Porn movies from South Korea - highly recommended
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I don't want to use the term "Korean porn", as US and Japanese journalists often do, because I don't want to neglect the northern communist part. Porn is forbidden in the North, even if there are still rumours, that the "revolutionary" army is producing some, or that it is for sale under the counter, if you can pay in hard currencies. Until only a few years ago, porn was illegal in the south too, this was a heritage of the military dictatorship. The legal status of porn is still unclear in South-Korea. Distribution of hardcore porn is neither legal nor illegal. You can get quite a lot of US titles in South Korea. But it would be illegal to produce these movies here. So many explicit south Korean porn movies are produced behind the Japanese border. The hardest movies are - as in China or other Asian states - category III movies (18+).
Brutal scenes, even rape, are no problem, but showing sex as explicit as in Europe or the USA isn't allowed, but if I look at the Korean movies produced in the last two years and look back at the category III movies of the 90s, they are almost hardcore now. Using US rating systems, this would be between NC-17 and on the border of tame X-rated movies. The south-Korean government still tries to block foreign porn websites, but isn't blocking Korean sites. Porn laws are a mess and all hope, that the newly elected government will change this soon.
There are six main genres of Korean porn :
1.) hardcore porn with Korean actors produced in Japan
2.) Playboy/Penthouse - no porn under US standards - but labelled as porn here, I was especially astonished, how popular Penthouse DVDs are in South Korea, I haven't seen a fraction of these releases in Europe !
3.) Imported porn from Japan, USA, Europe etc.
Of course, Japan is No.1, several US porn titles are for sale, European porn is rare
4.) Idol Korean - these are in the tradition of Idol JAV movies, they center around one Korean porn star - high production values and glossy covers
5.) Underground/Illegal porn: Harder porn movies produced in Japan or South Korea "underground", with scat/vomit/pee. These movies are fully legal in Japan, but illegal in South Korea. But nevertheless offered by some dealers. Sometimes they are confiscated, sometimes not. (Cynics say, this depends on the financial abilities of the store owners. Are they able to offer enough bribe money for the greedy authorities?)
6.) The "critical of society"-porn movie - oh my god, what the heck is that ?!?!
This is the genre that is also more popular among (young) women. Especially female students watch it. Some of the directors of these movies don't want to call their movies "porn" at all, because they center on topics, that are important for the south Korean society. As Japanese mangas have successfully drawn many women into comics, the south-Korean porn movie tries to copy this. South Korea was, because of the Japanese occupation in the past, the civil Korean war, the decades of military dictatorship, a very authoritarian society. Women had even fewer rights as in Japan. The society was 100% dominated by men and women weren't granted full rights until the late 80s. Arranged marriages were a problem, women had to obey the orders of men, especially of the "father of the family". With the ongoing process of democratisation, starting in the late 80s, women revolted against this suppression. The women's movement gained more and more followers. Especially in the capital city Seoul. Most men were shocked, that women not only demanded rights, but now abandoned relationships, from which they were suffering. The divorce rate skyrocketed. Women now demanded a new approach to sexuality too, where their sexual needs were also satisfied. In the early 90s, erotic nude model magazines started and some women saw this as a chance to become independent of men, showing her new sexual self-confidence AND reaching financial independence from men. Porn - strictly forbidden - developed in the underground, especially around universities. Lesbian sex - also a big taboo - was an important theme of the first photoplays and porn movies.
The south-Korean porn movie of today, is often centering around these topics. Extremely attractive women, who are treated like dirt by their cold-blooded husbands, who were socialised in a brutal dictatorship. They later joined the army, which only supported them in their women degrading attitudes. For these army men, the slogan " WAR IS HELL", isn't correct, because they were eagerly yearning for war. They've learnt, how to shoot the enemy, how to kill people and how to drive with a combat tank, but they never learnt how to love her woman. " Peace is hell on earth ", is one of these army officers saying, he is angry at his democratic government. Why aren't they commanding an invasion into North Korea ? His women is worthless to him, she has to be attractive and spread her legs, when he commands it, has to shut up her mouth.
Everyone follows his orders at the army, so his woman has to obey too. " Life is junk " for her. But he doesn't care. If she would be shot in a civil war, it would only be a collateral damage for him. His "marriage life" disintegrates slowly, because his wife slowly discovers her attractiveness and her own sexuality, totally independent of his commands. Instead of changing his "burnt earth" strategy, he blames the "North Koreans" for everything. " A soldier has to prove himself in daily combat. If he cant, he is undergoing a slow process of self-destruction. "
As usual in these movies, 2/3 are dialogues and content, 1/3 are sex scenes. The sex scenes fit exactly in the story, sometimes these are rape scenes, because force against women in relationships is a great problem, but sometimes they include very romantic and hot sex scenes. Rape is never shown positive, as in Japanese porn.
As in "Playmate". A young and attractive saleswoman tries to explore partner swapping and nude modelling. But the adoration and the sexual self-realization has also negative side effects. But happiness and joy of life finally succeeds - or ?
Is it possible, that you reach a point in your life, when you cant be sure if you are happy or not ? Is this drive toward self realization an intrinsic drive, or just a result of US-Americanization, a heteronomous force, that leads to anonymization in the long run. Are we living "our" life as we really want to, or are we desecrating the heritage of our Korean ancestors ?
Most of these movies drive around the (former) strong ties between Korean family members, that now are destroyed or at least drastically changed by a liberal society, women's movement and porn. The female attitude against porn is dualistic, porn can be an expression of female sexual liberalisation, but also a new form of suppression by male porn producers. Porn reflects this and other themes, that seem to be very strange for us non-Koreans: The division of the country is still a trauma for most Koreans (can partly understand this as a born German), the high speed of globalization that leads to anonymization, the dissolution of the old society and the perplexing development of a new society, that cant be called a "society" anymore. (For a brilliant analysis of the dissolution of the US-American society, read Allan Bloom's
Closing of the American Mind)
The south-Korean porn movie imbibes it all: The unconventionalism of the Japanese porn movie, the image language of the Hong Kong movie, the structure of the Taiwanese social drama, the experimental style of the Chinese new cinema, all of these styles are mixed together into the south Korean porn movie. Fading, fast cuts and the unleashed camera go together with a static camera. South korean porn movies are published on DVD and VCD. The cheaper VCDs have very high press runs, every average US porn producers can only dream of.
The biggest deficit is the language barrier. These movies are in Korean with Chinese subtitles. I was only able to understand the content of two movies barely, because a Korean girlfriend helped me with a translation. They don't have English subtitles, but only Chinese subtitles!
In my opinion, the South Korean porn movie (together with top Japanese productions) has the worlds highest standard. So it is a pity, that no US distributor has tried to license them yet. Sure, customers who want to watch "Gangbang No.69" or "Max Hardcore molesting 18-year old schoolgirls verbally", aren't interested in these movies at all. But these movies can be a link between sophisticated social drama and porn movies. This genre isn't a south-Korean invention, but it is also common in Japan, even if it isn't as popular here as in South Korea. Also some Danish + German social-drama porn movies were made in the 70s. With a little elongation, also some movies by Gerald Damiano could be labelled as "social-drama" porn.
If you want to see something different, I can wholeheartedly recommend these movies. And the Korean women are very hot too!
South Korean "social drama" Porn movies
02-12-2008, 02:04 PM
South Korean "social drama" Porn movies
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