Summary

• South Korea's unique take on zombie movies adds a fresh spin to the undead genre, with mythology and folklore as key inspirations.
• From historic beginnings to modern tales, South Korean zombie films offer a diverse range of storytelling, blending horror with social commentary.
• South Korea continues to innovate in the zombie genre, with movies like #Alive and Rampant adding new dimensions to the undead narrative.

South Korea's growing movie industry covers a wide range of genres including horror, leading to a number of great South Korean zombie movies. Hitting the mainstream in the 1960s with George A. Romero's The Night of the Living Dead, zombie movies are a staple of the horror genre. The zombie genre as a whole hasn't lost popularity as the years have gone on, with TV shows like All of Us are Dead and The Walking Dead keeping zombies on the screen. However, South Korea is also playing a big role in showing there is still life in the subgenre on the big screen.

Considering much of Korean horror is based on mythology and folklore, the best South Korean zombie movies often have a different spin on the undead than the typical zombie fare that comes out of the West. Nonetheless, this results in some truly terrifying films with imagery that will stick with audiences long after viewing. From anthologies to whole epic features, there may be more examples of South Korean zombie movies than most fans may necessarily realize.

15 A Monstrous Corpse (1981)

The First South Korean Zombie Movie

...it helps lay the foundation for the subgenre in South Korean movies...

A Monstrous Corpse is the South Korean zombie movie that started it all. Also called A Grotesque Corpse, the movie might seem like a more obscure choice when it comes to the best Korean zombie movies, but it is recognized as South Korea’s first official zombie movie. It’s actually a remake of the 1974 movie Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, which was a co-production between Italian and Spanish cinemas.

When a man arrives in town for an environmental conference, getting a ride from a woman who just returned from America to Korea herself, he crosses paths with an old university classmate who is participating in an experiment. The experiment, of course, is the catalyst for the undead to attack the woman, but no one initially believes her warnings.

It is not the bloodbath or thriller that modern zombie movies are. Instead, it helps lay the foundation for the subgenre in South Korean movies, though it does it through more of an investigative tale than anything particularly horror-like. It’s hardly the best zombie movie out of Korea, but it is a historically important one.

14 Gangnam Zombie (2023)

A Modern Zombie Pandemic

Gangnam Zombie, likely because it’s such a new zombie movie, is the only one to be set during the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the pandemic itself doesn’t play a huge role in the movie, even including it was likely a risk. Most audiences don’t want to be reminded of its existence so soon, but it does make the events of Gangnam Zombie seem even slightly closer to reality.

The movie takes place just before Christmas when two men break into a shipping container and one of them is infected from a scratch by a cat. That scratch leads to the man wanting to consume raw meat, and then human flesh. Every human he bites turns into a zombie, including those at an online streaming firm that has been struggling to find success. Two of the employees go on a journey of survival throughout the movie, struggling to make it out of the building and the neighboring parking garage.

The movie, like many classic zombie stories, doesn’t give the audience a conclusive ending, and that’s part of what makes the genre endure. It’s never clear if the human race is doomed or if there might be hope for the future after all.

13 The Neighbor Zombie (2010)

A Horror Story About Community

This horror story is light years away from A Monstrous Corpse, much closer to the modern level of gore seen in the horror subgenre. It’s not the best of the best that South Korea has to offer, though it did win the jury prize at the 2009 Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival in South Korea when it made its debut. For fans of zombie movies in general, it’s actually a great snapshot of how Korean storytelling differs from Western zombie movies.

Here, the conflict doesn’t take place at the start of a zombie apocalypse, and it’s not a simple take on kill-or-be-killed. Instead, the movie sees ordinary citizens in Seoul go against the government to protect their neighbors. While government officials are busy trying to kill anyone who is infected, citizens begin hiding their infected neighbors and sneaking them food. It’s not entirely a tale of community in a time of strife, since the horror elements are still there, but it comes close.

12 Zombie School (2014)

The Breakfast Club Meets The Faculty

If The Breakfast Club’s dysfunctional students and The Faculty’s students against body-snatched-teachers mentality were combined into a zombie movie, it would be something like Zombie School. Like many of the newer zombie television series in South Korea, Zombie School takes place in a high school.

In this case, however, it’s not set in one of the highly competitive academic settings that so many teen shows are known for. Instead, Zombie School takes place in a school for dysfunctional teens that typically has a more laid-back atmosphere. The teens are forced to band together and find common ground when their teachers begin to turn into zombies. One interesting point? The teachers become zombies when they’re bitten by pigs that were buried on the school grounds. It’s certainly a twist on how the zombie virus usually starts.

11 The Aliens And The Kong Kong Zombie (1989)

A Child Zombie Controls An Alien Invasion

...one of the most creative takes on the zombie subgenre of horror to come out of South Korea...

The Aliens And The Kong Kong Zombie is not a cinematic masterpiece. It doesn’t have the kind of rave reviews that something like Train to Busan does. That being said, it’s possibly one of the most creative takes on the zombie subgenre of horror to come out of South Korea - and it was released back in 1989.

In the movie, aliens stop by a Korean cemetery to reanimate bodies when they come to Earth. One of the bodies they animate is a little girl who was murdered during a kidnapping. She agrees to leave with the aliens if the zombies will specifically target the people responsible for her murder before another child is hurt. It’s not the most well-made movie, and makeup and effects have come a long way since then, but combining a child’s quest for justice with a sci-fi invasion and zombie horror is a great way to make the movie stand out.

10 Horror Stories (2012)

A Zombie Entry In This South Korean Horror Anthology

One of the most underrated horror anthology movies, Horror Stories saves the most frightening tale for the final entry with its zombie story. The movie takes an interesting approach to its anthology as each separate story is actually told by a young woman who has been kidnapped. She tells the stories in an effort to keep her kidnapper distracted and stay alive. Following a home invasion story, an escaped convict story, and a cautionary parable about plastic surgery, the film ends with a mortifying zombie onslaught.

Directed by Kok and Sun Kim, Ambulance on the Death Zone features a little girl who morphs into a mouth-foaming zombie after succumbing to an unknown infection. The little girl's mother and the paramedic she calls confront the little monster with harrowing results. The horror anthology movie was so well-received by audiences that it got two sequels, each with its own unique horror stories, and ultimately becoming a franchise that lives up to its namesake.

9 Seoul Station (2016)

An Animated Prequel To Train To Busan

Directed by Train to Busan's Sang-ho Yeon and released the same year, Seoul Station is an animated feature-length zombie movie that serves as a prequel to the live-action horror hit. Set one day prior to the events depicted in Train to Busan, Seoul Station imagines downtown Seoul being overrun by legions of zombies. Even many live-action zombie movies in Korean cinema set their stories in Seoul, but the animation here is fantastic.

Much of the plot revolves around Suk-Gyu (Ryu Seung-Ryong), a father desperately searching for his missing daughter, Hye-Sun (Shim Eun-Kyung), prior to the zombie pandemic. It's an interesting chapter in the story of modern South Korean zombie movies that audiences who enjoyed Train to Busan definitely need to check out, taking a refreshing approach to the set-up and adding more lore to Sang-ho Yeon's sprawling tale.

8 Rampant (2018)

A Korean Period Horror Movie

In Sung-Hoon Kim's period-set zombie film Rampant, dynastic Korea finds itself under a ruthless attack from an army of blood-thirsty ghouls. The story revolves around Lee Chung (Hun Bin), the Prince of Joseon who is kidnapped by the powerful Qing family with plans to appoint him the new Crown Prince.

As Lee Chung spars with Kim Ja-Joon, the Joseon Minister of War, a relentless attack of gory "night demons" threatens to annihilate the entire region. Though the movie wasn't as big a hit as its ambitious scale implied it would be, it remains an epic example of how South Korea has put its own unique spin on zombie fiction. The film finished first place at the box office for its opening weekend, proving that a blend of the best historical K-dramas and high-stakes horror is a match made in heaven.

7 The Cursed: Dead Man’s Prey (2021)

An Extension Of A K-Drama

The Cursed: Dead Man's Prey is an extended version of the horror K-drama The Cursed. Seeing some of the cast from the original series, the occult thriller opens with a shocking murder. What's worse, the body of the perpetrator is found next to the victim: and he's been dead for three months. While a journalist tries to follow up with someone claiming to be the real killer, it becomes clear that sinister forces are at work.

The man claiming to be the murderer prophesies that the undead will commit three more grisly murders. It becomes a high-stakes race against the clock to figure out exactly what's going on, and why zombies are walking among the living. The film features striking visuals and nail-biting sequences of pursuit by zombie assailants. The visuals alone are enough to give any viewer nightmares upon watching, which is why it's such a favorite among fans of the subgenre.

6 The Odd Family: Zombie On Sale (2019)

A Comedy About Zombies And A Dysfunctional Family

Shaun of the Dead has made zombie comedies a big part of the genre and one of South Korea's best attempts at this is The Odd Family: Zombie on Sale (sometimes simply titled Zombie for Sale), directed by Lee Min-Jae, which adds a memorable degree of quirkiness into the mix. The Odd Family revolves around the Park family as their lives are upended when the elderly patriarch suffers a sudden zombie bite.

When the family learns the zombie was created due to an illegal experiment conducted by a corrupt pharmaceutical company, the Park family attempts to use the experiments for their own financial gain. It's a great twist on the usual tracking of the zombie infection. With a high rating from critics, it sits above most South Korean zombie movies to rest just under the real masterpieces of the genre.