Sageuk

Common card · No. 403404

Sageuk (Korean: 사극; Hanja: 史劇; ) in Korean denotes historical dramas, including traditional drama plays, films or television series. In English language literature sageuk usually refers to historical films and television series (of South Korea). In North Korea, South Korean historical dramas are generally called 고전 영화 (Hanja: 古典映畫; MR: kojŏn yŏnghwa) or classic film. The first known historical film, The Story of Chun-hyang filmed in 1923, was directed by a Japanese filmmaker. The first Korean sound film was also sageuk. The heyday of Korean cinema began in the 1950s and lasted until the 1980s, with many sageuk films released, like Lee Gyu-hwan's Chunhyang adaptation in 1955. In the 1960s, historical melodramas were significant, as well as martial arts films. In the 1970s, due to the popularity of television, cinema started to decline, and in the 1980s it encountered a crisis, which prompted filmmakers to try to win viewers back with erotic pieces. From the 1990s, Im Kwon-taek's movies,...

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