'Squid Game' star says Korean cinematic rise was years in the making

Lee Jung-jae spoke after making history as the first foreign-language performer to win the Emmy for best actor in a drama

Smash hits like Squid Game and Parasite may make it look easy, but Emmy-winner Lee Jung-jae says South Korean cinema spent years learning how to reach unprecedented global audiences through stories about the competitiveness and violence of modern life.

Lee spoke just days after making history as the first foreign-language performer to win the Emmy for best actor in a drama with Squid Game — the most-watched Netflix show of all time.

“As a piece of work that is not in English that we’re able to bring to the global audience, we’re very happy about that,” said Lee.

“Even from Korea everybody was so happy and they were sending me congratulating messages,” he said during an interview at the Toronto film festival.

“When I go back there’s a lot of interviews and things waiting for me!”

The brutal social satire about misfits and criminals competing for cash in twisted versions of schoolyard games followed in the footsteps of South Korea’s Parasite, which two years earlier became the first foreign-language movie to win best picture at the Oscars.

“For a long time, Korean cinema has been trying to figure out how to connect better with global audiences,” said Lee.

“Now, as a result of these years-long efforts, we see a lot of high-quality content, that has resonated around the world and won critical acclaim.”

Commercial success

It has also been a huge commercial success: Squid Game director Hwang Dong-hyuk is writing an eagerly-awaited second season, with Lee teasing that his character Seong Gi-hun “will be completely different” this time around.

But before then comes Hunt, Lee’s directorial movie debut, which earned a prestigious “gala presentation” premiere this week at the Toronto International Film Festival — relatively rare for an Asian-language film.

The twisty Cold-War era spy thriller in which Lee also stars is loosely based on real 1980s political events, including an attempted assassination of South Korea’s president and the defection of a North Korean pilot.

Lee said the film shares some themes with Squid Game — including its unflinching depiction of violence, as rival South Korean spies turn against and even torture one another.

For instance, it too looks at how an “overly competitive society could actually lead to people hurting each other.”

Hunt has already topped the box office in its home country, and will be released in North American theaters and on-demand streaming on December 2 by Magnolia Pictures.