Bong Joon Ho

Bong Joon Ho is a study of the work of the most globally visible contemporary South Korean film director in the first decades of the twenty-first century. The book tracks his career from a set of earlier films addressed primarily to a national audience concerned with Korean modernity (and its discontents) to a group of later films (often transnationally produced) aimed more toward global audiences, frequently featuring Western actors speaking in English. As he gained global notoriety and acclaim—most famously at the 2020 Academy Awards, where Parasite (Kisaengch’ung, 2019) was the first non-English-language film to win Best Picture—Bong’s films increasingly explored the entailments of what it meant to be a global product. His films thus function as metacommentary on the regime of economic globalization that peaked around the start of the twenty-first century, which was dominated by the United States and imbricated South Korea in a world system that its export economy would come to depend on. As one of these products, Bong’s films help us reflect on the local consequences of such abstract systems and the social reorganization that they force on individuals and communities around the world.