The South Korean film industry and the Chinese film market

On 26 August 2016, the South Korea–Thailand–China co-production P'ainŏl Reship'i//Final Recipe (Gina Kim, 2014) opened on 3200 screens across the People’s Republic of China. The film was the first South Korean-directed feature to be granted a wide release in China following the 2014 South Korea–China Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Final Recipe featured the Malaysian Michelle Yeoh, the Singaporean Chin Han and the K-pop superstar Henry Lau (a Taiwanese American), and was shot in Bangkok, Seoul and Shanghai. The film tells the story of a high-school student (Lau) who enters a MasterChef-type cooking competition and finds his long-lost father along the way. Final Recipe is one of many attempts made by the South Korean media giant CJ E&M (hereafter CJ) to break into the global film market. Led by the company’s US-born executive Miky Lee (Yi Mi-kyŏng), CJ’s ‘global project’ has an ambitious vision of broadening the horizons...