So how does the film compare with the rest of Bong’s output? We rank all seven of his feature films, from worst to best.

7. Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000)

Bong’s debut feature details the struggles of residents and employees of a suburban housing estate. A frustrated academic (Lee Sung-jae) is clashing heads with his pregnant wife, who is still working a full-time office job while her husband procrastinates over securing a university professorship.

He vents his frustrations by kidnapping a neighbour’s yapping dog, only to discover he pinched the wrong pet and draws the ire of a listless slacker (Bae Doona). Thus begins an escalating comedy of errors.

Rough around the edges and tonally untamed, Barking Dogs Never Bite nevertheless introduces Bong’s recurring themes: marginalised protagonists, crippling economic inequality and institutionalised corruption, all filtered through a breezy, darkly comic sensibility that ensures even the abhorrent remains cinematically palatable.

Dog owners beware: Korea’s complicated relationship with our four-legged friends is also on the menu.

6. Okja (2017)

Okja pits a Korean farm girl (Ahn Seo-hyun) against a genetically modified food superpower when the latter reclaims her pet superpig, in a genre-bending fable that would turn the most committed of carnivores. State-of-the-art digital effects, a captivating central performance from the 13-year-old Ahn, and a globe-trotting heist plot involving Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal and Steven Yeun, all work in the film’s favour.

Bong’s propensity for wrong-footing his audience is both the film’s greatest strength and biggest weakness, luring audiences in with its cuddly “one girl and her pig” narrative, before hurling us into the literal meat grinder of industrial food production.

5. Snowpiercer (2013)

Adapted from a French graphic novel, Bong’s star-studded English-language debut imagines a snowbound future where a single train circumnavigates the Earth, with humanity’s only survivors all aboard.

Chris Evans stars shockingly against type as the de facto leader of a tail-end rebellion, as the underprivileged force their way through the luxurious first class carriages to seize control of the engine.

A masterclass of production design, the film presents a collage of gorgeously realised carriages, from the ghetto slums of the tail to the opulent saunas and sushi bars of the elite. The logistical minutiae of Snowpiercer’s sci-fi conceit don’t hold up to much scrutiny, but Bong’s commitment to relentless action, innovative staging, and classic Orwellian plotting ultimately wins through.

Song Kang-ho and Ko Asung provide the Korean contingent, while Tilda Swinton steals the show as the train’s Margaret Thatcher-like warden.

4. The Host (2006)

Bong dives into full-blown genre territory with this exhilarating monster movie, about a giant mutated fish that emerges from the Han River to terrorise Seoul. Inspired by everything from Godzilla to Jaws, Bong crafts a seat-of-your-pants adventure, elevated by a nuanced story of family reconciliation in the face of – what else? – high-level corruption.

Song Kang-ho plays a lowly snack shop owner, whose daughter is snatched by the creature. As the authorities scramble to concoct a bogus virus scare to cover up the incident, it falls to Song and his estranged family (including Bae Doona and Byun Hee-bong) to save the day.

Although the award-winning special effects have dated somewhat, The Host remains a thrilling tale of ordinary people rising up against those in positions of power who have poisoned their country.

3. Mother (2009)

Bong brilliantly subverts the small-town murder mystery genre by positioning 68-year-old Kim Hye-ja as the unlikely protagonist of this beautifully layered tale of justice and revenge. When her mentally ill son (Won Bin) is accused of murdering a schoolgirl, the unnamed mother fears he is being scapegoated by an incompetent police force, and sets out to prove his innocence.

Overbearing, absent-minded and something of a social pariah herself, she receives little cooperation from her community, but the deeper she digs, the more secrets – including her own – are exposed.

Kim, who had effectively retired before getting the call to star in Bong’s film, is a magnetic screen presence, and the film shows his maturing style as a filmmaker. Mother displays a tenderness and emotional vulnerability hitherto absent from his work, yet his lightness of touch remains as he finds humour in the least likely scenarios.

2. Memories of Murder (2003)

Bong’s breakthrough hit is a masterfully crafted police procedural, recreating a spate of shocking murders that ravaged a rural mining community in the late 1980s.

Standing toe-to-toe with the very best of the genre, Memories of Murder follows the desperate attempts of small-town detective Park (Song Kang-ho) to find the killer, his violent, bullying tactics getting him no closer to succeeding. He is joined by Kim Sang-kyung’s big city police officer, whose arrival is met with jealousy and derision by his new colleagues.

A respectful partnership is eventually forged, but not before more bodies have appeared and their spirits have been resoundingly broken. The real-life killer was never caught, enshrouding the entire rain-soaked endeavour in a cloak of inevitable failure.

Of course, Bong uses the film to reflect on Korea’s own troubled establishment, and the results are perfect.

1. Parasite (2019)

All of Bong’s favourite themes come together in Parasite, a perfectly constructed microcosm of Korea’s unbalanced economy.

The unemployed Kim family huddle in their basement apartment, leeching free Wi-fi and surviving literally with only their heads above the surface. Salvation emerges when the son (Choi Woo-sik) lands a job as English tutor to the daughter of the wealthy Park family, who live in a palatial hillside mansion.

From here, Parasite takes a number of unexpected twists, blending satire with scares and shocking revelations. The Parks represent families of the type than run South Korea’s chaebol conglomerates, upon which much of its economy is precariously perched. Workers like the Kims scramble for the jobs these families create, but must indulge the Parks’ unpredictable behaviour, rampant nepotism, and increasingly idiosyncratic and compulsive whims.

Bong’s darkest and most savagely funny film to date is also his best.