Kim Ki-duk

Over the last decade, amidst a surge of interest in Korean cinema by critics, cinephiles and scholars, the films of Kim Ki-duk have elicited the most sharply divided yet consistently ebullient responses from a broad spectrum of viewers. Characterized by subversion of “polite” sensibilities, Kim's films generate fierce debate and concomitantly fervent censure and praise. As a result of this furor, Kim's work is often omitted from university courses and even scholarly writing on South Korean film and media, despite its role in bringing South Korean cinema to prominence in the global arena. Rising to the complex challenge of analyzing Kim's controversial oeuvre, Hye Seung Chung's Kim Ki-duk situates Kim's films in their varied sites of reception. From transnational contexts, such as new canons of “global” art cinema and international film festival circuits, to national domains, including Kim's significance to the South Korean film market, journalists, activists and intellectuals, Chung's...