Jinhee Choi was educated at Seoul National University (South Korea) and completed a B.A. and M.A. in Aesthetics. She earned two PhDs—one in Philosophy (Aesthetics) and the other in Film Studies—at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (United States) and was a post doctorate/visiting professor in East Asian Studies and Film Studies at Yale University. She previously taught at Carleton University (Canada) and the University of Kent (UK) before moving to King’s College in 2011.

Research interests and PhD supervision

My monograph Forever Girls: Necro-cinematics and South Korean Girlhood (Oxford University Press 2025; winner of the BAFTSS Best Monograph Award for 2026) explores girlhood and the image of death in contemporary South Korean cinema. It examines how girls’ bodies have repeatedly embodied conflicting socio-political forces that have shaped the nation. Using the depiction of girlhood from the 1970s as a reference image, I analyse the extent to which the girlhood represented in millennial South Korean cinema still resonates with this image. Ultimately, I argue that South Korean cinema needs to more adequately mourn girls’ deaths and grant them the idleness that has long been denied.

I am interested in supervising PhD theses on: girlhood; East Asian cinema (popular and experimental); cinema and urban space; sensibility; food and cinema.

Teaching

I have taught a wide range of modules at both the BA and MA levels, including transnational cinemas (with a focus on East Asia), world cinema history, film theory, film industry (the Hollywood studio system and the East Asian contemporary film industry), documentary, avant-garde, film theories and emotion, and cinema and modernism.

At King’s College London I have convened modules on: Asian popular cinema; authorship (on Ozu); Korean cinema; food, film and philosophy; and cinema and sentiment.

Expertise and public engagement

I am a member of the editorial board of New Review of Film and Television Studies. I was the co-editor-in-chief of Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema (2017–2022) and served on the advisory board for the London Korean Film Festival hosted by the Korean Culture Centre UK.

I have been widely interviewed for various public radio programmes including BBC Radio 4 (UK), Philosophy Talk and Why? Philosophical Discussions on Everyday Life (US) and cited in numerous news articles including The Financial Times and The Korea Times.

• Korean Culture, Now!: Prof. Jinhee Choi (Film)
• STUDIOCANAL PRESENTS: THE PODCAST - Ep.14 | Train to Busan & Korean cinema, with Dr Jinhee Choi 

Selected publications

Monographs:

• Forever Girls: Necro-Cinematics and South Korean Girlhood (New York: Oxford University Press, 2025)
• The South Korean Film Renaissance: Local Hitmakers, Global Provocateurs (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2010)

Edited Volumes:

• Reorienting Ozu: A Master and His Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018)
• Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures. Co-edited with Noël Carroll (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006)

Chapters in Edited Volumes:

• “Vessels and Cargos: Spaces of Inclusion and Exclusion in Johnnie To’s Drug War and Lee Hae-young’s remake Believer.” In East Asian Remakes, ed. David Scott Diffrient and Kenneth Chan, 221-236. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2023.