Socio-Critical Cinema in East Asia

Kyoung-suk Sung applies film sociology to socio-critical cinema across South Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, tracing how East Asian cinema confronts social injury, historical memory, institutional failure, and social justice.Situating socio-critical cinema in relation to the social problem film, Sung extends her analysis beyond a single national tradition or genre to consider how documentary, animation, and popular genres such as courtroom drama, disaster cinema, and true crime give form to social conflict and organize public feeling across theatrical and digital platforms.Through close analysis of key East Asian films such as Parasite (2019) and The Murmuring (1995) and their public reception, Sung identifies recurring themes, including colonial and wartime violence, contested histories, sexual violence, legal injustice, class polarization, state authority and surveillance, disaster, and medical precarity, and interrogates the conditions under which cinema contributes to social change.Sung positions socio-critical cinema as a cultural practice capable of transforming social problems into shared fields of emotional engagement, interpretation, and public debate over responsibility, memory, and reform. Its influence extends beyond the confines of the screen into audience response, journalism, festival culture, digital circulation, and civic response.