Mark Jancovich has demonstrated that struggles over genre classification reveal much about how social identities are constructed through the use of cultural distinctions. As he explains, ‘genre definitions are produced more by the ways in which films are understood by those who produce, mediate and consume them, than they are by the internal properties of the films themselves’ (Jancovich 2001: 33–4). More than this, genres cannot

These observations – which suggest that genre classification is a process to be observed, rather than a fixed destination to be arrived at – are of particular relevance in the case of the simultaneous reception at multiple exhibition sites of New Korean Cinema. South Korea's emerging national film industry is revealing itself to be open to struggles over its meaning and status at home and abroad. Questions of genre have a crucial role to play in this regard.