An Analysis On The Champion Films Of Korean Box Office From 1999-2006

In 1999, the Korean film Shiri has got the historically high box office in Korea, and outweighed the popular American film Titanic, crowned the Korean box office of the year. This achievement was outstanding when the Hollywood films were overwhelming. In the following consecutive 8 years, Korean films were the champions of the box office in Korea. Meanwhile, the percentage of Korean films in Korean film market rose from 25.1% in 1998 to 64.2% in 2006. What were the reasons attributing to the rising of Korean films? Why could these films attract people to the theaters? How did they bring Korean films to the international platform? The author believes these questions deserving our investigation. Although box office is not the sole measurement to evaluate whether a film successful or not, to some extent, the champion films of the box office are representative. Therefore, the author conducts a comprehensive analysis on the success of the Korean films based on the champion films of Korean box office from 1999-2006.This thesis comprises six chapters. Chapter one introduces the research origin, literature review and research significance. Chapter two analyzes the background of Korean films'success in box office from the aspects of politics, economics, culture and efforts of filmmakers. Chapter three and chapter four focus on the films themselves. Chapter three discusses the topics and culture of the champion films, and tries to explore the hidden principles. Chapter four studies the narrative characteristics and audio visual characteristics as well as language characteristics, so as to find out the relation to Korean spectators'aesthetics. Chapter five researches the financing, marketing, publication and projection of Korean film, and especially the overseas promotion, to analyze how the international influence formed. Finally, this thesis puts forward that the Korean films not only deserve the learning of Chinese film makers, but also our alerts. Because of the same culture origin, Korean films are easily accepted by Chinese spectators, which would be a big threat to Chinese films. Additionally, the author makes some suggestion for the development of Chinese films.