What is the best South Korean movie of all time?

By YPB Team

Visceral revenge thrillers, slow-burn character studies, biting social satires, and ghostly horror — South Korean cinema's extraordinary recent run put the entire world on notice. Which stands tallest?

Parasite

Bong Joon-ho's 2019 Palme d'Or and Oscar Best Picture winner — a darkly comic thriller about class warfare between two families — the first non-English film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

1000pts

A Tale of Two Sisters

Kim Jee-woon's 2003 atmospheric gothic horror about two sisters returning to their remote family home after a psychiatric stay, full of dread and unreliable memory.

699pts

Oldboy

Park Chan-wook's 2003 neo-noir revenge mystery in which a man imprisoned for 15 years is inexplicably released and hunts for answers, featuring the legendary hallway fight scene.

666pts

Burning

Lee Chang-dong's 2018 slow-burn mystery based on a Murakami story, a hypnotic study of class envy and ambiguous menace that leaves its central question deliberately unanswered.

499pts

A Taxi Driver

Jang Hoon's 2017 historical drama about a Seoul taxi driver who unwittingly transports a German journalist into the heart of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, emotionally devastating.

499pts

The Host

Bong Joon-ho's 2006 monster movie cum family drama about a Han River creature snatching a man's daughter, wildly inventive in tone and devastating in its emotional gut-punches.

499pts

Memories of Murder

Bong Joon-ho's 2003 procedural masterpiece about detectives investigating South Korea's first serial killings, a forensic study of failure, frustration, and the limits of justice.

399pts

The Man from Nowhere

Lee Jeong-beom's 2010 action thriller about a mysterious pawnshop owner who unleashes devastating violence to rescue the child next door, a tight and emotionally charged genre piece.

399pts

I Saw the Devil

Kim Jee-woon's 2010 ferocious revenge thriller in which a special agent relentlessly stalks his fiancée's killer — an extreme, morally corrosive study of vengeance's cost.

249pts

Pieta

Kim Ki-duk's 2012 Golden Lion-winning tale of a brutal loan shark confronted by a woman claiming to be his abandoned mother, deeply disturbing and viscerally affecting.

249pts

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring

Kim Ki-duk's 2003 meditative Buddhist parable following a monk and his apprentice through the seasons of life on a floating monastery, achingly beautiful.

249pts

Decision to Leave

Park Chan-wook's 2022 romantic thriller — a detective falls for the prime suspect in her husband's death — a ravishingly elegant puzzle film shot with painterly precision.

249pts

The Wailing

Na Hong-jin's 2016 supernatural horror epic set in a remote village afflicted by inexplicable violence, genre-bending in its scope and profoundly unsettling in its ambiguity.

0pts

Joint Security Area

Park Chan-wook's 2000 Cold War mystery unravelling the aftermath of a fatal shooting in the DMZ between North and South Korean soldiers, a portrait of forbidden friendship.

0pts

Train to Busan

Yeon Sang-ho's 2016 zombie blockbuster set entirely aboard a speeding KTX train — relentless genre filmmaking fused with heartfelt paternal drama that became an international sensation.