Three Years Before Parasite, The Oscars Snubbed the Korean Masterpiece That Deserved Best Picture

Park Chan-wook helped make Korean cinema a global obsession, and somehow he still doesn’t have an Oscar. If any of his films could have kicked that door down, I’d put money on 2016’s The Handmaiden. Oldboy and Decision to Leave truthers, I see you — but this one had the juice.

Spoiler alert for The Handmaiden

How The Handmaiden pulled the rug (three times)

Park’s reputation is precision and pressure — immaculate craft, brutal elegance, and twisty storytelling. Oldboy (2003) is the bloodier calling card, but The Handmaiden — adapted from Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith — is the one that keeps re-dealing the deck across its three-act, perspective-shifting structure.

It starts like a straightforward con. Kim Tae-ri plays Sook-Hee, presented as a naive maid, who’s actually a pickpocket planted in a rich household. She’s teamed with Ha Jung-woo’s charming grifter, Count Fujiwara, to swindle Kim Min-hee’s Lady Hideko out of her fortune. That’s the setup. Then the movie flips: Hideko appears to be in on Fujiwara’s plan. Flip again: Hideko and Sook-Hee were playing him too. It’s a con within a con within a romance — and the trick is that the love story isn’t the twist, it’s the point.

The film’s erotic charge never tips into cheap shock. Park has always liked prodding at taboos, and this time the queerness isn’t fringe; it’s central and sincere. For context: he once considered centering a gay romance in JSA instead of the bromance path that film took, so the LGBTQIA+ focus here feels like a long time coming.

How the Oscars fumbled it

Here’s the frustrating part. South Korea chose The Age of Shadows as its Oscar submission that year — not The Handmaiden — and The Age of Shadows didn’t even make the shortlist. The Handmaiden never got a real shot, which is wild given how sharp and crowd-pleasing (in a wicked way) it is.

If you like numbers: The Handmaiden sits at 8.1 on IMDb, with a 96% Tomatometer and 91% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes. CJ Entertainment handled distribution. It’s a legit hit by any metric — just not the Academy’s.

Park’s next swing: No Other Choice

Park isn’t pretending he doesn’t care about gold. Talking to 10 Asia about his new film No Other Choice — which is already among the highest-rated movies of the year and lands in the U.S. on Christmas — he was refreshingly blunt about the campaign grind:

"If it gets nominated, it means several months of intense activity, starting a 'race to the death'. At my age, I think it would be nice if it happens."

The field is loaded — Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Oscar-winner Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet, and a new Paul Thomas Anderson film being touted as his most ambitious yet — but Park’s got a real lane. Think Parasite-level momentum if it clicks with voters. And unlike The Handmaiden, South Korea actually put No Other Choice forward for the Oscars this time.

• The Handmaiden: IMDb 8.1; Rotten Tomatoes 96% (critics) / 91% (audience); distributor CJ Entertainment; streaming now on Apple TV in the U.S.
• No Other Choice: selected by South Korea for the International Feature race; among the year’s highest-rated releases; opens in select U.S. theaters on Christmas.