It's the question I hope to avoid every time someone asks to interview me, and inevitably, the question always surfaces. "What is it that is special or unique about Korean cinema?" It's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask, and if it were me conducting the interview, I'd probably ask it too.

“Per Jai Mak (I’m very satisfied)!” A calm orchid-like smile illuminated the face of director BANJONG as the staff screening came to an end. At the end of July, 2010, the monsoon was about to start in Bangkok and the air was humid as ever. However, the screening room at Bangkok’s film company GTH, packed with 20-something staff members, was filled with curiosity and tension.

A taciturn Asian male lead kisses a tomboyish blond girl. Western cowboys fire guns to the rhythm of Samul-nori, a Korean traditional music with 4 different percussion instruments, and an Asian warrior swings his sword to rhythm of an electric guitar.

When the Korean cinema was still at its infancy, CHUNG Chang-wha was dominant in the Hong Kong film industry and made his name famous at the world stage. His movie Five Fingers of Death created a sensation for topping the US box office over The Poseidon Adventure in 1973 and the movie also stormed the European box offices.

The film Passerby #3, released on November 18th, is based on the autobiography of director SHIN Su-won. Just like the director who has challenged film production after quitting his job as a teacher at junior high school for 7 years, the woman in the film works hard to make her own film in her middle age.

Korean cinema’s most notable phenomenon in 2010 was various tests experimented on genre films. Significant changes had occurred to popular genres and genre film directors too showed certain change in their way of thinking. If genre is where desires collide and interact in excuse of public expectations, such change has quite an implication on dynamics of future genres. In the midst of overall market recession, preferring genre films has become more evident leading to diversification and experiments of genres.

Could both a Hollywood blockbuster with state-of-the-art effects like Wang Kaway’s films, and a hack-and-slash B-movie with hoards of living zombies—while keeping a certain level of quality—be shot with only the iphone? The answer is yes. In commemorating the new release of the Iphone 4, twelve Korean directors took part in a short-film project using just the iphone 4.

Korean Film Council presented 2010 Korean Film Festival in China in cooperation with China’s State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) from November 25 to December 9 in 3 major cities: Beijing, Haikou and Chongqing.

KIM Dong-ho, the chairman of PIFF for last 15 years, resigned his position this year. All filmmakers acknowledged that he was absolutely devoted to PIFF and made it into the best international film festival in Asia. His resignation would be the most unbelievable news for all filmmakers.

After the success of his 2008 debut feature film The Chaser, great expectations were put upon director NA Hong-jin’s shoulders as he was quickly urged to follow up on his psychopath action thriller. The film starred HA Jung-woo as a serial killer pursued by KIM Yoon-suk as an ex-cop running a “massage service” who is trying to catch him and save one of his girls.