PARK Heung-sik trained under PARK Kwang-su and HUR Jin-ho before debuting with <I Wish I Had a Wife> (2000). As can be seen through the movies he worked on as an assistant director, PARK Heung-sik focuses on capturing the delicate flow of emotions that reveal themselves in the ordinary routines of the day. His second film, <My Mother, the Mermaid> (2004), showed the director’s talent in drawing natural acting from his actors. JEON Do-youn, who would rise to the...More

PARK Heung-sik trained under PARK Kwang-su and HUR Jin-ho before debuting with <I Wish I Had a Wife> (2000). As can be seen through the movies he worked on as an assistant director, PARK Heung-sik focuses on capturing the delicate flow of emotions that reveal themselves in the ordinary routines of the day. His second film, <My Mother, the Mermaid> (2004), showed the director’s talent in drawing natural acting from his actors. JEON Do-youn, who would rise to the status of quintessential Korean actress, played two characters in this movie. The following year, he teamed up with another of Korea’s top actresses, this time MOON So-ri, for the period family drama <Bravo, My Life> (2005). PARK also took the challenge of making a TV drama in 2008 by directing <My Sweet City>, which depicted the lives and concerns of urban workingwomen of the modern days. He worked on an omnibus film on the subject of animal protection in 2011 along with YIM Soon-rye, SONG Il-gon and OH Joum-kyun. He next made the more modest drama <Children of Heaven> in 2012 before moving on to the period martial arts genre with <Memories of the Sword> in 2015, reteaming with JEON Do-yeon, without mentioning megastar LEE Byung-hyun and newcomer KIM Go-eun. The film bombed at the box office and was lambasted by the public for the director’s alleged disregard for the conventions of the genre, but this didn’t dampen PARK’s enthusiasm for the period drama genre. Indeed, he took on as his next project <LOVE, LIES> (2015), set during the Japanese occupation, with HAN Hyo-joo and CHUN Woo-hee playing two of the last traditional courtesans who are competing to break out on the pop music scene. Despite the more positive reception led in large part by the impressive reconstruction of the Korea from the 1940s, the film didn’t fare much better in theaters. Less