South Korean films are the talk of the town all over the world. Festivals, like the one above in Busan, draw large crowds. Their innovative forms of storytelling and high aesthetic standards have won audiences over. Here are 11 films in the diverse world of Korean cinema.

Long before the early 2000s, when Korean cinema really took off, Kim Ki-young made "Hanyo" ("The Housemaid"), an erotic thriller that is still today considered one of the best Korean films of all time. The impeccably filmed melodrama revolves around an affair between a rich man and household help that ultimately destroys the family.

The second film from director Lee Chang-dong (above) begins with the suicide of the businessman Yongho before going on to tell the story of his life in reverse chronological order, from present to past. Little by little, circumstances accumulate that could have led to his death.

This film alone significantly boosted South Korean cinema's popularity. A man is locked up in a tiny room for 15 years — without knowing why. After his release, he becomes consumed with getting revenge. The film, the second in a revenge trilogy by Park Chan-wook, is a masterpiece of the extreme filled with unforgettably powerful, dream-like images.

"Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring" is considered Kim Ki-duk's masterpiece. The director was later accused of sexual assault amidst the #MeToo movement, and died due to complications from COVID-19 in 2020 aged 60. The film, which depicts the unstoppable cycle of life, is about a Buddhist monk and his student who goes through the seasons of his life up to old age.

Bong Joon-ho's breakthrough is considered the most successful crime film to come from South Korea. It takes place from 1986-91 and is based on true events related to a serial killer who murdered 10 women in a northern province of South Korea. Two very different police officers want to solve the case, which makes for many humorous moments despite the heavy subject of this thriller.

Directed by Lee Chang-dong, the film tells the story of retiree Yan Mi-ja, who has early onset dementia. She attends a poetry class to relearn how to capture the beauty of the world in words. As she loses her memory, she simultaneously acquires a new vocabulary and way of perceiving her surroundings. It is through her eyes that the viewer sees a tragedy play out over the course of the film.

The film by Hong Sang-soo (above left, holding his Golden Leopard won at the Locarno film festival, with leading actress Min-Hee Kim) tells the story of one evening twice over: A famous director arrives in a city for a film screening, where he meets a beautiful young woman. They spend the day together. The shared evening goes awry, but the man gets a second chance. But is it really a happy ending?

In this erotic drama from Park Chan-wook, an inheritance hunter wants to steal a rich heiress' money. A pickpocket disguised as a maid is to enter the household and ensure the heiress falls in love with the inheritance hunter, but she herself falls in love with her target. Simple dichotomies between good and bad dissolve over the course of three acts and through multiple perspectives.

In this mystery thriller from Na Hong-jin, a stranger appears in a small village. Shortly after, horrific murders start occurring. The atmospheric horror film draws on various motifs of the genre as well as old folk tales and stories about satanic cults.

"Parasite" is not only the first non-English language film to have won the Best Picture Oscar. In many countries, it's also the most-seen Korean film of all time. Director Bong Joon-hoo's film sits somewhere between drama and satire. It serves up a biting critique of capitalism as it follows a family from a poor neighborhood of Seoul that manages to make its way into the life of a wealthy family.

The mystery thriller from Park Chan-wook (above right, with actor Hayato Isomura), is about a detective who falls in love with the widow of a man who supposedly died in an accident. The film premiered at Cannes in 2022, where it won the best director prize. It was South Korea's submission for Best International Feature Film at the 2023 Oscars, but didn't make the final cut.

In the "Honeycomb Challenge," participants have to remove the stamped symbol from a traditional "dalgona" Korean candy by licking or breaking the pre-carved shape out of it with a needle — without destroying it. The Brown Butter Cafe in Singapore organized the challenge for its guests. If they had followed the rules of the survival thriller series, this woman would have been dead.

Jung Jung-soon (right) and her husband Lim Chang-joo (left) prepare dalgona candy at their street stall in Seoul. They were hired during production of the series to make the crisp sweet, also called ppopgi, on set. Since the surprise success of the series, customers have been lining up to buy their snacks. Dalgona street vendors' sales have doubled.

Google searches for dalgona recipes have multiplied. On social networks, thousands of users show how to make the sweet. It's not difficult: heat sugar until it caramelizes, add a pinch of baking soda, stir, flatten it to make the round discs and imprint each with a mold.

The fact that the successful series comes from South Korea is no coincidence. Since the end of the 1990s, the government in Seoul has promoted cultural exports such as music, film and TV as an economic growth industry. It's been successful, as proven by boy band BTS and the 2019 Oscar-winning film "Parasite." The Korean Cultural Center in Abu Dhabi (photo) also organized a honeycomb challenge.

There was no dalgona candy at a Netflix promotional campaign in the Philippines — instead, visitors to the Robinsons Galleria Ortigas mall in Manila faced the robot doll from the "Red Light, Green Light" game. The 3-meter-tall (nearly 10-foot) figure warns pedestrians not to cross the street when the light is red. Luckily, unlike in the series, ignoring the warning doesn't result in getting shot.

A man and his daughter play the squid game on a squid-like diagram on the ground in Goyang, South Korea. As the attacker, the dad tries to reach the circle-shaped head at the top, while his daughter tries to stop him. The final game in the series is a classic South Korean children's game, which is once again enjoying increased popularity among young and old.

Within two weeks of its release, the South Korean series unexpectedly became Netflix's most watched program in at least 90 countries, including the US. A group of 456 people who are deeply in debt are invited to play a series of children's games in order to win a ton of money. But those who lose are killed. The violent, addictive survival drama is part of a film genre with a long tradition.

Some have accused "Squid Game" of plagiarizing the Japanese film "As the Gods Will," which tells a similar story, but with high school students participating in the survival game. Above, director Takashi Miike and actors Hirona Yamazaki and Sota Fukushi show heads of Daruma dolls at a film premiere. Just like in the Korean series, it is a doll who leads a deadly game of Red Light, Green Light.

Kinji Fukasaku's dystopian Japanese thriller also follows a group of high-school students who are forced by a totalitarian government to fight for their survival in an annual "Battle Royale" until a victor emerges. Even though many critics praised the film for reflecting the distressful experience of adolescence, it was banned in several countries due to its extreme violence.

Set in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future in the fictional nation of Panem, "The Hunger Games" opposes representatives of the nation's 12 Districts, who have to fight each other to death. Critics pointed out that there were many similarities between the "Hunger Games" films, based on a book series, and the novel and film "Battle Royale," which then became a label for the entire genre.

Also set in a dystopian future, this sci-fi film has been called "The Hunger Games" of 1975. By the year 2018, the world is controlled by corporations. The population is kept distracted by a sport called Rollerball, which combines football, roller derby, motocross and gladiatorial fighting. But the game turns into a carnage to eliminate the star player (James Caan), seen as a threat to the system.

Released just before "Rollerball," this film starring among others, Sylvester Stallone, is also set in a dystopian United States, in the year 2000. The country's totalitarian regime has created a national entertainment event called the Transcontinental Road Race, which has its drivers kill pedestrians for bonus points. The film was remade in 2008, followed by direct-to-video sequels.

This film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger also depicts a dystopian United States. In 2017, a totalitarian regime is in place. Serving as entertainment for the masses is a TV show called "The Running Man," which has convicted criminals run to avoid being killed by professional executioners. A long court case determined it was plagiarized from a 1983 French movie, "Le prix du danger."

That French film was not an original script, but rather based on a short story, "The Prize of Peril," written by US author Robert Sheckley. It had also previously been adapted into a German TV movie, "Das Millionenspiel" (The Game of Millions), praised for anticipating how television would turn to extreme reality shows for ratings. Here candidates hoped to survive to win a million German marks.

In this US horror thriller, 80 Belko Corp employees in Bogotá, Colombia are one day trapped in the company building. There, they hear a voice over an intercom, instructing them to kill a specific number of their own co-workers within certain time limits. The deadly challenge leads the co-workers to create various alliances, until only the strongest person remains alive at the end.

A big game hunter organizes to get a group of passengers from a luxury yacht stranded on a remote island in order to hunt them down. The early US horror movie is based on a highly influential short story by Richard Connell from 1924, which went on to inspire many other films of different genres, such as "A Game of Death" (1945), "Run for the Sun" (1956) or "The Pest" (1997).