And while that familiar refrain ‘critics are suckers for foreign films’ might work on arthouse pictures, Bong Joon-ho isn’t an arthouse director — his films appeal to a much wider audience (The Host is one of Korea’s all-time highest grossing movies), and they have also helped put the korean film industry on the map as a force in its own right (along with, of course, his breakthrough film memories of murder — easily one of the best films of the last decade).
That kind of response happened well before critics could get a hold of his films, so their praise is somewhat of an afterthought in terms of what could affect the film’s reception.