The Best Korean Movies
The Korean wave in the film canon: from Oldboy to Parasite, ranked by our composite score across festivals, polls and community lists.
Parasite (2019) leads with a composite score of 5.72.
- 1Parasite2019 · Bong Joon-ho · South Korea · comedy, drama, thriller5.72
Palme d'Or winner 2019 · Oscar Best Picture winner 2019 · Film Comment year-end poll 2019 #1
- 2Oldboy2003 · Park Chan-wook · South Korea / Japan · drama, thriller, mystery2.38
Cannes Grand Prix winner 2004 · Kehr's annual top 10 2005 #1 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2004 #6
- 3Burning2018 · Lee Chang-dong · South Korea / Japan · thriller, drama1.74
Film Comment year-end poll 2018 #2 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2018 #4 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2019 #10
- 4The Host2006 · Bong Joon-ho · South Korea · horror, sci-fi, comedy1.35
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2006 #3 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2006 #3 · Rolling Stone 100 Best of the 21st Century #71
- 5Mother2009 · Bong Joon-ho · South Korea · drama, mystery1.20
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2009 #2 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2010 #10 · Film Comment year-end poll 2010 #11
- 6Memories of Murder2003 · Bong Joon-ho · South Korea · thriller, crime, mystery1.16
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2004 #2 · Letterboxd Top 250 #53 · Criterion Collection spine #1073
- 7Right Now, Wrong Then2015 · Hong Sang-soo · South Korea · drama, comedy, romance1.02
Locarno Golden Leopard winner 2015 · Film Comment year-end poll 2016 #12
- 8Breathless2009 · Yang Ik-june · South Korea · crime1.00
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2010 #1
- 9
- 10The Woman Who Ran2020 · Hong Sang-soo · South Korea · drama0.88
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2020 #2 · Film Comment year-end poll 2021 #16
- 11Decision to Leave2022 · Park Chan-wook · South Korea · mystery, drama, romance0.83
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2023 #7 · Film Comment year-end poll 2022 #12 · Rolling Stone 100 Best of the 21st Century #89
- 12Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?1989 · Bae Yong-kyun · South Korea · drama0.75
Locarno Golden Leopard winner 1989
- 13House of Hummingbird2018 · Kim Bora · South Korea · drama0.63
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2020 #2
- 14In Front of Your Face2021 · Hong Sang-soo · South Korea · drama0.62
Film Comment year-end poll 2022 #7 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2022 #10
- 15The Handmaiden2016 · Park Chan-wook · South Korea · drama, romance, thriller0.60
Film Comment year-end poll 2016 #16 · Letterboxd Top 250 #76 · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
- 16Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring2003 · Kim Ki-duk · South Korea / Germany · drama0.58
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2004 #9 · Sarris's annual top 10 2004 #10 · Roger Ebert's Great Movies
- 17On the Beach at Night Alone2017 · Hong Sang-soo · South Korea · drama0.58
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2018 #7 · Film Comment year-end poll 2017 #16
- 18In Another Country2012 · Hong Sang-soo · South Korea · drama, comedy0.56
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2012 #5 · Film Comment year-end poll 2012 #48
- 19
- 20Joint Security Area2000 · Park Chan-wook · South Korea · drama, mystery, thriller0.50
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2001 #5 · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
- 21Poetry2010 · Lee Chang-dong · South Korea · drama0.48
Film Comment year-end poll 2011 #10 · Letterboxd Top 250 #248
- 22Oasis2002 · Lee Chang-dong · South Korea · drama, romance0.43
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2004 #4
- 23The Chaser2008 · Na Hong-jin · South Korea · thriller, crime, action0.43
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2009 #4
- 24
- 25The President's Barber2004 · Im Chan-sang · South Korea · comedy, drama0.36
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2005 #6
- 26Hotel by the River2018 · Hong Sang-soo · South Korea · drama0.36
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2020 #6
- 27Snowpiercer2013 · Bong Joon-ho · South Korea / Czech Republic / United States · thriller, sci-fi, action0.34
Film Comment year-end poll 2014 #20 · Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
- 28Tale of Cinema2005 · Hong Sang-soo · South Korea / France · drama0.32
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2005 #8
- 29A Brand New Life2009 · Ounie Lecomte · South Korea / France · drama0.32
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2010 #8
- 30Nobody's Daughter Haewon2013 · Hong Sang-soo · South Korea · drama, romance0.32
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2013 #8
- 311987: When the Day Comes2017 · Jang Joon-hwan · South Korea · drama, thriller0.32
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2018 #8
- 32
- 33The Novelist's Film2022 · Hong Sang-soo · South Korea · drama, comedy0.30
Film Comment year-end poll 2022 #9
- 34Seopyeonje1993 · Im Kwon-taek · South Korea · drama0.29
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1994 #10
- 35Peppermint Candy2000 · Lee Chang-dong · South Korea · drama0.29
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2000 #10
- 36
- 37
- 38Chunhyang2000 · Im Kwon-taek · South Korea · musical, romance, drama0.26
Sarris's annual top 10 2000 #9 · Rosenbaum's Essential Cinema
- 39
- 40Night and Day2008 · Hong Sang-soo · South Korea · comedy, drama0.21
Film Comment year-end poll 2009 #25
- 41Woman Is the Future of Man2004 · Hong Sang-soo · South Korea · romance0.20
Film Comment year-end poll 2006 #34
- 42Sympathy for Lady Vengeance2005 · Park Chan-wook · South Korea · drama, thriller, crime0.19
Film Comment year-end poll 2006 #40
- 43Woman on the Beach2006 · Hong Sang-soo · South Korea · comedy, romance0.18
Film Comment year-end poll 2008 #42
- 44Chi-hwa-seon2002 · Im Kwon-taek · South Korea · biography, drama0.18
Film Comment year-end poll 2003 #46
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance2002 · Park Chan-wook · South Korea · drama, thriller, crime0.11
Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
- 50Train to Busan2016 · Yeon Sang-ho · South Korea · horror, action, thriller0.11
Edgar Wright's 1,000 favorite movies
The fastest canon entry in film history
No national cinema has moved from international obscurity to the center of the canon faster than South Korea's. The infrastructure story explains the speed: after decades of censorship under military rule, democratization in the late 1980s, the screen-quota system protecting domestic films, the chaebol-funded studio boom, and a film-school generation raised equally on Hollywood genre and European art cinema produced a industry that could do everything at once. The announcement to the world came at Cannes 2004, when Park Chan-wook's Oldboy — a revenge tragedy containing a single-take corridor fight and one of cinema's most devastating final acts — took the Grand Prix from a jury chaired by Quentin Tarantino.
Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder (2003), released the same season, is the movement's craft summit for many critics: a serial-killer procedural based on Korea's real Hwaseong murders, in which the detective genre is used to X-ray an authoritarian society that cannot solve its own crimes. Its ending — a detective staring into the camera, into an audience that might contain the killer — gained a further layer in 2019 when the real murderer was finally identified, weeks after Bong's Parasite had won the Palme d'Or. The community canons rank it among the greatest films of its decade; its near-absence from Western awards data of its own time is precisely the gap that endurance-based sources correct.
Parasite and the arrival
Parasite (2019) completed the arc with a record that had never existed before: Palme d'Or and Academy Best Picture in the same cycle — the first film to hold both since Marty in 1955, and the first non-English-language Best Picture ever — followed by entry into the 2022 Sight & Sound poll within three years of release. Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden (2016) meanwhile carries the tradition's other flank: ornate, literary, formally extravagant genre cinema that dominates community lists. What this page measures, ranked by composite score, is a canon still compounding — Korean cinema's awards data, poll placements and community standing are all rising simultaneously, and this list will look different, and longer, with each data refresh.