Escape from Mogadishu (2021): The Geographical Expansion of Korean Cinema

This paper discusses the transnational aspirations and territorial expansions evident in the textual and contextual spaces of South Korean cinema. I focus on the film, Escape from Mogadishu (Ryoo Seung-wan, 2021), to examine how it expands the territorial scope and topography of Korean cinema. This film demonstrates how local and global agents are converging in Korean media production, and it provides a glimpse into the opportunities provided by expansions into foreign locations that diversify the topographies of Korean cinema. Ryoo’s film, I contend, illustrates the Korean film industry’s overseas expansion by demonstrating an advanced level of professional expertise needed to systematize a transnational production. Through this case study, I analyze how the global ambitions of the Korean film industry manifest in non-Korean settings, and how this reflects territorial tensions that trouble the increasingly porous borders of a globalizing nation.