[한미동맹 70년]K-culture
‘Parasite’ sweeps Academy Awards
Drama ‘Squid Game’ records highest viewership
Strong impression by winning 6 Emmy Awards
Actress Yoon Yeo-jeong, who won the Best Supporting Actress Award at the 93rd Academy Awards for the movie ‘Minari’. AMPAS homepage capture“Breaking the barrier of 1-inch subtitles allows you to enjoy a lot more movies.”
At the 2020 Golden Globe Awards in the U.S., director Bong Joon-ho won the Best Foreign Language Film Award for his movie ‘Parasite’ (2019), and his acceptance speech became a reality. Since then, not only movies such as ‘Minari’ (2021), but also dramas such as ‘Squid Game’ (2021), ‘Pachinko’ (2022), and ‘Crash Landing on You’ (2020) have been popular all over the world, and Korean content showed the potential of It is especially encouraging that these works have been greatly loved in the United States, the birthplace of world content. K-content has now taken off as a content that not only Korea but also people around the world enjoy and look forward to a follow-up to.
Director Bong Joon-ho (center), who directed the movie ‘Parasite’, and the cast and crew pose for a commemorative photo after winning at the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020. American Academy Official Twitter2020 was the year of the parasite in the film industry. It was the first Korean film to win four awards (Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, International Film) at the Academy Awards, and also set a record as the first Korean film to win the US Golden Globe Foreign Language Film Award.
Parasite’s successive awards are significant in that K-content was properly recognized in the United States, the Mecca of the film industry. The box office revenue of the North American film market combined with the United States and Canada was about $ 4.5 billion in 2021, ranking second in the world after China. In the same year, the share of domestic films in the United States reached 88.6%.
The squid game literally exploded the K-content fever. Squid Game, which depicts a story in which people who participated in a survival game with a prize money of 45.6 billion risking their lives to challenge the game, was watched by 100 million paid subscription households in 17 days after its release around the world. This is the first time in Netflix history that the number of households has exceeded 100 million.
Ki-hoon (Lee Jung-jae), who participated in a survival game where he risked his life in the Netflix drama ‘Squid Game’, is concentrating on the Dalgona game. Courtesy of NetflixThe squid game has been sensationally popular, especially in the United States. In the first week after release, the cumulative viewing time exceeded 3 billion minutes, and during Halloween in 2021, there were a lot of people wearing the training suits in the drama as costumes. ‘Dalgona’ has emerged as a popular snack. Squid Game was honored with six awards including Best Director and Best Actor at the most prestigious Emmy Awards in the US broadcasting industry last year. Squid Game is the first non-English language drama to win the Best Director Award at the Emmy Awards. The city of Los Angeles, USA, even declared September 17, when the Squid Game was released on Netflix, as ‘Squid Game Day’. It is to honor the influence that Korean works have had on American popular culture. The tvN drama ‘Crash Landing on You’ starring actors Hyun Bin and Son Ye-jin and the Apple TV Plus drama ‘Pachinko’, in which a large number of Korean actors participated, also became a hot topic in the United States.
As K-content became a hit, interest in Korean actors naturally increased. Korean actors were cast in Hollywood movies one after another. Actor Lee Jung-jae, who played the main character Sung Ki-hoon in Squid Game, was cast as the main character in the Star Wars series ‘Acolyte’ produced by Disney Plus. He also signed a contract with CAA, one of the top 3 agencies in the US. Actor Brad Pitt and director Steven Spielberg belong to this agency.
Actor Jung Ho-yeon, who played the role of Sae-byeok Kang in Squid Game, is also receiving great love in the United States for showing a bouncy appearance without being intimidated in Hollywood. He has been cast as the lead in Alfonso Cuaron’s Apple TV Plus drama ‘The Disclaimer’ and Joe Talbot’s new film ‘The Governance’, standing shoulder to shoulder with Hollywood stars. Actor Park Seo-joon is also cast as Prince Yan, Captain Marvel’s husband, in ‘The Marbles’, a follow-up to ‘Captain Marvel’ (2019), and is about to be released.
Park Ki-soo, director of Hanyang University’s Cultural Contents Strategy Research Institute, said, “K-content, which entered Hollywood 20 years ago, is now in full bloom. did.
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.