one, it was the only one that most people visited). The dearth of other sites had its plus points: if you wanted to discuss Korean film, then Darcy’s was the site to go to, with informed comment and reviews in the discussion forums and of course the authoritative reviews by Darcy and his fellow contributors.
Sadly, the koreanfilm.org discussion forums are much less active these days, and much of the historic content got lost when Darcy’s webhost went bust. But looking on the bright side, one of the reasons why people don’t hang out in the koreanfilm.org forum any more is that they’re too busy running their own blogs: Korean film seems to have got a lot more mainstream over the past 10 years. Speaking purely from a Londoner’s perspective, the Korean film nights at the Korean Cultural Centre are always well attended (even for the more marginal films); there’s lots of interest in the annual Korean film festival; audiences are far more informed than they were six or seven years ago, judging by the questions asked at the Q&As after the various film screenings; and I can’t remember squirming with embarrassment at the ignorance of a Q&A chairman since the Lady Vengeance London premiere a few years ago.
The Korean Film Blogathon, which hopefully will be an annual event now, was co-organised by New Korean Cinema and CineAwesome. Browsing the 150 articles which are gathered together here will lead you to an amazing number of different websites, some focusing on movies generally, others on Asian entertainment, and others simply personal blogs maintained by people whose interests happen to include Korean film. Some of the sites I was already familiar with, but others were completely new to me. Check out some of the sites below, and browse the rest on the Blogathon home page.
http://www.yam-mag.com/
http://cineawesome.com/
http://newkoreancinema.com/
http://www.theoneonefour.com/
http://www.hangulcelluloid.com/
http://www.koreanfilm.org/tom/
http://www.koreanfilm.org/Q/
http://www.anikornetwork.com/
http://cinephileforeignerinkorea.blogspot.com/
http://www.fareastfilms.com/
http://modernkoreancinema.blogspot.com/
http://www.naruhodou.org/choco/
http://chrisbourne.blogspot.com/