As the moviegoing world becomes increasingly aware of the high-quality films being produced today in South Korea, the Dryden Theatre is proud to present a series of three classic movies from the South Korean film industry’s past, as well as three highly acclaimed contemporary features.

World War II culminated 36 years of Korea’s occupation by the Japanese, leading to the country being divided into two halves. The lingering effects of WWII and the pursuant Korean Civil War of 1950 to 1953 are the subjects of many films from the golden age of South Korean cinema in the late 1950s and ’60s, especially Sang-ok Shin’s Flower in Hell (March 4). Man-Hui Lee, a veteran of the Civil War, returned to the subject again and again, but never as effectively as in his masterful companion films, The Marines Who Never Returned (March 11) and Wildflower in the Battlefield (March 18).

In recent years, South Korea has become one of only three nations worldwide whose audiences buy more tickets to domestic than imported movies. Part of this can be explained by the films’ discussion of specific domestic issues, like relations with mainland China as explored in Chinese director Lu Zhang’s story of revenge Grain in Ear (March 28) and Joon-Ho Bong’s portrait of a dysfunctional neighborhood in the dark comedy Barking Dogs Never Bite (March 25). But it’s also the skill with which South Korean filmmakers deliver blockbuster entertainments that have given them a thriving film marketplace, and there’s no better example than Bong’s terrifically scary and funny monster movie, The Host (March 9), to date the most successful South Korean film at the US box office.

Jim Healy, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, Motion Picture Department