China Inc., Limited

Over the past two decades, the East Asian region has witnessed various ebbs and flows in cultural saliency. As the cult of Hong Kong cinema waned in the mid-1990s, a Korean Wave (hallyu) unexpectedly surged, and the popularity of Korean cultural products such as pop music and television drama series rose to great economic and cultural significance throughout the region. Regional audiences currently may be anxiously awaiting what might follow this Korean Wave. Not surprisingly, officials within media conglomerates and local governments might themselves actively seek to initiate or be part of the "next" wave, which could either sustain or replace the current one. Some critics and scholars are cautiously predicting and estimating the potential of an impending "Chinese wave."

This essay examines the distribution of Chinese-language films in South Korea, for which the most dominant foreign regional cinema is still Hong Kong and Hong Kong/China coproductions. I attempt to show how the South Korean majors' distribution practices restrict the dissemination of Chinese-language films because a significantly smaller number of theaters are allotted to Chinese-language films during their opening weeks in comparison to either South Korean or Hollywood blockbusters. This discussion also examines the popular discourse on Chinese and Japanese media in South Korea, through which one can detect a more positive disposition toward the latter, even though both are "marginal" in terms of their saliency within Korean national culture. I will argue that the difference should be attributed to Korean cultural policies as well as cultural novelty—not to audiences' economic aspiration for the consumed culture, contrary to the model advanced and discussed by scholars such as Koichi Iwabuchi.¹

Hong Kong cinema has long been an integral part of the cultural memory of Korean audiences and filmmakers alike. South Korea was not immune to the worldwide phenomenon of Bruce Lee in the 1970s,² followed by that of Jackie Chan in the 1980s. Bruce Lee's Game of Death (Robert Clouse, 1978) opened at a single theater in Seoul and over two months (May 18 to July 31, 1978) attracted an audience of 281,000.³ A year later, Drunken Master (Jui kuen; Yuen Woo-ping, 1978) had an extended run over five months (September 29, 1979, to March 28, 1980), pulling in 891,000 viewers.⁴

Cultural affinities and the universal appeal of the carnal aspect of martial arts may explain the popularity of Hong Kong martial arts films in South Korea. But one must look further into the distribution and exhibition policies that facilitated and/or deterred the importation of Hong Kong cinema. In the 1970s, foreign imports dominated the screen at first-run theaters during the major holiday seasons in South Korea.⁵ Although there was a screening quota in place designed to allow ample screen time for domestic productions, it was often ignored by local exhibitors who preferred foreign films over domestically produced features.⁶ Furthermore, since the South Korean government forbade the importation of foreign films with production costs of more than $35,000, the relatively low production budgets of Hong Kong cinema, in addition to their proven popularity at first-run theaters, might suggest why such films were such a viable option for importers.⁷

As the kung fu phase slowly died out in the 1980s, the box office draw of Hong Kong films—both martial arts and actioners—significantly declined. With the exception of Jackie Chan's directorial debut Police Story (Ging chat goo si; 1985), many Hong Kong films, including A Better Tomorrow (Ying hung boon sik; Woo, 1986) and A Chinese Ghost Story (Sien nui yau wan; Ching Siu-tung, 1987), sold fewer than 100,000 tickets, despite the fact that the number of opening theaters had tripled since the 1970s.⁸ As Ahn Jin-soo has pointed out, the popularity of Hong Kong bloodshed gangster cinema began as a cult phenomenon in South Korea, shown mostly at second-run theaters, which had difficulty in securing content under the direct distribution system used by the Hollywood majors.⁹ However, the cult status of Hong Kong cinema did not last long. With the success of A...