In an echo of the screenwriters and actors guild strikes in the U.S., the Korean guild is lobbying to revise legislation that prevents directors from receiving residual pay from hit movies and shows.
In April, the Directors Guild of Korea members took to the streets of central Seoul where the country’s Culture Ministry was holding a press conference on local copyright law.
Twenty-five years later, the directors are preparing to gather again to protest what they call the “collapse of the creative foundation” of the Korean film industry.
They are calling for revisions to the existing Copyrights Act, which dictates that all intellectual property and profits from video content belong solely to service providers — including legacy studios and streaming platforms — and do not have to be shared with individual professionals who participated in the creation.
Given such guidelines, companies like Netflix have faced little organized pressure to pay any residuals at all to Korean directors and screenwriters, even with massive hits like Squid Game.
“Without revising the Copyrights Act, we don’t have any bargaining power to negotiate remuneration issues with the production companies,” Yun-jeong Lee, a spokeswoman for the Directors Guild of Korea tells THR.
Hwang, the director of Squid Game, has also admitted in past interviews that he had the creative freedom to focus on his work because Netflix took the risk of investing in a production that other networks had passed on.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In April, the Directors Guild of Korea members took to the streets of central Seoul where the country’s Culture Ministry was holding a press conference on local copyright law.
Twenty-five years later, the directors are preparing to gather again to protest what they call the “collapse of the creative foundation” of the Korean film industry.
They are calling for revisions to the existing Copyrights Act, which dictates that all intellectual property and profits from video content belong solely to service providers — including legacy studios and streaming platforms — and do not have to be shared with individual professionals who participated in the creation.
Given such guidelines, companies like Netflix have faced little organized pressure to pay any residuals at all to Korean directors and screenwriters, even with massive hits like Squid Game.
“Without revising the Copyrights Act, we don’t have any bargaining power to negotiate remuneration issues with the production companies,” Yun-jeong Lee, a spokeswoman for the Directors Guild of Korea tells THR.
Hwang, the director of Squid Game, has also admitted in past interviews that he had the creative freedom to focus on his work because Netflix took the risk of investing in a production that other networks had passed on.
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