UC Irvine News Brief: Professor's book on Korean cinema has foreword by Martin Scorsese
Kyung Hyun Kim – who writes about the extraordinary success of Korean movies in the early 21st century – and the Academy Award-winning director worked together on the restoration of “The Housemaid,” a classic 1960 Korean film.
Kyung Hyun Kim, associate professor of East Asian languages & literatures and film & media studies and director of UCI’s critical theory emphasis, recently published Virtual Hallyu: Korean Cinema of the Global Era. The book explores the phenomenon of Korean cinema in the early 21st century, which saw these films gross millions of dollars in Asia and outperform their Hollywood competitors at home. Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese wrote the foreword, saying that Kim’s work “enlarges our vision of one of the great national cinematic flowerings of the last decade.” Kim and Scorsese worked together on the restoration of “The Housemaid,” a classic 1960 Korean film. The director is a fan of Korean cinema, even referencing it in his Oscar acceptance speech. Says Kim: “He has made more people aware that the Korean film industry is a vibrant one and [that Korea] is no longer just a land marked by war, destruction and Cold War remnants.”