‘Cultural discount’ is a concept used as an index for calculating the possibility of cultural exchange between regions. It is believed to indicate the rate of acceptance of a cultural product from a particular region by others. For example, pansori, a traditional Korean folk performance, has a high rate of cultural discount, which means that it is not easily translated or accepted in non-Korean territories.

Chuseok is the biggest holiday in Korea and also the busiest season of the year for box-office. Along with New Year’s holiday, Chuseok season traditionally saw the increasing preference of the audience on Korean films, thus had always been a target point of the Korean film industry. Especially with this year’s Chuseok being longer than usual, the competition among Korean films for box-office became tougher than ever.

One of main features identifying Korean films in 2010 would be the change in ways to deal with the issue of “violence” in movies. It is nothing new that Korean movies have conventionalized and generalized ‘violence’ as a subject matter in movies. The movie series of My Wife Is a Gangster, which was released first in 2001, is the relevant example that violence in movies became popular through comic action genres.

According to director KIM Jee-woon, I Saw the Devil is “a film that talks of a clash between fire-like madness and ice-like lunacy.” Directing a total of five feature films starting from The Quiet Family to The Good, The Bad, The Weird , KIM had each time challenged himself to a different genre. Now for his sixth film, he has chosen a cold-blooded thriller. The screenplay written by PARK Hun-jeong, who also wrote The Unjust and directed The Showdown , was first suggested to KIM Jee-woon through actor CHOI Min-sik (Old Boy ).