Entrepreneur brings Seoul of Korean movies to DFW

GRAPEVINE -- South Korea and Northeast Tarrant are nearly 7,000 miles, a few time zones and an ocean apart but, in one way, they are becoming as close as neighboring suburbs. In both, it's now possible to catch first-run Korean films as the AMC Grapevine Mills 30 here is scheduling the likes of Le Grand Chef 2: Kimchi Battle and Haeundae: The Deadly Tsunami alongside such American blockbusters as Avatar and Up in the Air.

The result is that Grapevine and generally art-house-starved Tarrant County -- not Dallas -- is becoming the place Asian film fans in the Metroplex go to when they want to see the latest Korean export. And they have one man to thank for it: Paul Shin.

The bespectacled Korean immigrant -- who moved from Seoul to the States in 1989 to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston -- had been in the music industry, working as a producer/engineer in "K-Pop," aka Korean pop. But now he's the man in charge of booking Asian films into select AMC Theaters across the country in some markets with a significant Asian population.

He made the leap when he and his business partner saw a void in the cinematic marketplace. While several South Korean movies, such as The Host and Oldboy, have garnered acclaim on the film-festival and art-house circuit, the sights and sounds of Seoul don't regularly play the mainstream multiplexes.

"We saw that a lot of Korean-Americans lived in the United States, but there were no movies in theaters," says Shin, 46, sitting in the lobby of AMC Grapevine Mills on a recent afternoon. "As a first-generation immigrant, it's hard to communicate with the American people to introduce your background. But a movie is a great medium to understand each other."

Making connections

So Shin made contact with various Korean distributors and American theater chains to drum up interest. On this side of the Pacific, he hit a brick wall at first.

"Everywhere I went, the first question I got was, 'Who are you?,'" he remembers with a laugh. "Asian films are a minor market, and it doesn't have a great revenue [for theaters], but AMC is good with independent films, so it was a good chance for me to introduce my films to this market."

AMC liked the idea and, beginning in February 2009, Shin got the chance to book the mystery-thriller Private Eye at a theater in New Jersey across from New York City. That led to the opportunity to book other AMC theaters in such markets as Chicago, Long Island, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle and Dallas/Fort Worth, and engagements for a string of Korean hits including the comedy My Girlfriend Is an Agent, the disaster flick Haeundae, the action film Take Off and most recently, the dramedy Le Grand Chef 2, which ended its run last week. The next film to play will be the spy thriller Secret Reunion, which will begin its run later this month or in early April. All are in Korean with English subtitles.

Of the local AMC theaters, he likes Grapevine Mills because it attracts a large audience from across the area. "It's in one of the biggest outlet malls in the area, and it has 30 screens," he says. "I felt it had a good chance to play and introduce the films, not only to Korean-Americans but the North American general public, too."

Shin, through his company, JS Media & Entertainment, even set up a Facebook page for American-based Korean-film aficionados called Korean Movies At US Theaters, which has more than 1,000 fans.

While Shin, who relocated from the New York area to Flower Mound last year, admits some films have done better than others -- Haeundae played for a month, Le Grand Chef 2 didn't do as well -- Kansas City-based AMC is happy with how the films have performed so far.

"We've had enough success to keep going," says Justin Scott, AMC's director of corporate communications, although he can't offer specific numbers. "We're trying lots of different things, and we're always looking at [audience] niches and, where it makes sense, to play these movies, we'll play them as long as they get traction."

Broadening the audience

The wave of Korean films came into the market without much fanfare. Even those who make it their business to keep track of what's going on in Asian moviemaking, like Crystal Decker-Norwood, programming director of the Asian Film Festival of Dallas, were caught off-guard.

"I was at a festival in New York [last year] when my husband e-mailed me and said My Girlfriend Is an Agent was showing at Grapevine Mills. We thought it was a mistake," she recalled in an e-mail. "But we checked with the theater, and they said, 'No, sometimes we get Korean first-run films.' We literally couldn't believe it.

"That's when I learned about Paul. At the next film, Haeundae, I hung out in the lobby and looked for someone who looked official. I just walked up to him and asked if he was responsible for bringing the film in, and to thank him."

What Decker-Norwood finds most impressive is that Shin is bringing movies from Korea while they're still in theaters back home.

"I don't think people really understand how unusual this is," she says. "Seeing a first-run box-office foreign film in a U.S. theater? Let's say you heard of a movie in Korea and you're interested, unless you're connected to the film industry in some way, you might be able to see it by Christmas, or next spring. Or maybe not at all."

Shin concedes that he hasn't gotten the word out to the general filmgoing community about what he's doing. Right now, he's only advertising in Korean-language media, although he would like to broaden to other markets down the line.

"There are a number of different stages that I have to go through. So the first target is Korean-Americans. And then those who attend the many Asian film festivals as well as people from other Asian countries, like China and Vietnam, who love Korean films," he explains. "Third is the general public, but that's a long way to go. [In general] American people don't watch films with subtitles."

He would also like to start bringing in films from other parts of Asia, specifically China.

Even though part of him misses the music business, Shin says that "film is more fun," and that his goal is to change some filmgoers' thinking about Asian films.

"When you think about films from Asia, it's either martial arts or an old, traditional film. It's not really representing the culture very well," he says. "But this is a good opportunity to understand the Asian community.... You can learn from culture and from friends, but watching a film is a different experience."

Cary Darling is the Star-Telegram pop culture critic, 817-390-7571