CHUNG Yoon-chul, born in 1971, studied film at Hanyang University and later at Yong In University. After making his directing debut in 1996 with the short <Memorial Photographing>, he was selected by the Samsung Foundation of Culture to receive a scholarship through their MAMPist program, which allowed him to go study film editing at the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney. He has enjoyed huge success with his debut feature <Marathon> (2005), a f...More

CHUNG Yoon-chul, born in 1971, studied film at Hanyang University and later at Yong In University. After making his directing debut in 1996 with the short <Memorial Photographing>, he was selected by the Samsung Foundation of Culture to receive a scholarship through their MAMPist program, which allowed him to go study film editing at the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney. He has enjoyed huge success with his debut feature <Marathon> (2005), a family drama about an autistic young man who finds a passion for marathon running that attracted 5.1 million spectators. Lauded for the surprising maturity of his filmmaking, he won Best New Direction at several awards ceremonies in Korea, including the Grand Bell Awards, the Blue Dragon Film Awards, the Chunsa Film Art Awards and the Baeksang Arts Awards, the latter of which having also bestowed him the Grand Prize of its film category. CHUNG followed it up with two comedy-drama films, <Skeletons In The Closet> (2007) and <A Man Who Was Superman> (2007), but none of them fared as well as his first film. Although he had several projects in mind after that, he suffered from writer’s block and couldn’t finish any screenplay until 2014, when he completed the first draft of a historical war epic. The story of a group of mercenaries defending the Joseon Dynasty against the Japanese invasion, <WARRIORS OF THE DAWN> was released in 2017 to a lukewarm reception. Less