According to the Hankyoreh newspaper, one of Asia's biggest film festivals was launched in 1996 in the South Korean port city of Busan rather than the capital, Seoul, for a variety of reasons.
Chief among them was that three of the country's most important film scholars lived and worked there, including Kim Ji-seok, the late Busan Arts College professor who became the chief Asian movie programmer for Busan International Film Festival (BIFF).
Another factor was timing. In the mid ’90s, pop culture, especially movies and music, was driving the South Korean economy thanks to the democratic freedoms that came with the end of the dictatorship in 1988. When BIFF started as an art film festival celebrating all of Asia, it was successful because thousands of passionate Korean cinephiles were ready for it, even if they had to travel from Seoul to Busan.
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