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The History of Korean Cinema

From the back cover:

This book is the first English edition which describes the history of Korean motion pictures.

The Motion Picture Promotion Corporation is very much indebted to world film men for this book, who are deeply interested in Korean film, especially today.

This fact is the same case with the author of this book, myself. Film critics, film historians, and film students around the world, whom I have met or haven’t yet, not only told me that they desire to know more about Korean film history but asked me to tell them about Korean films. Of course, this international interest in Korean films is derived from the fact that Korean films in the 1980s began to be attracted to many international film festivals around the world. They were also introduced to foreign countries through TV and Korean film weeks.

The 1980s brought about a great crop of Korean films, and I, the author of this book, am very much pleased with the fruits of this effort. For Korea, its film history began with the advent of foreign film in 1903 and the first film production began in 1919. Therefore, Korean film history will reach its 70th birthday at the time of publication of this book.

LKL says:

The book traces the history of the Korean film industry from its very beginnings until 1988 and as such has some interesting information. But the enterprise is spoiled by poor production values and clunky English.

LKL rating: score-2score-1score-0score-0score-0. Read our review of this book here.

* Where the book is available from a number of sources, they are prioritised as follows: (1) Amazon UK site, or Bookshop.org for the more recent uploads (2) Amazon US site (3) Other sites in US or Europe, including second-hand outlets (4) LTI Korea, where the title is advertised as available from there (5) Onlines stores in Korea. Links to Bookshop.org and Amazon UK site contain an affiliate code which, should you make a purchase, gives a small commission to LKL at no additional cost to you.