The filmmakers of South Korea are among the best in the world. Movie fans saw the great Bong Joon-ho make history by not only winning Best International Film at the Oscars for Parasite but Best Picture as well, something that has never happened before.
But Bong Joon-ho is not alone. His Korean contemporaries like Kim Jee-woon, Park Chan-wook, and others have been turning in world-famous for years and may follow Bong Joon-ho’s footsteps at the Oscars one day. To give you an idea of the high caliber of their work, check out the 15 best South Korean thrillers from the 2010s!
Veteran (2015)
Stars Hwang Jung-min and Yoo Ah-in tower in this comedic cop thriller as a hard as nails detective and the diabolically arrogant businessman that he butts heads with.
Veteran has plenty of exhilarating bare-knuckle action to keep the audience on the edge of their seats but it’s the feel-good quality of the movie that makes it such essential viewing in these harsh times.
The Outlaws (2017)
When a brutal gang of Chinese gangsters moves into Seoul, the city’s toughest cop has to take them down with pure muscle. Luckily, he’s exactly the man for the job.
Ma Dong-seok truly comes into his own as one of the decade’s biggest breakout stars from the world of movies and The Outlaws deftly balances laughs with thrills via some lovable heroes and some seriously intimidating villains.
A Hard Day (2014)
A corrupt cop goes through a grueling ordeal when, on the evening of his mother’s funeral and a simultaneous raid on his office by internal affairs, he accidentally hits and kills a man with his car.
Covering up the crime is nerve-wracking enough as it is, but he soon discovers that he was witnessed in the act and must find a way to somehow outsmart his ruthless blackmailer before whatever luck he has left finally runs out.
The Spy Gone North (2018)
A dramatization of a real-life South Korean intelligence operation to place a spy within the North Korean nuclear program, The Spy Gone North is an unexpectedly emotional rollercoaster of tense standoffs and secret identities.
Hwang Jun-min leads the terrific cast as the infiltrating agent and, with a ceaselessly compelling performance, makes this thriller one that steadily sucks you in further and further, right until the final moments.
Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time (2012)
World-renowned actor Choi Min-sik leads this impressive crime saga as an unscrupulous customs agent who steadily crimes the ranks of the South Korean organized crime world, building his own empire and even forming bonds with the Japanese Yakuza.
Steeped in South Korean history and culture, Nameless Gangster is a wildly unpredictable movie thanks to its relatably bumbling (yet deceptively intelligent) protagonist and the endless scrapes that he has to think his way out of.
The Yellow Sea (2010)
In the gory and hyper-violent Yellow Sea, a simple taxi driver is hired to travel from China to South Korea to assassinate an unknown target. Yet through unforeseen circumstances, the job goes terribly wrong and the taxi driver must run for his life.
Directed by Na Hong-jin, The Yellow Sea blends big, broad action with personal drama in ways rarely seen. As the taxi driver evades a series of violent attacks, he tries to track down his estranged wife. With a hair-raising finale, few Korean thrillers of the past decade have been this effective!
The Housemaid (2010)
For a torrid and thrilling romantic melodrama, look no further than Sang-soo Im’s lusty Housemaid!
Aside from the slick direction and convincing performances, what makes the movie so great is the twisty premise. When a young housemaid, named Eun-yi, is hired by a wealthy couple, things look bright. But when the father of the family seduces Eun-yi, the matriarch of the family finds out. Tables turn and allegiances shift as the women in the family plot to ruin Eun-yi’s life.
The Age Of Shadows (2016)
Kim Jee-woon is among the top Korean filmmakers working today, joined by the likes of Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho. As such, his period-thriller The Age of Shadows is a cut above the rest!
Starring Parasite’s Song Kang-ho, the movie centers on a group of Korean resistors who, in retaliation to the Japanese government’s severe oppression, conducts a bombing campaign with stolen explosives. The resistors seek to raze the Japanese properties that threaten to squeeze local Koreans out of business in this taut thriller.
The Man From Nowhere (2010)
Not to be confused with the 1966 Spaghetti Western of the same name, Lee Jeong-beom’s The Man from Nowhere is one of the most thrilling action movies to come out in recent years, regardless of the country of origin!
The premise finds a Korean mother involved in a drug-smuggling operation. When she is caught stealing from her bosses, the woman’s young daughter, So-mi, is kidnapped. So-mi happens to be the only human connection to Cha Tae-sik, a gruff former special agent who takes it upon himself to find the girl and deliver her home safely.
The Handmaiden (2016)
While most famous for shaking up the world with his 2003 revenge tale Oldboy, in 2016, Park Chan-wook turned in a sultry and deeply duplicitous romantic thriller in The Handmaiden!
Set in 1930s Korea, the movie tracks Soo-kee, a hired handmaiden, to look after a rich Japanese heiress named Hideko. However, Soo-kee is really a cunning thief who has been hired by a man to help seduce Hideko and bilk her fortune. Soo-kee enlists her boss, posing as a Japanese Count, to do the seducing. Of course, nothing goes as planned!
Train To Busan (2016)
Even among the best zombie movies and shows of the past decade, Train to Busan shines as a refreshing genre exemplar. It’s simply one of the best movies to come out of South Korea in the last few years!
The reason why the movie works so well, aside from the awesome FX and gruesome zombie action, is the strong relationship between the two main characters and the performances by the actors. When a somewhat neglectful father (Yoo Gong) allows his young daughter to travel via Seoul to Busan on the KTX train, he has no idea a zombie apocalypse is about to break out. Now he must not only defeat scores of undead ghouls but save his daughter as well.
Snowpiercer (2013)
From one train to another! Bong Joon-ho is such a talented filmmaker that you can make a case for all three of the thrillers he made between 2009-2019 being masterpieces. While Mother can’t be counted as it’s from 2009, Snowpiercer cracks the top five!
Set in a dystopian future following an environmental catastrophe, Earth’s population has been quarantined in a giant train called Snowpiercer that circles the globe. Social classes are divided between the various compartments of the train, with the rich and powerful upfront and the disenfranchised in the back. The movie is so good TNT turned it into a TV show!
The Wailing (2016)
Director Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing almost plays like the South Korean cousin of David Fincher’s famous thriller Se7en.
The movie follows a police detective who investigates a spreading sickness in a small fishing village that has something to do with a mysterious stranger that’s new to town. With great performances, splendid photography, and a spine-chilling revelation by the end, this movie is essential viewing.
I Saw The Devil (2010)
In terms of brutal revenge movies, little can outdo Kim Jee-woon’s unflinchingly violent and hugely satisfying I Saw the Devil. In South Korea, or anywhere else!
The movie tracks a sadistic psycho-killer and one of the his latest victims, Joo-yeon, was married to a skilled secret agent named Soo-hyun. Vowing revenge, Soo-hyun tracks down the killer, pulverizes him too a bloody pulp, allows him to escape, only to chase him all over again and repeat the process.
Parasite (2019)
To simply label Parasite a thriller is not only lazy, but it’s also reductive. Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece transcends genre and defies category in ways audiences rarely see. It’s funny one moment, thrilling the next, dramatic one moment, horrific the next, all of which builds up to a gut-punching finale.
But the real strength of the movie is the socioeconomic commentary it so sharply observes, highlighting the class divisions and financial inequality that plagues our time.
