While modern auteurs like Lee Chang-dong, Kim Ki-Duk, Hong Sang-soo, and Im Kwon-Taek have garnered praise for their masterful direction in the film festivals, they have carved an inviolable niche for themselves. Modern renaissance filmmakers like Park Chan-wook, Kim Jee-Woon, and Bong Joon-ho have put South Korean cinema on the world stage. Thus, although Bong Joon-ho and Kim Jee-Woon are contemporaries of Park and began making films around the same time, it is fair to say that Park is the name that carved the niche for Korean cult movies, and he can be seen as influencing an entire generation. His international success opened up Korean cinema for similar directors, who make genre films aimed at popular domestic and international festival crowds. The biggest name in Korean cinema continues to be Park Chan-wook.
The 35 Best South Korean Movies of the 21st Century: South Korean cinema is best known for its on-screen, no-holds-barred, grotesque violence that would find space in the list of the most unsettling movies.
