The Korean Film Archive, the government-funded agency for collecting, restoring and archiving Korean films, remastered The Ginkgo Bed in 4K and held a public screening in August 2026. After the screening, Shin Hyun-jun, the actor who played General Hwang, and director Kang Je-kyu attended a guest talk, sharing anecdotes about the making of this groundbreaking film. Originally released in 1996, the film was heralded as the one that introduced the era of homegrown blockbuster films. In the midst of ongoing US demands to open the Korean market, primarily through such legal measures as Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974 and the Korea-U.S. Film Bilateral Agreements, the emergence of large-scale domestic action films seemed to be an inevitable choice. Korean audiences, industry people and critics alike welcomed The Ginkgo Bed, which was commercially successful and instrumental in defining the identity of Korean cinema in the global age and defending its share of the market. Thirty years on, however, the territorial and cultural division it was supposed to establish may not be as clear as it was once deemed to be.
Following his success with The Ginkgo Bed, Kang Je-kyu continued his filmmaking career with a focus on commercial films, portrayed by the media more often than not as films that could compete with Hollywood films. Efficient storylines, big spectacles and, sometimes, the fantastical worlds he draws on became Kang’s signature marks that distinguished his films from the rest, and the rest would soon follow. It is no wonder that his films were dubbed Korean blockbusters, as these characteristics were commonly known as the Hollywood style in Korea. A good example is Shiri (1999), an action thriller in which two Korean agents put their best efforts into stopping a North Korean sniper from assassinating the Korean political leader. The story maintains the highly wrought tension between the agents from the two Koreas and ends with the spectacle of explosions and shootings.
However, more importantly, Shiri was the film that beat Titanic (1998) at the Korean box office, amassing around six million viewers in theaters and breaking the record of five million set by Titanic. There could be nothing more Korean than a story about the divided country, and there could be nothing more Korean than a Korean film that beat a Hollywood blockbuster at the box office. The standards of Korean filmmaking entered a new era in which a combination of typically Korean subject matter and Hollywood-style visual spectacle became the norm.
This new way of Korean cinematic storytelling peaked with Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War (2004), another great cinematic success by Kang. The film follows two brothers caught in the vortex of the Korean War, in which the older brother crosses the staunch North-South frontline to protect his little brother. It attracted eleven million or so viewers. Korean films had never looked in better shape. It seemed that the trade border of Korean cinema was safely guarded by this new way of filmmaking. Was the existential crisis of Korean cinema truly over and dealt with?
The Memory of the Nine-tailed Fox
The shift to Hollywood-style filmmaking was driven by the dynamics of the market. It was not necessarily only down to the pressure of the global trend toward free trade. Shin Cine, the studio that produced The Ginkgo Bed, invested in The Fox with Nine Tails (1994). The film is based on a well-known and well-loved Korean folk tale about the mystical fox, which yearns to become human. The fox feeds on men’s life essence and has prolonged her life to a thousand years minus one. She needs the life essence of one last victim to become a true woman, but she falls in love with him. The filmic variation of the folk tale, which has been narrated through generations, maintains the core of the story: unfulfilled dreams and resentment.
Although set in modern times, The Fox with Nine Tails faithfully repeats this arc of desire that treads on the boundaries between humans and animals, and their inevitable failures bring forth a forlorn empathy for the animal. Despite its special visual effects and the two rising stars playing the main roles, the film did not make a splash at the box office. To make up for the loss, Shin Cine turned to Kang’s new kind of fantasy romance.
The taste of viewers was changing even before American pressure to open the market, as they were exposed to such foreign imports as A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) and A Terra-Cotta Warrior (1989). Both films represented something familiar and new. They were based upon traditional elements of Chinese culture yet incorporated elements of martial arts action, historical mystery and fantasy. The Fox with Nine Tails could also be an attempt to ride this wave of fantasy historical fiction. Shin Cine’s choice of its next investment shows that its further pursuit in the direction of fantasy romance was heading towards a hybrid form in the adaptation of traditional stories.
The Ginkgo Bed was hardly the film that kept the Korean tradition of storytelling alive, not to mention the border of cultural territory. It added time travel to the story, building a romance in the terrain of science fiction. The princess, bound by an arranged marriage to General Hwang, falls in love with the royal court musician. Their love does not have a happy ending, with a lethal interruption from General Hwang. A thousand years later, the spirit of the princess seeks the carnal incarnation of the musician, with the terrible news that General Hwang is in hot pursuit of him.
This is a fantastical mystery with a flair of science fiction and horror, far removed from the tale of the nine-tailed fox. The Ginkgo Bed was experimenting with a new form and exotic storytelling. Yet there is a very familiar element: love and sacrifice. The fox, giving up her thousand-year-old plan, allows the man to live out his full life. The princess, travelling across a span of a thousand years, saves the man and gives up her chance of being incarnated. The generations-old gender stereotype seems to have survived the onslaught of globalization in film consumption. If this is an indication of the saved cultural boundary, is it something worthwhile to fight for?
The Evanescent Cultural Boundaries
The experiment of The Ginkgo Bed evolved, combining disparate elements divided by historical and cultural contexts. The emergence of the zombie genre is exemplary. Train to Busan (2016) created an apocalyptic dystopia, re-imagining Korea on the fast track of modernization by adopting the conventions of the genre. The transplant of the living dead onto Korean soil, to be precise, onto the train from Seoul to Busan, cracks open possibilities of seeing Korea differently while expanding the horizon of cinematic forms. Train to Busan not only gives new perspectives on Korean modernity but also shows what zombies can do to make a film more horrifying while remaining faithful to contemporaneity. Kingdom (2019), a drama series, follows a similar path. Set in the era of the Joseon dynasty, the series provides a darkly tinted picture of a period that is usually associated with tradition, honor and pride.
The acceptance of cinematic forms and storytelling that are not an innate part of the history of Korean cinema raised a question about the identity of Korean cinema, as the process of such convergence cannot but mean a loss of Korean cinema’s integrity. Yet, deep into the era of OTT and digital platforms, the visibility of Korean cinema is clearer than ever. Unexpectedly, though, what distinguishes Korean cinema has landed on something completely different from what used to be regarded as Korean: traditional stories, adherence to social issues or even action movies based on fist fighting. As in the zombie movies, Korean films can be violent, gory and extreme. But it also means an experimental spirit that expands the scope of cinematic conventions, consequently creating wider viewpoints on the world we are living in.
The popularity of Korean cinema and the strength of Korea as a label that sells it do not guarantee that the emotional structures, family relations and gendered stereotypes that remained in the rebuilding of Korean cinema have disappeared. The obsession with traditional family relations, the mother who loves and sacrifices unconditionally, and the respect for the deeply rooted hierarchy of society do remain in this newly developed experimental formulation of Korean cinema. For some, they are the hallmarks of Korean cinema. For others, they are the last resort of filmmakers to attract viewers to the screen. The cultural marking point of a cinema varies, and it only reflects the ways films engage with society. Thirty years after The Ginkgo Bed, the boundary it was supposed to protect has become difficult to locate. Perhaps that was never the point.