There's a reason all these critically-acclaimed and commercially celebrated Korean movies and tv shows with heavy social commentary started coming out rather suddenly in recent years. The two previous right-wing administrations that ran South Korea between 2007 and 2016 decided that artists criticizing the ills of society were 'impure elements' and therefore, a threat to their regime. Putting aside the anachronism of it, blacklisting critical minded artists had a huge impact on Korean culture; people started self-censoring just to be safe, and 'safe' never was a recipe for masterpiece when it comes to art. Movie studio/distributor CJ Entertainment was targeted for producing the majority of films by directors and writers who seemed to support 'the other side' and it was an open warning to all the other movie producers. It wasn't immediately obvious how it impacted the Korean cinema/art scene until president Moon and his Democratic party took power in 2017 in the aftermath of impeachment of president Park from what is now People Power party. Once the censorship was lifted, movies such as Parasite came out. It was directed by Bong Joon Ho who was blacklisted in the previous administration, and its main lead was Song Gang Ho, who was also blacklisted for playing president Roh in a previous movie, the last Democratic president replaced by president Lee. Lee incidentally jailed an artist for drawing a rat on a wall in Seoul because Lee was said to resemble a rat. It was as if all these blacklisted artists were just waiting for their vengeance and their weapon of choice was sharp wit and freedom. Some nine thousand artists were blacklisted in a country of a little over 50 million people and while their absence might have gone unnoticed by the world, their subsequent reemergence was definitely noticed. While not blacklisted themselves, even musical artists such as BTS seemed to thrive in the new, liberal environment and soared to the top of charts everywhere. On March 9, 2022, the far-right candidate Yoon Seok-youl from People Power party was elected president with promises of crackdown on all things president Moon. It's hard to tell how long it'll be before we notice the change of tune in Korean cinema and Korean culture in general, but it might be a while before they can resume producing quality art in quantity.