# What is the best South Korean movie of all time?

> 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?

*By YPB Team · Published June 3, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-south-korean-movie-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Parasite** — score 1000/1000
   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.
2. **A Tale of Two Sisters** — score 600/1000
   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.
3. **Oldboy** — score 555/1000
   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.
4. **Burning** — score 333/1000
   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.
5. **A Taxi Driver** — score 333/1000
   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.
6. **The Host** — score 333/1000
   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.
7. **Memories of Murder** — score 200/1000
   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.
8. **The Man from Nowhere** — score 200/1000
   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.
9. **Pieta** — score 1/1000
   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.
10. **Decision to Leave** — score 1/1000
   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.
11. **I Saw the Devil** — score 1/1000
   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.
12. **Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring** — score 1/1000
   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.
13. **The Wailing** — score 1/1000
   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.
14. **Joint Security Area** — score 1/1000
   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.
15. **Train to Busan** — score 1/1000
   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.

Tags: movies, asia, classics, all-time