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Despite the enormous popularity of Hong Kong films in the mid1980s to the mid-1990s in South Korea, a scarcity of documents makes this phenomenon difficult to prove or illustrate. Very few explanations of this phenomenon are mentioned in any academic publications on Korean film history in Korean or in English. This period of the "Hong Kong Film syndrome"1 has been commemorated as the personal memories of individual audience members who lived through the time, rather than being mobilized as an important part of the cultural history of Korea: it seems to be completely erased from the cultural memory of Korean society, destined to vanish with the fading memories of fans. This article reevaluates the significance of the presence of Hong Kong cinema in Korean film culture at that time. In the process of analyzing this cultural phenomenon, the "Hong Kong Film Syndrome," I want to argue how popular culture, and especially that coming from a neighboring society, Hong Kong, provided an alternative space in which Korean people could actively engage themselves in the act of resistance and negotiation with various challenges coming from the domestic social and political situations, intertwined with the larger politics of global culture and economy.
The Hong Kong Film Syndrome
The 1980s were not in fact the first period of interaction between the film industries in Hong Kong and Korea. As early as in the 1960s, the two film industries maintained a close collaborative relationship. Although the fascination with Hong Kong films in Korea persisted throughout the early 1970s, due mostly to the international stardom of Bruce Lee, and was revived in the early to the mid-1980s with Jackie Chan's popular action films, in actuality, with the exception of the passionate reception of Lee's and Chan's films, this enthusiasm did not translate into a general popularity of Hong Kong cinema. Until the mid-1980s, the popularity of Hong Kong films in Korea was built up only around these two names.
A new stage of popularity of the Hong Kong cinema in Korea began in the mid-1980s, with the influx of a new generation of Hong Kong films. Besides the changing sociopolitical circumstances of Hong Kong during this time - most notably the SinoBritish Joint Declaration by the People's Republic of China (PRC)...