Korean films about torture

Jin-seok, 21-year-old, moves into a new house with his family. He suffers from a slight schizophrenia but he carries an ordinary life under the warm care of the family. His older brother Yu-seok is a decent college student, a mentor, and role model for Jin-seok. One night, his beloved brother is kidnapped by unidentified assailants before Jin-seok’s eye. Jin-seok can’t recognize their faces, but can remember only the VIN that matches with no car. After long silence of 19 days, suddenly Yu-seok returns home, but remembers nothing which had happened in the meantime. And soon Jin-seok feels Yu-seok is a total stranger…

On September 4, 1984, democracy movement leader Kim Jong Tae (Park Won Sang) is arrested and taken to an infamous interrogation facility in Namyeong-dong. For the next 22 days, he would be cruelly and continuously tortured in all manners by interrogators intent on forcing him to confess to communist collaboration.

In the early 1980s, South Korea is torn by student protests over the lack of representation in the government. Song Woo-Seok is a successful attorney in Busan specializing in tax law. His views regarding civil liberties are changed by student activist Park Jin-woo. When Jin-Woo is brutally tortured and put on trial for his activism, Woo-seok decides to defend Jin-woo as his client.

Set in the late 1920s, The Age of Shadows follows the cat-and-mouse game that unfolds between a group of resistance fighters trying to bring in explosives from Shanghai to destroy key Japanese facilities in Seoul, and Japanese agents trying to stop them.

After a 13-year imprisonment for the kidnap and murder of a 6 year old boy, beautiful Lee Guem-ja starts seeking revenge on the man that was really responsible for the boy's death. With the help of fellow inmates and reunited with her daughter, she gets closer and closer to her goal. But will her actions lead to the relief she seeks?

1986 Gyunggi Province. The body of a young woman is found brutally raped and murdered. Two months later, a series of rapes and murders commences under similar circumstances. And in a country that had never known such crimes, the dark whispers about a serial murderer grow louder. A special task force is set up in the area, with two local detectives Park Doo-Man and Jo Young-Goo joined by a detective from Seoul who requested to be assigned to the case.

To combat rising violent crimes, the Police Chief asks Detective Oh Goo Tak to form a team consisting of criminals. He is currently suspended from the police force for using excessive force. He then gathers team members: Park Woong Chul who is a gangster, Lee Jung Moon who is the youngest serial killer with extraordinary intelligence and Jung Tae Soo who is a contract killer. Police Inspector Yoo Mi Young also joins the team and she tries to have these guys work as a team by dealing with them rationally and sometimes emotionally.

A young girl is raised as a killer in the Yanbian province of China. She hides her identity and travels to South Korea where she hopes to lead a quiet life but becomes involved with two mysterious men.

A poor North Korean fisherman finds himself an accidental defector, and is groomed to be a spy by an ambitious South Korean military officer.

Nanami Hoshino, a wealthy entrepreneur, marries Korean potter Kim Jun-ho, and they both live a seemingly happy life. Then, one year after their marriage, Nanami is killed by a biker on her way home. This tragedy leaves Jun-ho completely devastated. At the hospital, Nanami's ghost arises from her body, and upon meeting a ghost child, she realizes that she is a ghost whose presence cannot be seen. She then realizes that her death was no coincidence and Jun-ho is in imminent danger. Unable to communicate with normal humans, Nanami seeks help from the elderly psychic Unten in hopes of saving Jun-ho's life.

A case of the flu quickly morphs into a pandemic. As the death toll mounts and the living panic, the government plans extreme measures to contain it.

A son to a high-ranked official in North Korea commits a series of murders going across the countries around the world. The movie depicts the following events as South Korea, North Korea and Interpol start chasing down after him.

Based on the series by the popular Japanese novelist Keigo Higashino, this is a mystery drama that 'faithfully but freely' adapts the 3rd part in the series, . The story revolves around 3 characters: a woman who unwittingly killed her husband, a math genius next door who sets up a perfect alibi for her out of his attraction toward her, and a detective who closely traces her, finding the alibi suspicious.

The destinies of hard-luck lowlifes slowly converge and come crashing down: Jung-man barely gets by working at a sauna and taking care of his sick mother until he finds a bag full of cash in the locker room; Tae-young is in trouble after his girlfriend runs away with the money he borrowed from a loan shark. Soon, a dead body mysteriously turns up; Mi-ran, caught between her husband’s violence and a dead-end job as a bar hostess, she finds a young lover, Jin-tae who offers to kill her husband… And now their dog-eat-dog game starts.

Stuntman Cha Dal-geon gets involved in a tragic airplane crash and ends up discovering a national corruption scandal in the process. Go Hae-ri, the oldest daughter of a deceased marine, decides to work for the National Intelligence Service as a secret ops agent in order to support her mom and younger siblings, although all she wanted to do is to become a civil servant.

A shady cop finds himself in over his head when he gets caught between Internal Affairs and the city’s corrupt mayor, in this scintillating crime drama from Korean maestro Kim Sung-soo (The Warrior).

After moving into a new house, a young girl begins displaying strange and disturbing behavior until, one day, she disappears behind a closet. While the devastated father is left with no clue about his daughter’s disappearance, an exorcist shows up to help.

Gon, a Korean hitman bred in the United States where he works for a Chinese triad, usually flawless in taking out his targets, makes a terrible mistake in fulfilling a mission. Swamped by feelings of regret, Gon no longer wants to be a hitman, but, in order to tie up loose ends, his boss forces him to do another job in Korea.

During the Japanese colonial era, roughly 400 Korean people, who were forced onto Battleship Island (‘Hashima Island’) to mine for coal, attempt to escape.

As a grisly virus rampages a city, a lone man stays locked inside his apartment, digitally cut off from seeking help and desperate to find a way out.

Having died unexpectedly, firefighter Ja-hong is taken to the afterlife by 3 afterlife guardians. Only when he passes 7 trials over 49 days and proves he was innocent in human life, he’s able to reincarnate, and his 3 afterlife guardians are by his side to defend him in trial.

Hyeong-min, a prominent police detective, and Tae-oh, a killer who has confessed to multiple murders, maintain a fierce psychological confrontation.

Jong-Woo (played by Sin Ha-gyoon) is a poor, beleagured taxi driver with a bad attitude, understandable given the kind of clients he has to deal with. So when one night, a polite, well-dressed man offers an outrageous sum of money to rent the taxi for an extended period, Jong Woo doesn't ask any questions, though he does make rather cheerful and inappropriate conversation with his uninterested charge. It's difficult to blame Jong-Woo for this, given that it takes him some time to realize that he is not the protagonist of a low-brow comedy, but of an action-packed thriller.

Taysan, a young homeless man in dust-riddled Seoul, begins a series of illustrations over dusty surfaces. Through his Dust Art, Taysan starts the process of recovery from the pains of his past.

In the 1970s, Korea is under the absolute control of the President Park who controls the KCIA, the organization with an edge over any branch of government. The director of KCIA, KIM Gyu-pyeong, is the seemingly most prospective second-in-command. In the midst of reign of fear, a former KCIA director, PARK Yong-gak who knows all about the government’s obscure operations, exiles to the U.S. where the investigation of ‘Koreagate’ is underway. As the tension escalates, the stifling political maneuvering by the all second-in-command’s unfolds.

An undercover cop has his loyalties tested when the boss of the corporate gang he's spent years infiltrating dies.

1930s Korea, in the period of Japanese occupation, a new girl (Sookee) is hired as a handmaiden to a Japanese heiress (Hideko) who lives a secluded life on a large countryside estate with her domineering Uncle (Kouzuki). But the maid has a secret. She is a pickpocket recruited by a swindler posing as a Japanese Count to help him seduce the Lady to elope with him, rob her of her fortune, and lock her up in a madhouse. The plan seems to proceed according to plan until Sookee and Hideko discover some unexpected emotions.

Seong-cheol is a high school student who grew up neglected. In order to make money in a harsh society that abandoned him, he teamed up with Gi-joon, who is two years younger than him, to use his status as a minor to make money and seek a big blow. A father who left home, a sick brother and a mother whose cares for him. Seong-cheol, who was abandoned in hellish reality, starts a desperate survival in his own way.

When an illicit arms deal goes bad, North Korean spy Pyo Jong-seong finds himself targeted not just by the South Koreans but also his own bosses.

Stagnant since 1903, at an elevation of 9000', a volcano erupts on the mythical and majestic Baekdu Mountain.

A man receives a wedding invitation from his first love who he met in high school.

All unemployed, Ki-taek's family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.

A deadbeat teacher helps an angry, aimless teenager find direction in life during his final year of high school.

Pastor Park is head of a religious investigation center that exposes cults and cult leaders. While looking into a suspicious new religion called ‘Deer Mount,’ he slowly uncovers clues that connect this cult to a series of mysterious cases of missing teenage girls when a body is found inside a damaged tunnel beams. He begins to uncover dark secrets surrounding this cult and its enforcer Na-han.

The film is based on a true yet unsolved murder case from the early 1990s that is known among Koreans as the "disappearance of the frog children." In 1991, five elementary school students told their parents that they were going to hang out on a nearby mountain to catch frogs, and then they go missing.

After waking up with mysterious wounds on his hands, a champion fighter finds himself in an otherworldly battle against evil forces that wreak havoc in the human world.

After a traumatic event, a drug trafficker turns sides and conspires with a dangerously ambitious undercover police officer to bring down the mysterious kingpin of a major drug cartel. (Remake of the Chinese film “Drug War,” 2012.)

The film mainly follows the famous 1597 Battle of Myeongryang during the Japanese invasion of Korea (1592-1598), where the iconic Joseon admiral Yi Sun-sin managed to destroy a total of 133 Japanese warships with only 13 ships remaining in his command. The battle, which took place in the Myeongryang Strait off the southwest coast of the Korean Peninsula, is considered one of the greatest victories of Yi.

As a North Korean sleeper cell agent, Ryu-han infiltrates the South and assumes the role of a village idiot in a rural town. He observes the townsfolk and waits patiently for his mission. One day, after 2 years of playing the role of the village idiot, fellow elite spies Hae-rang, posed as a rock star and Hae-jin, posed as an ordinary student, are dispatched to the same town as Ryu-han. He helps the other two spies settle in and teach them how to adjust in the South. There is a sudden drastic political power shift in the North and all three spies receive an urgent and ultimate mission.

Kingdom of Goguryeo, ancient Korea, 645. The ruthless Emperor Taizong of Tang invades the country and leads his armies towards the capital, achieving one victory after another, but on his way is the stronghold of Ansi, protected by General Yang Man-chu, who will do everything possible to stop the invasion, even if his troops are outnumbered by thousands of enemies.

In 1951 ceasefire is declared, but two remaining armies fought their final battle on the front line Towards the end of the Korean War, a South Korean battalion is fiercely battling over a hill on the front line border against the North in order to capture a strategic point that would determine the new border between two nations. The ownership of this small patch of land would swap multiple times each day. Kang is dispatched to the front line in order to investigate the tacit case that’s been happening there. But he gets spiraled into the war that’s more terrifying than death itself when he meets his friend Kim, who has transformed into a war machine, and his unit. As the countdown for ceasefire begins, both sides become more vicious, resulting in deaths of countless lives until the last man could claim the land.

On the run from a dogged internal affairs agent, a corrupt cop reluctantly teams up with a defiant teen to unravel a conspiracy -- before it's too late.

A kidnapper disappeared 15 years ago without a trace. Five days before the case's statute of limitations expires, someone anonymously leaves a flower at the crime scene. A few days later, another kidnapping takes place using the same method on a similar target.

A three-tiered story centered on a trio of French tourists visiting the same seaside resort.

A magician meets a weird girl and offers her to work together in his magic show. It's only until a year later that he starts to know her personally and develops a feeling towards her despite her own problems.

In response to a sudden dismissal of staff, workers at a big retail store begin a protest against their employer's oppressive labor policies.

A story about a mentally ill man wrongfully accused of murder and his relationship with his lovingly adorable 6 year old daughter.

Ma Seok-do works as a detective squad chief. His team struggles to bust a criminal ring who originally came from Yanbian, China and led by Jang Chen.

When Hye-Jung was young, her life was difficult. She was good at fighting, but also studied well. Overcoming her tough situation, she is now a doctor.

Assassination is set in Korea and Shanghai in the 1930's during the Japanese occupation. The government resistance assigns a secret commando group with killing collaborators.