“In the past, the zombie genre was considered somewhat minor, but works like Train to Busan and Kingdom were well-crafted pieces. I believe that even without focusing on the zombie characters, the movies’ stories and high production level provided satisfaction to the audience.”

South Korean culture has become increasingly popular among international audiences since the beginning of the Korean Wave, or Hallyu, in the 1990s.

“We’ve been enjoying South Korean music, TV and food, similar to the Japan wave a few decades ago. So, you could see that there’d be an obvious attraction to a South Korean spin on a well-worn theatrical genre, the zombie horror film,” says Swinburne University cinema and screen studies lecturer Dr Andrew Lynch.

However, he notes that many of the most popular titles overseas – including Kingdom, All of Us Are Dead, and #Alive – are Netflix productions.

“Shows like Kingdom are South Korean creations. They were shot there, they cast South Korean actors. But they were commissioned by Netflix, a globally focused US-based company. It’s important to recognise these are products of a global industry that’s looking to put an exotic, or at least novel spin, on familiar, identifiable content.”

The South Korean spin on zombies came at an ideal time for the streaming giant, Lynch says, as audiences appeared to be becoming bored by the inundation of “American zombies”, a trope that had been exhaustively explored by 2016 and had veered into the realm of parody with films like Zombieland and Warm Bodies.

“Crunchy zombies”

One of the main drawcards is the physicality of South Korea’s undead, Lynch says. For example, in Peninsula, the sequel to Train to Busan, a person on-board a refugee ship begins to contort as they transform into a zombie. The transformation is paired with the cracking and crunching of bones, as the body shifts into almost balletic contortions.

“I think of it as the crunchy zombie,” Lynch says. “Traditionally in Western zombies, there’s a low moan or a shambling shuffle. Even Danny Boyle’s zombies [28 Weeks Later], they usually charge forward wordlessly. You can almost hear the South Korean zombie – the sound of the damage they’re doing to their own bodies as they reanimate and scramble over each other to try and reach you.”

Beyond the physicality, programmer of the Korean Film Festival in Australia Francis Lee says South Korean zombies are generally more nuanced than simply monstrous killers.

“Unlike in Hollywood films where zombies are typically depicted as adversaries, Korean narratives frequently depict survivors who have personal ties to the zombies, emphasising themes of compassion, empathy, and the complexity of human emotions even in the face of catastrophe.”

For example, in Il Cho’s #Alive, a man tries to feed one of the main characters to his undead wife. It initially appears to be a villainous act, but upon closer inspection, it’s merely a desperate man afraid to accept his wife is gone.

Zombies, but make it political

Bong Joon-ho’s The Host was partly inspired by the US military’s dumping of formaldehyde in South Korea’s waterways in 2000. Train to Busan explores a reality where capitalism is left unchecked.

Dr Sung-Ae Lee, a lecturer in Asian studies at Macquarie University who has researched zombies in South Korean cinema, says it’s rare for K-zombie content to centre entirely on the human vs zombie conflict, instead injecting thought-provoking social commentary into the violence.

“Zombies resonate with the many outsider groups in South Korea. With one per cent of the population controlling most of the wealth, and a very weak social welfare system, masses of people are economically and socially deprived.”

This is epitomised in the animated zombie film Seoul Station, Sung-Ae Lee says, when the army, mobilised to deal with the zombie incursion, indiscriminately slaughters both zombies and the urban dispossessed who are seeking escape.

Western zombie films are also rife with political symbolism, including Night of the Living Dead, which was interpreted as a political statement on contemporary issues like the Cold War and civil rights. Kim says part of K-zombie content’s appeal is its ability to merge South Korea’s history with contemporary political issues.

For example, Kingdom is set during the 16th and 17th century, but Kim says the zombie figure is symbolic of both the “misguided desire for power and the extreme hunger of the common people”, issues that are still occasionally evident in modern-day South Korea, and evident in popular films like Parasite.

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“It’s not just about simple primitive satisfaction, but rather genre satisfaction – filling films with suspense and action – along with a sense of the present era embedded in past stories,” Kim says. “All of this effectively conveyed tension to the audience and evoked great empathy.”

Though specific to South Korea’s history and contemporary socio-politics, the themes resonate universally.

“These are global themes now,” Sung-Ae Lee says. “Urban isolation, contrasts between egocentric and pro-social or altruistic behaviours, suspicion of how political power is gained and used, and class struggle in a world where financial instability and upper-class privilege are rampant. Everywhere social and economic gaps are widening.”

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