SOUTH KOREA : 'PARASITE'S' OSCAR PARAMOUNT

The South Korean thriller is the first movie not in English to win best picture.

Ninety-two years of Oscar history were shattered when the South Korean hit ''PARASITE'' became the first film not in the English Language to win the Academy Award for the best picture.

The class-struggle thriller faced stiff competition for Hollywood's top trophy from movies that included Quentin Tarantino's showbiz epic, ''Once Upon a Time.........in Hollywood,'' the billion dollar comic-book film ''JOKER'' and Martin Scorsese's Netflix crime drama, ''The Irishman.''

But ''Parasite,'' directed by Gong Joon Ho, managed to pull off the final win in a moment that had audience members in the Dolby Theater on Saturday night leaping to their feet.

The historic victories made front page news in South Korea, where Back Young-hoon, 50, a Seoul officer worker and avid Bong fan noted ,'' The South Korean movie industry became 100 years old last year, and this is momentous event that makes South Koreans proud.''

In honoring the film, which also won best director, original screenplay and international feature, voters managed to simultaneously embrace the future - Hollywood's overreliance on white stories told by white filmmakers may finally be ebbing - and remain reverential to decade-old tradition:

Unlike some other best-picture nominees, ''Parasite'' was given a conventional release in theaters. It has taken in $35.5 million at the North American box office since its release in October, Global ticket sales stand at $165 million.

''We never write to represent our countries,'' a beaming Bong said through a translator, as he accepted the screenwriting Oscar with Han Jin Won.

The film's seismic win came following the slashOscarSoWhite protests in 2015 and 2016 that forced Hollywood to examine its systemic sidelining of minorities.

Humiliated by the outrage that followed the failure to nominate any minority actors for Oscars at the time, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences vowed double minority membership by 2020.

In 2015, about 8 percent of the academy's 8,500 voters were people of color. The percentage of minority members now stands at roughly 16 percent.

The comedy-thriller seemed to touch a nerve wherever it played, thanks to its tale of have-nots outsmarting the haves.

The World Students Society thanks authors Kyle Buchanan and Brooks Barnes.