Korean cinema's dust-covered dystopias

Korea Herald

29-03-2025

Where smog-filled cityscapes mirror the darkness within
Last week's wave of yellow dust from China blanketed Seoul in a hazy shroud, turning the metropolis into something akin to a setting of a real-time apocalypse movie.
As people donned masks and hurried through their daily routines, the cityscape came off as eerily familiar to fans of dystopian cinema. The annual spring ritual of constantly monitoring air quality apps while watching layers of dust settle on every surface offers a timely lens through which to view Korea's growing catalog of home-grown dystopian films.
While Hollywood's apocalypses tend toward bombastic spectacle, Korean filmmakers have crafted more intimate portraits of societal collapse that feel uncannily prescient as the skyline vanishes behind thick clouds of toxic particulate matter.
Here are three standout Korean dystopian films that use environmental degradation among other issues as backdrops for deeper explorations of human nature.
"Concrete Utopia" (2023)
When a devastating earthquake reduces Seoul to rubble, the residents of an apartment complex find their building mysteriously left standing amid the ruins. Director Um Tae-hwa crafts a gripping social experiment as the survivors, led by the enigmatic Young-tak (Lee Byung-hun), establish a makeshift community that quickly devolves from democratic idealism to totalitarian insularity.
The film's ashen color palette and desolate cityscape form a visual language for moral decay. As resources grow scarce and outsiders beg for shelter, the residents' once-noble principles crumble faster than the surrounding buildings. A young couple, Min-sung (Park Seo-jun) and Myung-hwa (Park Bo-young), embody the ethical tug-of-war at the heart of the film -- is compassion for strangers a luxury only the privileged can afford?
"Concrete Utopia" earned South Korea's Oscar submission for best international feature in 2023, and despite its occasionally heavy-handed messaging, it's easy to see why. Its exploration of how quickly social order cracks under pressure resonates far beyond Korean borders.
Available on Netflix with English subtitles.
"Time to Hunt" (2020)
Director Yoon Sung-hyun's sophomore feature drops viewers into a financial dystopia where the dollar has become the only valuable tender. Through smog-choked streets and decrepit buildings, four desperate young men plot to rob an illegal gambling den for a chance at escape.
Korea as depicted on screen is a pollution-smothered nightmare of economic inequality. Yellow dust hangs perpetually in the air, creating an oppressive metaphor for the characters' desperate circumstances.
Yoon crafts his setting with impressive attention to detail -– abandoned buildings, massive surveillance screens and crowded slums suggest a world where environmental collapse and financial ruin have gone past the point of no return. The film's technical strengths -- from experimental lighting to its atmospheric set pieces in urban spaces -- create a dystopian sandbox that at once feels alien and uncomfortably plausible.
Available on Netflix with English subtitles.
"The Tenants" (2023)
In Yoon Eun-kyung's stark black-and-white nightmare, Seoul's housing crisis and pollution problems have spiraled into a Kafkaesque hellscape. The film follows Shin-dong (Kim Dae-gun), a fatigued office worker who hopes to score a coveted transfer to Sphere 2, a utopian city supposedly free from Seoul's suffocating air.
When threatened with eviction, Shin-dong reluctantly participates in "wolwolse," a government program allowing tenants to sublet portions of their already cramped apartments. His new tenants -- a bizarrely tall man and his near-silent wife -- request to live in his bathroom. This absurdist premise quickly transforms into genuine horror as the couple's unsettling behavior ramps up and Shin-dong discovers an entire ecosystem of people living in increasingly subdivided spaces.
Yoon's monochromatic visuals capture a world drained of both color and hope. The air pollution is so severe that citizens have become "clones in this zombie-like city," mechanically trudging through lives reduced to mere survival. As Shin-dong's home becomes progressively less his own, "The Tenants" delivers a scathing critique of housing problems that risk dignity for profit.
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