The HFPA’s Ting Ting Xu examines Asian film trends through standout films and the authors behind them.

After Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite became the first non-English language film in Oscar history to win the award for Best Picture, as well as the Foreign Language Golden Globe, films from South Korea received an unprecedented amount of attention on the global market. With the Korean New Wave, South Korea has been witnessing a robust wave of high-quality films. Locally made films often beat Hollywood blockbusters at the box office, and director Woo Min-ho’s latest period political piece The Man Standing Next is one of them. The film dominated the four-day Lunar New Year holiday weekend box office at the beginning of 2020.

The film takes place in the 40 days leading up to Park’s assassination. Former KCIA director Park Yong-gak played by Kwak Do-won escapes to the United States and uses the Koreagate scandal as a way to build interest in his tell-all memoir. President Park sends his current chief of KCIA Kim Gyu-pyeong, played by Lee Byung-hun, to the States to ensure that Park Yong-gak’s memoir manuscript never sees the light of day. Before his trip to America, Kim already believed it was time for Park’s administration to end. Then his encounters with American spies and Park Yong-gak made him more worried about his country’s future if President Park continued his rule. Facing a tough dilemmaBefore Inside Men that focuses on the current corruption in South Korea and The Drug King starring Parasites’ Song Kang-ho and Sense 8’s Bea Doona. Cinematographer Ko Nak-Sun previously worked on A Taxi Driver, the South Korean entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards. He delivers a visual polish with blue-hued street scenes and overhead symmetry to build the suspense.