My Top 10 Best Korean Thrillers

1. Oldboy (2003)

Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) is a husband and father whose reputation for womanizing is well known. One day, for reasons he doesn't understand, Oh Dae-su finds himself locked up in a prison cell, with no idea of what his crime was or whom his jailers may be. With a small television as his only link to the outside world and a daily ration of fried dumplings as his only sustenance, Oh Dae-su struggles to keep his mind and body intact, but when he learns through a news report that his wife has been killed, he begins a long and difficult project of digging an escape tunnel with a pair of chopsticks. Before he can finish -- and after 15 years behind bars -- Oh Dae-su is released, with as little explanation as when he was locked up, and he's soon given a wad of money and a cellular phone by a bum on the street. Emotionally stunted but physically strong after 15 years in jail, Oh Dae-su struggles to unravel the secret of who is responsible for locking him up, what happened to his wife and daughter, and how to best get revenge against his captors.

2. I saw the devil (2010)

CHOI Min-sik plays Kyung-chul, a dangerous psychopath who kills for pleasure. The embodiment of pure evil, he has committed horrifying and senselessly cruel serial murders on defenseless victims, successfully eluding capture by the police. On a freezing, snowy night, his latest victim is the beautiful Ju-yeon, daughter of a retired police chief and pregnant fiancée of elite special agent Soo-hyun ( Lee Byung-hyun). Obsessed with revenge, Soo-hyun decides to track down the murderer, even if doing so means becoming a monster himself. And when he finds Kyung-chul, turning him in to the authorities is the last thing on his mind. The lines between good and evil fall away in this diabolically twisted game of cat and mouse. Pushing the concept of revenge to its most extreme limits, KIM Jee-woon brilliantly transcends the police procedural and serial killer genres in surprising and thrilling new ways.

3. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002)
Ryu, a young factory worker, has recently quit art school in order to look after his sister, who is dying a slow, agonizing death for want of a kidney. When a doctor tells Ryu that he is an unsuitable donor and that the chances of finding one is slim, Ryu turns to the black market. But the old lady who runs an underground organ ring cheats him, taking both his life savings and his kidney and leaving him without the kidney she promised in exchange. Ryu’s girlfriend, a Raggedy-Ann leftist named Young-Min, urges Ryu to kidnap the four-year-old daughter of industrialist owner Dong-Jin Park, who recently laid off Ryu and many other workers from his factory. Ryu agrees, but just as the plan is on the verge of success, Ryu’s sister discovers what Ryu and Youngmin have been up to, and kills herself in despair. Compounding the tragedy, Ryu loses track of his little illicit charge during a visit to his childhood haunts, and she drowns in the river Ryu and his sister played in as kids. Dong-jin’s deep grief quickly turns to rage and he embarks on an implacable quest for vengeance. At the same time, Ryu goes after the organ traders, knowing that if they had come through, none of the tragic occurrences would ever have happened. Bound by their common sense of loss and deep-seated anger, the two are on a collision course of revenge.

4. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005)

A woman looks for both revenge and redemption after spending 13 years in prison in this offbeat thriller from South Korea. Lee Geum-ja (Lee Yeong-ae) was in her early twenties when she was found guilty of kidnapping and killing a young boy, and though she confessed to the crime under duress, while behind bars she dreamed of one day being able to clear her name -- and even the score with the people who railroaded her, including the police officer who brought her in (Nam Il-woo) and Mr. Baek (Choi Min-Sik), a teacher who wronged her in a number of ways. Lee Geun-ja teams up with a number of friends she made during her time in lock-up, including Woo So-yeong (Kim Bu-seon), a thief with a gunsmith for a husband; Oh Su-heui (Ra Mi-ran), who was saved from assault at the hands fellow inmates by Lee; and Preacher Jeon (Kim Byeong-ok), an eccentric man of the cloth who was struck by her gentle nature in jail. As Preacher Jeon helps Lee seek salvation for all she had to do while in prison, her other friends stand by her side as she gets even with her rivals and searches for the daughter she was forced to leave behind when she was convicted.

5. Memories of Murder (2003)

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 (Song Kang-Ho) and Jo Young-Goo (Kim Roe-Ha) joined by a detective from Seoul who requested to be assigned to the case, Seo Tae-Yoon (Kim Sang-Kyung). Park personifies the policeman who goes with his instincts and his fists, bloodily challenging every small-time crook in the area to confess. In contrast, Seo pores over evidentiary documents related to the case and inevitably the clash of styles leads to tense rivalry.
From the fact that not a single hair is ever found at the scene, Park takes off to search the area's temples and public baths for people with follicular disease, while Seo finds a pattern in the evidence of women wearing red on a rainy day as the victim's profile. On a rainy day, the detectives set up a trap in order to forestall another murder. The next day however, yet another woman is found murdered - with an umbrella speared through her pubis. The solution to the murders grows fainter and drives the detectives to ever greater despair.

                                       

6. The Chaser (2008) 

Joong-ho is a dirty detective turned pimp in financial trouble as several of his girls have recently disappeared without clearing their debts. While trying to track them down, he finds a clue that the vanished girls were all called up by a same client whom one of his girls is meeting with right now.

7. Joint Security Area - JSA (2000)

Set along the ‘Bridge of No Return’ in Panmunjom, the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. One day, a border guard is killed by a rifle bullet; the suspected marksman is a South Korean soldier (Lee Byung-Hun), who is found wounded in the middle of no-man’s-land. This incident will have grave repercussions. Both North and South Korea regard the incident as an act of deliberate provocation. The North accuses the South of having committed a ‘terrorist attack’, while South Korea suspects the North of having attempted an ‘abduction’. Both sides appeal to the authorities of the neutral states (NNSC )for help and ask them to investigate the affair.
A female Swiss army captain (Lee Yeong-Ae) of Korean descent is then sent to Panmunjom to investigate the death of the North Korean border guard.

                                  

8. Voice of a Murderer (2007)
One day, the only son of famous news anchor, Han Kyung-bae, disappeared without a trace. Soon, the kidnapper calls the nine-year-old boy’s mother, Oh Jisun, demanding $100,000 as ransom. The police assign veteran detective Kim Wook-jung to the case and assemble a task force under his command. However, the kidnapper constantly outwits the police traps and keeps calling the parents with yet another instruction for the money drop. The only clue the police and the parents have is the kidnapper's voice recorded on tape. The parents become restless and angry as days turns into weeks, and one day, when the kidnapper calls Han Kyung-bae with another set of instructions, he turns the situation completely around and demands a direct confrontation.




9. Blind (2011)

A female university student goes missing one day and later is discovered as a victim of a hit-and-run. Assuming the kidnapper and the driver are the same person, police begin investigating the case and find two witnesses who were at the scene: Soo-ah, a visually impaired woman who was once a very promising student at a national police university, and Gi-seob, a young man who happened to see the hit-and run. The case becomes even more complicated as the two witnesses tell different stories about the accident.
The investigation then goes through many twists and turns, while Min Soo-Ah finds herself up against the killer.

10. The Secret Reunion (2010)

Also known as "Brothers" or "Blood Brothers".
When North Korean secret agent Ji-won (Kang Dong-won) crosses the 38th Parallel on a mission, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) led by Han-gyu (Song Kang-ho) intervenes, and a shooting rampage ensues in the heart of Seoul. For the incident, Han-gyu is fired and Ji-won is deserted by his agency. Six years later, the two meet by chance and start a business partnership in order to steal information from the other.