In 2018, when seasoned actor Mon Confiado flew to Busan, South Korea, to work on the film "The Golden Holiday," he shared via social media his experience there.
He wrote: "I'm now shooting here and found out that their Government lets the local filmmakers use Soundstages (Studios) for FREE! They really support and helping their Entertainment Industry. Now I understand why their Film Industry is booming!"
https://www.facebook.com/mconfiado/posts/10217168107337949
Mon went on to note some of the things he learned there like screen quota.
"In Korea, the government tries to protect the local industry by imposing a screen quota, which mandates each theater in the country to screen domestic films for at least 146 days a year," he related.
He also talked about the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), which he described as a self-administered body that is in charge of stimulating and protecting the domestic film industry both on a national and international level.
As for international film festivals, Mon shared that South Korea has a number of events such as the Pusan International Film Festival, the Jeonju International Film Festival, and the largest one, the Busan Film Festival.
According to him, these film festivals cater to different markets by introducing new films and first-time directors to audiences.
"The festival also attracts a lot of young audience due to their prestige and status as significant events and it also helps production of future films," he added.
Mon also tackled South Korea's more liberal censorship.
"Creativity is encouraged in Korea’s film industry, and it shows in their approach to censorship; Who could forget Park Chan Wook’s Oldboy, which featured incest themes and lead actor Choi Min Sik eating a live octopus on camera. This film would have been banned or heavily censored in some countries, but not in South Korea. Their approach is that instead of censoring or cutting the scenes out, they allow it to be preserved the way the director intended, and just depend on the KMRB (Korean Media Ratings Board)’s system to ensure that they won’t be seen by impressionable people of a certain age," he maintained.
He also noted the importance of funding.
"It takes a lot of money to start a full-length feature but there’s no guarantee of ROI, so investors are not likely to risk it and getting bank loans is equally difficult. The South Korean government aims to alleviate this problem by investing a total of 380 billion won as seed money for the country’s domestic films. The seed money is also being invested smartly, because aside from providing support to new studios, it is also used to grant subsidies to established studios based on the performance of their earlier projects, making the program merit-based," he said.
Mon revealed that South Korea has movie-making courses even at the primary schooling level.
"In many countries, people who want to study film making and production have to take it up as a college course, but in South Korea, skills related to movie making are taught as early as elementary. In fact, some schools have invested in equipment that allows teachers to teach movie making, these equipment can include actual blue screen technology and rooms with set pieces that can be used for role playing and staging of plays," he shared.
The veteran actor also reiterated how Korean directors, writers, editors, composers, and other production staff are just as important and well-paid as actors.
"Despite all the glamour surrounding their actors and performers, the South Korean entertainment industry does not ignore people behind the scenes. Directors, writers, composers, and other production staff are deemed as important as the actors and are well-paid," he said.
Meanwhile, Mon also likes the fact that there are movie houses in every province, which he believes helps a great deal in promoting South Korea's film industry.
"Because it makes watching movies easier for people – they don’t have to commute or drive to faraway places just to watch the latest offerings," he related.
He discussed as well the continuous reinforcement of tradition and culture in movies and TV dramas.
"If you take a look at the wave of South Korean TV Dramas and movies that became popular overseas, you will see that many of them are period dramas such as Empress Ki or Dae Jang Geum. These dramas do a great deal in promoting Korean history and culture to the outside world," he said.
Then lastly, Mon shared how the Koreans enforce taxes.
"The support that the government gives to the local industry does not come free, though, as the industry is taxed. But the main difference is that there is no favoritism, as the tax laws are enforced strictly regardless of how popular the celebrity is or how powerful their agency can be."
He ended his post by declaring: "I'm dreaming that one day our Film Industry will be like this!"
Well, many netizens are reviving the old post.
As of writing, 40K and 79K people have shared and reacted to the post, respectively.
On the other hand, among the 3.4K comments were netizens tagging the social media account of Senator Jinggoy Estrada.
Recall that a few days ago when he suggested to “ban” Korean dramas and other foreign-made films in the Philippines to boost local shows and support “homegrown talents.”
But it received mixed reactions.