On July 1, 2006, South Korean movie stars and directors such as Lee Byung-hun, Song Kang-ho, Choi Min-sik, Bong Joon-ho, and Park Chan-wook joined 2,000 other people on a street in Seoul. The celebrities—many of whom who would go on to earn international acclaim with drama series and films such as Squid Game and Parasite—were not there for a premiere but to protest a government measure that went into effect that day: the reduction of South Korea’s screen quota.
The South Korean screen quota dates to the 1960s and requires the country’s movie theaters to feature domestic films for a certain number of days; at its peak, the system required theaters to show South Korean productions for at least 146 days of the year under the banner of promoting the domestic film industry. The protest attended by Park and others was in response to the government’s decision to halve the quota to 73 days—one of numerous film industry-led efforts between 1998 and 2006 to resist any amendment to the decades-long protectionist measure.
