I have always felt that despite the success of the Korean Wave in Asia, Korea has made very little impact in global pop culture when compared to the Japanese.  The latest example of this is a movie that was just released titled Tokyo! that even has one of Korea’s top directors Bong Joon-ho contributing to it:

Three short films set in Tokyo but made by foreigners – Frenchmen Michel Gondry and Leos Carax, and South Korea’s Bong Joon-ho – Tokyo! finds xenophobes and freaks wandering the streets of Japan’s capital, grappling with alienation and ennui, horror and regret, toilet paper and pizza boxes.

Without doubt the standout, Gondry’s “Interior Design” tracks a young couple as they hunt for an apartment, staying in the claustrophobic flat of a friend while seeking employment and a space they can afford. As fans of Gondry (The Science of Sleep, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) might expect, these typical pursuits turn pretty weird: I won’t say how weird, but the girlfriend Hiroko (Ayako Fujitani) undergoes a metamorphosis one doesn’t see every day.

Carax, in his first film since 1999′s Pola X, presents “Merde,” the surreal story of a Westerner with a crooked beard and a milky eye who emerges from the city’s sewers to terrorize its citizens. A lengthy trial sequence, in which French, Japanese, and a made-up language known only to a lawyer and the madman he represents are spoken, tries one’s patience.

Bong, of the great monster pic The Host, offers a quiet tale of isolation and love, “Shaking Tokyo,” in which a recluse falls in love with a pizza-delivery girl. The relationship has seismic implications.

Tokyo! is a must-see for the Gondry segment, and a strange, diverting pleasure for the rest.  [Philly.com]

You can see the trailer for the movie here at the official website.

Watching the trailer this looks like quite a weird movie, though fans at Yahoo movies are giving it pretty high grades.  Does anyone think we will ever see a major international film based in Korea anytime soon?

I think has a lot to offer to the movie industry as is evident with Bong Joon-ho co-directing this movie, but personally I don’t see Korea doing much in the international movie market until it improves its global brand image, which continues to be tarred by the North Korea issue and nonsense such as the US beef protests.