Korea’s representative films were distributed to major universities such as Harvard in the U.S. and Cambridge in the U.K. and cultural centers abroad. The Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism and the Korean Film Archive produced and distributed complementary DVD box sets of great Korean movies with multi-language subtitles and guides to about 600 universities and colleges and cultural centers around the world.

 

The Korean Movie DVD Production Project annually produces such a DVD box set as part of the Korean Society through Films Series by selecting excellent Korean films under one theme. The first set is made up of eight films under the theme of ‘Women On Screen: Understanding Korean Society and Women through Films.’ The eight film are mainly classic films such as Sweet Dream (1936, director YANG Joo-nam), Madame Freedom (1956, director HAN Hyung-mo) and Yeong-Ja’s Heydays (1975, director KIM Ho-sun). The set also included Happy End (1999) directed by JUNG Ji-woo which depicts changes in Korean society and the social position of Korean women after the financial meltdown that hit the Korean economy in 1997. The project will produce another box set under the theme of ‘Korean families’ next year.

 

This DVD set includes a Korean book and an English book with comments on and interviews related to the movies in eight languages (Korean, English, Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic). Both books are 250 pages, respectively. The Korean Film Archive expects the DVD set with multi-language subtitles to be used as important materials for overseas Korean studies.