Bong Joon-ho has said Lee Chang-dong taught him that genre films could carry the weight of social critique without becoming lectures — that entertainment and political anger could share the same frame. Burning and Secret Sunshine are the films that built the tradition Parasite sits inside. But the deeper ancestor is Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid (1960) — a Korean film about class resentment in a domestic space, which Bong has called the founding text of Korean cinema. It's on MUBI.
The Housemaid from Kim Ki-young is a giant tree, casting a huge shadow over Korean cinema. This idea of people from lower economic classes infiltrating the house of a rich family is a very universal theme.
— Bong Joon-ho · BFI Q&A with Bong Joon-ho (November 2019, reported by IndieWire)
It's a very classy, elegant film that deals with class very effectively. That film and the class issue resonated with me for a long time.
— Claude Chabrol · Vulture interview: 'How Bong Joon Ho Made the Best Movie of the Year'
Films That Influenced Parasite
