Cinema of South Korea

Police officers escort South Korean crypto mogul Do Kwon (R) in Podgorica, Montenegro. Photo: EPA-EFE/BORIS PEJOVIC

 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.

Filmmaker Park Chan-wook, known for his ultra-violent thrillers that helped catapult South Korean cinema onto the global stage, is back with an altogether different work, a restrained yet deeply emotional love story.

Does art imitate life or does life imitate art?

Clearly both may very well be true and one does not preclude the other.

The key issue is to what extent artists express and record the pulse of their era while at the same time highlighting parallel truths that are diachronically combined with a distinctive aesthetic result.

South Korean black comedy "Parasite" made movie history at the Oscars on Feb. 9, becoming the first non-English-language film to win the best picture award, Hollywood's biggest prize of all.

A genre-defying thriller about a poor family infiltrating a wealthy household, "Parasite" won four awards, stunning the pundits who believed the Academy would never crown a subtitled Asian movie.

The Athens International Film Festival (AIFF), the biggest event of its kind in the Greek capital, which this year will feature a fascinating selection of more than 200 films from different parts of the world, takes place from September 18-29 at 12 venues across the city. The event opens on Wednesday with Cannes' Palme d'Or winning black comedy "Parasite" by South Korea's Bong Joon-ho.

The Korean Embassy and the Korea Foundation present three films in a mini-tribute to the work being done by screenwriters and directors in the Republic of Korea, at the Village Cinemas multiplex in The Mall Athens.

World-famous composer and pianist Anjelika Akbar's complaint about a taxi driver who tried to overcharge her has stirred a debate on social media.

A taxi driver in Istanbul has been fined and banned from traffic for refusing to take a disabled passenger, local media reported.

A taxi driver in a viral video showing her crying after being paid a bill by two Iranian women in Istanbul has said the incident ended well with the help of good-hearted people.