If you think that Boon Jong-ho’s Parasite (which won four Oscars this week, including Best Picture) is pretty black as comedies go, you should try the South Korean film The President’s Barber. Set in 1970s Seoul, a working-class hair clipper is appointed to tend the dictatorial leader Park Chung-hee, and tensions grow between his family and the upper-class presidential entourage.
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Rana Mitter is Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at Oxford. His documentary South Korea: The Silent Cultural Superpower is on BBC Sounds.
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