In the wake of the new millennium, the South Korean film industry began to get involved with ‘mega-budget’ transnational coproduction projects such as (2005), (2008), and (2010). Generating such epic films, i.e. ‘South Korea’s global project,’ has been the South Korean film industry’s catchphrase for years that would ultimately help to export South Korean cultural products to the Asian andglobal media marketplace. Most scholars in the field have interpreted the logic that gave rise to these ambitious productions is South Korea’s political and economic redirection toward Asia in the new millennium. Therefore, it is essentially a new phenomenon. Yet, this article reconstructs the untold genealogy of South Korea’s transnational projects by arguing that it has early and late moments in film history. The South Korean film industry has tried to penetrate geographically and culturally adjacent markets for many decades although the practice was virtually erased from the country’s collective memories. Throughout the project, the 1960s Shaw Brothers-Shin Films coproduced epic films (1964), (1966), and (1967) will be scrutinized vis-à-vis their contemporary counterparts.