Yes, and it’s my personal favorite, but as far as I remember it also wasn’t a box office success in Korea. The DVDs are out of production here, indeed — I had to order one from the US. I’m remembering that right, am I not? I remember when I saw it first (in a DVD-방 in Jeonju), we’d asked whether they had any Korean SF in their collection and the proprietress recommended it, saying most Koreans either hated it or had refused to see it because their friends hated it (and that it had bombed domestically), but that it was absolutely brilliant and a must-see movie for an SF fan. (And indeed it was. It’s a bit fast and loose in bits, but there’s such abandon, such wicked glee, that I can’t help but be swept away by it.) I also remember editing a student article about brilliant films that had bombed in Korea but were getting a second life on DVD, and the students mentioned Save the Green Planet second, right after Please Take Care of My Cat, another worthy film, though not SF, but which I’ve bubbled about here before.

Definitely The Host was the most popularly successful of the bunch, both here and abroad; I think, though, that it’s not hard to see why Save the Green Planet would appeal more than The Host to non-Koreans; The Host simply has too much stuff that non-Koreans (or those unfamiliar with modern Korean history) won’t really get. And I suspect the deeper historical resonances in The Host (about which I’ll be posting later) were lost on a lot of the Korean audience, too; I say this because I presented my analysis of the film to my Popular Cultures course as an example of how knowing some history and culture can help you unpack all kinds of layers of meaning in even a film that looks like fluff. My students were mostly shocked that anything in terms of an allegorical reading could even be found in a monster movie. (Oddly, since it’s so obvious in, say, King Kong or Godzilla.

I’ll say more about all that when I’m discussing The Host, which I’ll be doing sometime in the next couple of weeks. Maybe even in a few days, if our gambit to get tickets to Hong Kong fails. (I didn’t know it was a maybe thing, but it turns out it is.)

By the way,. I’ve added a film to the list I’ll be examining and discussing, the indie film Teenage Hooker Became Killing Machine in Daehakroh, which I’d once heard of but forgotten, but which definitely belongs on this list, even if it is a total B-movie.

But I am leaving out some other films which could be fit into genre, the way Alice in Wonderland seems to be an honorary SF text: films like Oldboy and Arahan, though they’re more comic-book or fantasy respectively, which is why I’m leaving them out. Likewise, no horror gets in unless it’s technohorror. I’m being pretty tight about the limits of the SF genre for this paper I’m writing, out of necessity. I can always attack Korean horror or fantasy later, I suppose. The focus, for me right now, is the general failure of the SF genre to take hold in Korea, and horror, fantasy, and manga-styled films (of a non-SFnal type) seem to be doing relatively well here, compared.

Owch. That’s expensive hosting! Well, probably not for the traffic, but…

Yes, those comment sections just disturb me sometimes.

I’m criticizing the fleas, at this present moment, not the mammal on whose back they ride

Consider yourself lucky — half the time, I’m afraid to look at what’s in my comment section in the morning, and I pay US$100 a month to Media Temple hosting for the privilege.

That’s great, thanks! I’ll pass that reference on. If she wants to meet him, I’ll put her in touch with you, but I’m sure she’ll be as glad to read the book instead.

I’d like to look at the book myself, too.