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.

The holiday season at the end of year is a big ticket season for Korea as much as summer season, so the blockbusters are held and opened in this season. The movie Warrior’s Way opened at the holiday season with a huge welcoming buzz that JANG Dong-gun made his Hollywood debut. However, the box office turned out a bit disappointing at the opening week, following movies like The Petty Love and Finding Mr. Destiny that appealed to the young audience for their familiar romantic comedy genre.

‘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.

The Korean film market has recently experienced a new trend: the abundance of thrillers. This is somewhat of a shift in that thrillers have traditionally been considered a weaker genre when compared to comedies. People attribute this change to the so-called “Chaser Effect.” After the movie The Chaser was a big success at the box office, drawing more than 5 million audience members back in 2008, investors have raised their antennas towards thrillers. This led to the inevitability of theaters being filled with thriller movies with good performances.

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.