South Korea - Page 7

When it comes to the spy film genre, the most famous movies are none other than the James Bond series.

While Hollywood took on a more fictional, imaginative angle of espionage activities, South Korean filmmakers turned to their northern neighbour for inspiration.

A handful of dramas and movies based on North Korean espionage came out over the years, and some of them were inspired by the real deal.

So here are KajoMag’s 10 South Korean spy films about North Korean espionage to watch:

1.Spy Gone North (2018)

Loosely based on the true story of South Korean spy, Park Chae-seo, this movie stars Hwang Jung-min, Lee Sung-min and Cho Jin-woong.

Jung-min plays the role of Park Seok-young, an agent recruited by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) to infiltrate the highest ranks in North Korea.

He is given the code name ‘Black Venus’. His mission is to travel to Beijing disguised as a salesman and establish a business connection with high ranking North Korean official Ri Myung-un (Lee Sung-min).

Instead of expecting action and guns like most spy films, Spy Gone North (2018) is more of a slow-burn political drama.

Watch the trailer here.

2.The Berlin File (2013)

If you are looking for more action and thrill for your dose of South Korean spy films, watch The Berlin File (2013).

Talented Korean actor Ha Jung-woo stars as North Korean agent Pyo Jong-sung in Berlin who is betrayed and cut loose when a weapons deal goes wrong.

While trying to escape from Berlin, South Korean agent Jung Jin-soo (Han Suk-kyu) and North Korean agent Dong Myung-soo (Ryoo Seung-bum) are also hot on his trail.

The director Ryoo Seung-wan wanted the movie to be reminiscent of The Bourne Identity. So you can imagine it to be fast-paced with intense characters build-up for the secret agents.

3.Commitment (2013)

After his father’s failed espionage mission, North Korean Myung-hoon (Big Bang’s TOP) and his younger sister Hye-in (Kim Yoo-jung) are sent to a labor prison camp.

To save his sister, Myung-hoon volunteers to become a spy and infiltrates the South to finish what his father failed to do.

Arriving in South Korea, he poses as a North Korean defector and enrolls at a local high school.

Things get tricky when both North and South Korean governments are out to get him.

Watch the trailer here.

4.The Suspect (2013)

The selling point for us to watch this film is the fact that Gong Yoo is playing the role of a spy.

His character Ji Dong-chul is one of the top special forces agent in North Korea until he is abandoned by his own government.

This South Korean spy film is another revenge movie as Dong-chul finds out his wife and daughter are killed.

He defects to the South where he is framed for a murder by the South Korean intelligence service.

Watch the trailer here.

5.Secretly, Greatly (2013)

Secretly, Greatly (2013) is a South Korean spy film that starts light and funny and then intense and emotional halfway through the movie.

It stars Kim Soo-hyun, Park Ki-woong, and Lee Hyun-woo who play North Korean spies infiltrating South Korea as a village idiot, a rock musician and a high school student respectively.

What are the odds of three North Korean spies living in the same neighbourhood anyway?

They start to get comfortable with their lives in the South until a mission comes ordering them to commit suicide.

Watch the trailer here.

6.Operation Chromite (2016)

Liam Neeson in a South Korean spy film? Sign us up for this movie. Based on the real-life events of the Battle of Inchon, Neeson takes up the role of General Douglas MacArthur who devises a secret plan to attack behind enemy lines at Inchon.

The movie sets in 1950, few months after North Korean forces have invaded most of South Korea.

Then, an American-led UN coalition is sent to Korea to help the South Koreans.

But before any making any move, MacArthur plans a top secret South Korean intelligence operation. Operation Chromite presents a fictionalised version of the real operation in which the spies gather essential information from within occupied Inchon.

Watch the trailer here.

7.Secret Reunion (2010)

Imagine two spies; one from South Korea and another from the North reuniting years after both are no longer in the espionage business. Will they pretend to not know each other or plot to murder each other?

The story follows Agent Lee Han-gyoo (Song Kang-ho), a South Korean spy who falls from grace after failing to stop the assassination of a North Korean dissident.

Meanwhile, Ji-won (Kang Dang-won) is a North Korean undercover spy living in South Korea who is betrayed by his fellow agent.

Six years later, Han-gyoo works as a private investigator and Ji-won in construction. Fate brings them together later in life; will they pick up what they left years ago?

Watch the trailer here.

8.Silmido (2013)

In 1968, a black operations unit of the Republic of Korea Air Force known as Unit 684 is formed to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Il-sung.

Thirty-one civilians made up of either petty criminals or unemployed youths are recruited with the promise of money and jobs if they succeed in their mission.

Unit 684 members are trained on Silmido, an inhabited island off the Yellow Sea. They have to endure harsh training for years, during which seven of them die.

Things go even farther south in August 1971, when the assassination mission is cancelled following the improvement of relations between North and South Korea.

Feeling betrayed and upset after all they went through, the surviving members of Unit 684 start an uprising against the South Korean government.

This movie is the dramatised version of the Unit 684 retaliation against their government.

Watch the trailer here.

9.The Spies (2012)

Imagine living your life undercover for 22 years and suddenly you receive a mission to assassinate a target.

Section chief Kim (Kim Myung-min) was dispatched to South Korea 22 years ago to spy for the North Korean government. Over the years, he sticks to his life routine; making a living by selling fake Viagra pills smuggled from China.

After he receives a sudden assassination order, he starts to gather his teammates.

The movie follows how Kim and his teammates reluctantly carry out the assassination plot.

10.Double Agent (2003)

During the Cold War, Lim Byong-ho (Han Suk-kyu) is chased by North Korean officials in Berlin where he narrowly escapes.

However, he is caught by South Korean officials in which he is brought back to South Korea for interrogation.

After enduring horrifying torture, Lim convinces the South Korean to let him working as a training officer for operatives on survival in North Korea.

The plot thickens as it turns out Lim is actually a North Korean spy who still receives orders from his sleeper agent in South Korea.

Watch the trailer here.

They said revenge is sweet but here at KajoMag, we say it is sweeter when filmmakers make a movie out of it.

Perhaps the reason why revenge films are popular, especially the ones with good storylines and convincing lead characters, is because they bring the audience on an emotional roller coaster ride.

First, it creates a bond between you and the main character. Then it brings you down with sadness and sorrow when something important is taken from the character. When the character decides to take revenge, then you feel the eagerness and determination. After the revenge finally takes place, you feel satisfied along with the main character.

But we cannot talk about revenge films without mentioning those that come from South Korea.

Over the years, the South Korean movie industry has been generous in giving us revenge films that are not only satisfying to watch but borderline gruesome as well.

Here are 10 South Korean revenge films you need to watch:

1.The Vengeance Trilogy

The trilogy is a series of three films that are not connected in stories but directed by the same director Park Chan-wook.

The first installment Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) is a tale of how revenge can go wrong.

It all starts when a deaf-mute man kidnaps a young girl to pay for his sister’s surgery. When the young girl accidentally dies, her father seeks vengeance.

Meanwhile in the second installment Oldboy (2003) revolves around a man who is imprisoned for 15 years. He is then released without any explanation as to why he was confined and released.

When he think he has the freedom, he is given five days to learn his captor’s true identity or his new love interest will be killed.

As for the third and final installment aptly named Lady Vengeance (2005), the film tells the tale of a young woman released from prison doing time for a child killer. She of course seeks revenge against the man for whom she served time.

The movie really tells how long a person can hold grudges and how far they will go to seek revenge.

Watch the trailer here.

2.I Saw the Devil (2010)

Rolling Stone magazine picked this movie for its top 20 of ‘scariest movies you’ve never seen.” So you can imagine how scary the revenge must have been or how the events led up to the revenge must have been.

It follows Kim Soo-hyun (Lee Byung-hun) who embarks on a journey of revenge after his fiancee was brutally murdered by a psychopathic murderer.

Oh, did I mention Soo-hyun is a secret service agent of the National Intelligence Service (NIS)?

Hence, it is a cat and mouse story except the role of the cat switches between the antagonist and protagonist.

Furthermore, the psychopathic murderer (played by veteran actor Choi Min-sik) is everything you imagine your perfect villain to be: sadistic and brutal.

Watch the trailer here.

3.Mother (2009)

How far would you go to protect your son? Hye-ja is a single mom to 27-year-old Do-joon who is extremely shy.

Do-joon is prone to attack anyone who mocks his intellectual disability. Walking home one night, he encounters a young girl and then decides to follow her.

The next morning, she is found dead and Do-joon is accused of her murder.

Like any protective mother, Hye-ja sets on a journey to seek the real killer in order to free her innocent son.

Watch the trailer here.

4.Pieta (2012)

Imagine a job of threatening debtors into paying his clients, loan sharks who demand 10 times the return. That is what Kang-do does for a living.

To recover the interest, the debtors sign an insurance application for a handicap. And then Kang-do comes in to injure the debtors brutally so that they file the claim.

This might be a feasible idea to make ends meet. But what is not that feasible is to seek revenge for a woman who just shows up claiming she is your long lost mother.

That is what happens to Kang-do when a strange middle-aged woman visits him.

Later when he finds his mother missing, Kang-do goes to every person he crippled to find his mother.

Watch the trailer here.

5.Bedevilled (2010)

Have you ever thought what would make the perfect murder weapon to carry out your vengeance? In this Korean revenge film, a sickle fits the bill.

The story starts with Hae-won who escapes from her busy life to take a break in Mudo, an island where she spent her childhood.

There, she meets her friend from teenage years, Bok-nam. Bak-nam suffers under her abusive husband and her attention goes all to her young daughter Yeon-hee.

When her daughter is accidentally killed, Bok-nam seek her revenge by starting a killing spree on the island with a sickle.

Watch the trailer here.

6.Hwayi: A Monster Boy (2013)

Hwayi: A Monster Boy (2013) revolves around a 16-year-old boy who is raised by five criminal fathers to become the perfect assassin.

He follows his adoptive fathers in their criminal activity until he learns that the first man he killed was his real father.

That is when he starts his journey of vengeance against his criminal fathers who took him from his real parents.

Watch the trailer here.

7.Broken (2014)

“Life no longer exists for parents that lost their child,” is a famous quote from this movie. It centers around widower Lee Sang-hyeon (Jung Jae-young) who avenges the death of his daughter.

Frustrated with the pace of the investigation team, Sang-hyeon begins his own investigation. After he accidentally kills the first suspect, he finds out there is more than one culprit.

Then he sets to find those who are responsible for his daughter’s murder with the police hot on his trail.

Watch the trailer here.

8.No Mercy (2010)

This Korean revenge movie comes with a very shocking plot twist. It all starts with pathologist Kang Min-ho (Sol Kyung-gu) who is about to retire.

When a dismembered corpse of a young woman is found, Kang agrees to do one last job.

The main suspect for the murder is Lee Sung-ho (Ryoo Seung-bum). It seems like it is an easy case because Lee is all ready to confess for the murder. Or is there more to the story?

Watch the trailer here.

9.Soo (2007)

Two brothers, Tae-soo and Tae-jin separated when they were young. Tae-soo (Ji Jin-hee) becomes an assassin while Tae-jin becomes police detective.

When they finally reunite as adults, Tae-jin is suddenly killed. The killer really should know better than kill an assassin’s brother because Tae-soo then decides to get revenge.

10.The Five (2013)

What if you are physically incapable to take revenge on those who hurt you? Then you manipulate and threaten others to do it for you.

Go Eun-ah (Kim Sun-a) is a crippled woman who gathers four people to kill the serial killer who murdered her family.

In return, Eun-ah promises them her organs once her revenge is complete. However, things do not go as planned and the killer starts hunting them instead.

Watch the trailer here.

11.Don’t Cry Mommy (2012)

Don’t Cry Mommy is inspired by a real case of revenge which happened in South Korea. An 8-year-old Kim Bu-nam was raped by her 35-year-old neighbour Song Baek-gwon.

21 years later, following two divorces and months in a mental hospital, Bu-nam went back to her hometown where she stabbed Baek-gwon to death.

Acknowledging that she went through enough, the court sentenced Bu-nam to a three-year suspended sentence and a requirement that she receive medical treatment.

However in this South Korean revenge movie, the victim Eun-ah (Nam Bo-ra) is not that lucky. She takes her own life after being brutally raped by her schoolmates. This leads her mother Yoo-lim (Yoo Sun) on a path of vengeance to kill those who are responsible for Eun-ah’s death.

Watch the trailer here.

12.Monster (2014)

First of all, Kim Go-eun acting as Bok-soon in this movie is impressive. Bok-soon is known to be an aggressive woman with a mental disability.

She lives happily with her younger sister Eun-jeong while running a stall in a local market. Everything changed when a serial killer Tae-soo (Lee Min-ki) kills Eun-jeong.

Thus, Bok-soon’s journey to avenge her sister’s death starts making you wonder who is the real monster in this movie.

Watch the trailer here.

13.Azooma (2013)

This Korean revenge movie had its world premiere at the 2012 Busan International Film Festival. It centers around a mother seeking justice for the rape of her 10-year-old daughter.

When her daughter is sexually assaulted, Yoon Young-nam (Jang Young-nam) is not happy with how the police handles the case.

So Young-nam decides to track down the child molester herself.

Watch the trailer here.

14.Princess Aurora (2005)

This is a story of a woman who sets out to kill everyone whom she believes played a role in her child’s death.

At first glance, it seems that there is a serial killer on the loose asthere seems to be no connection between all the victims excepts for small sticker depicting a character from the popular “Princess Aurora” cartoon series is found at every crime scene.

Eventually, the killer allows herself to get caught simply to carry out the final act of her revenge.

Watch the trailer here.

15.Revenger (2018)

To sum up most of these Korean revenge movies, do not molest, rape or kill anybody because their family members, especially parents, will definitely come and find you.

Unlike the other movies on this list, Revenger (2018) is set in the near future where dangerous criminals are housed in a hellish prison island.

Then comes a man who purposely sends himself to the island just to carry out his revenge.

Watch the trailer here.

You have to admit, Korean zombies are among the scariest of all fictional zombies; they run, they run in a horde, they twist into bone-breaking pretzels, they eat people alive… they are exactly what you imagine zombies should be.

When comes to terrifying an audience, Korean zombies can beat most Hollywood zombies (except those from 28 Days Later and World War Z) and of course Malaysia’s own zombies from Kampung Pisang.

Here are five South Korean zombie movies you need to watch:

1.Train to Busan (2016)

When comes to zombie movies, this is THE zombie movie to watch. Starred Gong Yoo, Jung Yu-mi and Ma Dong-seok, the movie takes place on a train to Busan as a zombie apocalypse suddenly breaks out.

The audience also get to watch the reunion for Gong Yoo and Yu-mi who both starred in a based on a true story movie Silenced (2011).

Anyway, the storyline is thrilling and the acting even for those who had only small roles is impressive.

To top it all, the zombies are just purely gory and terrifying.

We guess the movie is so good that there is a sequel in the pipeline with the Korean title Bando.

Watch the trailer here.

2.Seoul Station (2016)

If you wondering how did the events in Train to Busan unfold, then you need to watch its prequel animated zombie film.

Released a month later after Train to Busan, Seoul Station (2016) revolves around a young runaway woman named Hye-sun.

It also centers around her father Suk-gyu who is looking for Hye-sun only to find out she has become a prostitute.

While a father-daughter reunion is about to take place, a zombie epidemic conveniently breaks out in Seoul.

Watch the trailer here.

3.Rampant (2018)

When Korean period drama meets zombie epidemic, what you get is Rampant (2018).

Since it is set during the Joseon dynasty, you can imagine there would be horse riding, sword fighting, some archery skills in the movie.

The story circles around a prince named Lee Chung (Hyun Bin) who was given to the Qing empire as a political hostage.

When he returns upon hearing the death of his brother the Crown Prince Lee Young, Lee Chung is met with zombie epidemic plaguing his country.

Though the plot is predictable (you basically know which one is the bad guy and who is going to sacrifice himself in the end), this Korean zombie movie is still worth to watch.

Why? Because of the zombies of course! They are creepy, quick, disgusting and just scary.

Watch the trailer here.

4.The Odd Family: Zombie on Sale (2019)

If there is a possibility of a profiting from a zombie, would you give up the opportunity? This zombie comedy film revolves around the Park family who resides in a peaceful rural town.

One day, the whole town turns up and down when a zombie suddenly appears.

So the Park family decides that they need to find the zombie and tries to profit from it.

Watch the trailer here.

5.Kingdom (2019)

First of all, this is not movie but a Netflix original series consists of six episodes. It is on the list because we cannot talk Korean zombie onscreen without mentioning Kingdom. It is definitely worth-watching.

Adapted from the webcomic series The Kingdom of the Gods, the series is set in Joseon period.

It tells the story of Crown Prince Yi Chang (Ju Ji-hoon) who becomes embroiled in a political coup. While investigating about what happened in the palace, the prince embarks in journey that takes him right into a zombie epidemic.

On top of the exciting plots which keeps audience on their toes, we cannot help but notice the picturesque cinematography.

You might be flip a table after watching the series because the ending is a cliffhanger. But fret not, the filming for the second season had started last February so yeay!

Watch the trailer here.