This article introduces and critically engages with the animated films produced in the geopolitical reality of South Korea from the colonial period under Japanese occupation to the present, and the animation-related phenomena they caused. In the past, studies of South Korean animation have tended to describe it merely in terms of a production factory on the international scene of animation. However, the history of South Korean animation, many parts of which have been forgotten or not recorded, is as extensive as that of South Korea itself. In exploring the historical and political contexts of South Korean animation in chronological order, the aim is not to present a grand narrative of national cinema. Rather, the article hopes to shed some light on the complex web of animation production, aesthetic expression and South Korean ideologies and political situations.