泥中蟠龍's Game愛歌
[A love song for games of the dragon waiting for an opportunity]
Records of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and Ninja
Autumn has come with a cool breeze in the morning and at night. In my experience, soon it will be winter when I feel the cool air. However, looking at short-sleeved shirts still hanging in the closet, I'd like to say that summer has just passed. A lot of things happened in the content industry last summer. Assassination (directed by Choi Dong-hoon) and Veteran (directed by Ryoo Seung-wan) recorded over 10 million viewers respectively. Also Friends Pop created a great sensation amongst mobile game users. And I heard the news about the production of the feature-length version of The Flying Superboard, a TV animation series.
The most memorable thing for me was Monkey King: Hero Is Back, a Chinese computer-animated film, which drew 20 million viewers in China. It broke all kinds of records showing the huge potential of the Chinese animated-film industry to product animation movies only for the domestic market. Monkey King: Hero Is Back, took in 700 million Chinese yuan (about 1300 billion South Korean won) gaining extreme popularity across China. Let me give you examples for better understanding. Until now, only The Admiral: Roaring Currents and Avatar attracted over 17 million and 13 million viewers nationwide respectively: The Admiral had a big lead over the Hollywood blockbuster in terms of the total number of viewers, however, both had similar box-office profits because of significantly high percentage of 3D-movie audiences for the James Cameron's film.
To be frank with you, I envy China and Japan who own top-class global characters. Both have rich cultural contents which have lots of fans all over the world. Records of the Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West, among countless Chinese contents, are the most recognized traditional ones which are equal to the attractions from The Walt Disney Company. Japan created a world-famous character from an ordinary covert agent in feudal Japan and has consistently made diverse attempts to develop variations.
Considering the domestic situation, I'm so disappointed. Sadly, there is no national content or character especially popular in the world. Of course, it doesn't come overnight. The success is only possible based on thorough historical research and various reinterpretation of the content. Many Korean people are not generous to reinterpretation in multiple ways different from the fact. Someone who transforms history into a story to make better content is easily criticized for distorting history.
All that aside, The undeniable fact is that South Korea is one of the content powerhouses in the world. Domestic film's market share is higher than most nations and Korea is a big part of the global video-game market. But I'm not sure that I can say proudly to our next generation about the status of Korea in the world content market in a couple of decades. Seeing Monkey King: Hero Is Back, I just think that we should try to make a competitive-advantage character from now on for our children.
※ This is from Kyunghyang Games column by 泥中蟠龍 since September 2013.
(http://www.khgames.co.kr)
Translation by Kim Ki-hui
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