Korean cinema has always had a brilliant knack for smuggling heavy societal baggage into genre flicks. Right now, we’re seeing two wildly different films—an indie horror-comedy and a blockbuster zombie thriller—doing exactly that, turning modern-day anxieties into literal monsters that reflect the suffocating weight of the systems we live in.
The Ghosts of the Classroom
“Don’t wind up the parents, don’t upset the kids, and whatever you do, keep your head down.” That’s the cracking bit of advice handed to Eun-kyung, a student teacher returning to her old stomping ground in Kim Min-ha’s latest indie hit, Student Teacher. It’s a cheeky throwaway line, but it lands uncomfortably close to home for anyone keeping an eye on the current, rather dire state of South Korea’s education system.
Released exclusively in CGV cinemas on the 13th, the film bills itself as a “horr-ovely” (horror meets lovely) high-school comedy. Eun-kyung ends up teaming up with a gang of girls from the black magic club to fight off CSAT—the notorious university entrance exam—ghosts in a deadly mock exam. Sounds utterly barmy, doesn’t it? But beneath the overt B-movie sensibilities and the barrage of laughs, there’s a razor-sharp critique of the collapse of teachers’ authority and a ruthless private education market that leaves the most vulnerable students behind.
Kim’s direction isn’t just taking a punt in the dark here. He was genuinely rattled by the realities he heard from educators, eventually leading him to focus on the tragic 2023 death of a teacher at Seoi Elementary School—an event that sparked massive national protests over teachers’ rights. But instead of delivering a dour, heavy-handed documentary, he wraps this trauma in a delightfully off-kilter cinematic universe. If you caught his previous film, the 2024 hit Amoeba Girls and School Ghost Stories: School Anniversary—which swept up awards at both BIFAN and the Blue Dragon Film Awards—you’ll recognise the shared DNA. He’s building a proper indie franchise out of school exams and the supernatural, a rare and ambitious move for the independent circuit. And it’s paying off nicely; Student Teacher has already nabbed the top spot at the indie box office, proving that audiences are well up for chewing on grim social issues if you serve them up with a decent rhythm of scares and satire.
The Hive Mind and the Horde
Speaking of monsters evolving to reflect the times, Yeon Sang-ho—the bloke who practically wrote the modern rulebook for Korean zombies—is back, and he’s bringing the heavy artillery. His latest picture, Swarm, sees him teaming up with A-lister Jun Ji-hyun, alongside a stacked cast including Koo Kyo-hwan, Ji Chang-wook, Shin Hyun-bin, and Kim Shin-rok. But Yeon is adamant about one thing: these zombies are built differently.
During the press screening at CGV I’Park Mall in Yongsan on the 20th, the director laid his cards on the table. He isn’t just churning out another rabid, sound-chasing horde. This time, he’s looking at artificial intelligence. Swarm traps a group of survivors in a locked-down building, forcing them to fend off an infected mob that constantly upgrades its tactics. Yeon drew inspiration from how AI aggregates collective intelligence. As the hive mind grows stronger, individual humanity gets steamrolled. So, rather than your standard flesh-eaters, these creatures represent the terrifying, unstoppable force of groupthink and conformity. To make this look right on screen, he ditched the breakdancers he used to choreograph his previous ghouls and brought in contemporary dancers to nail a more avant-garde, unified movement for the mob.
To ground a film where the survival rules are in constant flux, you need a bloody good anchor, and that’s where Jun Ji-hyun steps in as Kwon Se-jung, a biotech professor. As Yeon rightly pointed out, if the audience loses track of the shifting rules, they lose the plot entirely. Jun’s character becomes the essential vessel for figuring out this deadly puzzle. She admitted to dialling back the action slightly during filming—after all, it wouldn’t make much sense for an academic to suddenly start fighting like a seasoned mercenary—but she maintains the tension, doing just enough to survive whatever the swarm throws at her next.
Whether it’s Kim Min-ha using academic ghosts to dissect the suffocating pressure of the modern classroom, or Yeon Sang-ho weaponising the concept of collective intelligence to terrify us about the loss of our own individuality, the underlying current is hard to ignore. The monsters aren’t hiding under the bed anymore. They’re built right into the system.
