What was the first Korean movie you ever saw?

For me it was the good action film Shiri (1999) which i saw in 2003 in a "videobang".

I had heard rav reviews for Old Boy before finally seeing it in '06. It is a classic.

Attack the Gas Station, My Wife is a Gangster, and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring... I'd gladly re-watch from long ago.

Host (괴물), 2006.

My problem with Old Boy, and more recently Squid Game, is that these are really American values imitations….not real Korean movies for Koreans, but attempts to break into the American-controlled foreign market. Yeah Old Boy was good, but it’s disgusting in-humanism. With Hollywood already coving that (don’t trust anyone, don’t respect anyone, do drugs, have sex in the ally with a stranger, betray your friends, gratuitous gore, only care about money) we really don’t need any more of that tired old market space.

Host (괴물), 2006.

My problem with Old Boy, and more recently Squid Game, is that these are really American values imitations….not real Korean movies for Koreans, but attempts to break into the American-controlled foreign market. Yeah Old Boy was good, but it’s disgusting in-humanism. With Hollywood already coving that (don’t trust anyone, don’t respect anyone, do drugs, have sex in the ally with a stranger, betray your friends, gratuitous gore, only care about money) we really don’t need any more of that tired old market space.

   

... Yeah Old Boy was good, but it’s disgusting in-humanism....

Agreed. In 2022 it'd be panned and buried or shouted against.

But it is one of a handful of the most disturbing GREAT works of cinema that shows depravity, resilience and vengeance.

I don't think Old Boy was "good" in any moral sense. Keep it away from any child you know. But it was GREAT in terms of hitting the nerves of the human body.

As Hitchcock once said: it isn't TV, it's cinema.

In 2022 the divide is gone.