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It seems like a coincidence that a number of Korean filmmakers whose last films were released more than a decade ago are coming back all at once. The previous film of Fabricated City’s PARK Kwang-hyun was the 2005 Welcome To Dongmakgol, Bluebeard’s LEE Soo-yeon was the 2003 The Uninvited, and director of soon-to-be-released WARRIORS OF THE DAWN, CHUNG Yoon-chul’s last work in theaters was the 2008 A Man Who Was Superman.

So what are the reasons for such long breaks? A box office flop can create difficulties for the next project the filmmaker is working on, but this was not the case for PARK Kwang-hyun whose last work, Welcome To Dongmakgol, was a hit with a box office score of 8 million ticket sales. All three filmmakers had their own reason for such delays, but their experiences also prove that they aren’t just cases of filmmakers trying to be artists in their own right, but examples of how difficult it is to put out a film. Meanwhile, the Korean film industry has undergone rapid change.

Filmmaker PARK Kwang-hyun’s next project was already locked in after the release of Welcome To Dongmakgol. He announced that in 2 years time which would be 2008, he would start shooting his next film, The Arts of Fist, a tale of a timid young boy with abnormal strength, fighting against injustice committed in an underdeveloped neighborhood. But no one knew that this highly awaited film would haunt the filmmaker until 2014.

What held The Arts of Fist back was casting issues. Once the script was done, rumors were that the main character role would go to ZO In-sung scheduled to complete his mandatory military service in 2011. When the project turned into a mega-scale Korea-China co-production, the size and budget jumped to more than KRW 10 billion (approx. USD 10 million). But the shooting date was pushed back, and actor YEO Jin-gu became the new lead man, and then new rumors that actor, KIM Soo-hyun was also a candidate. In 2014, around the time when The Arts of Fist was once again surrounded by the news that a different actor was replacing the main role, PARK Kwang-hyun was offered the script for Fabricated City.

According to PARK Kwang-hyun, he received a portion of his directing and development fees for this project that was ultimately put on hold, but in order to make a living, he had to divide his time as a director in advertisement, a previous job which got his career started. The most prominent change that filmmaker PARK Kwang-hyun found the most amazing during the theatrical release of Fabricated City was the system that enabled him to check the audience’s response and box office scores in real time.

 

Filmmaker LEE Soo-yeon who directed The Uninvited was praised as the ‘Up-and-coming talent in Korean horror cinema’, yet box office scores for this film were far from satisfactory, causing difficulties upon her next project. The stereotype of “thriller films from female directors don’t work” was another obstacle. She recalls the past 14 years, “I’ve been writing scripts, looking for financing, and if that didn’t work, I just wrote another script.”

LEE Soo-yeon had a project she had been working on for a long time which was the self-written script Return to the Palace that won the Grand Prize at the 2007 Busan Film Commission Scenario Competition. This project was a fantasy thriller about a mermaid, which is ultimately a cruel fairy tale with hints of eroticism and comedy according to the director. She opened her own production to make this film, but the project didn’t take off. 

Bluebeard was written while preparing for Return to the Palace. It was around this time the treatment of Bluebeard was selected as a CJ Culture Foundation’s support program, Project S, and subsequently developed into a complete script and made it to production after the first draft was selected for the 2014 SEOUL International Women’s Film Festival’s ‘Pitch & Catch Program’. She also spent her time working on non-commercial projects including short films such as her 2008 Rabbit and 2012 E.D.571.

 

After releasing his 2008 film, A Man Who Was Superman, it was a short film production that filmmaker CHUNG Yoon-chul took to. He showcased his smart phone short, Mini & Bikeman at the ‘iPhone Film Festival’ sponsored by telecommunication company KT Corporation in 2010. The filmmaker comments on this experience, “It made me realize how much fun it is to continue making films. I decided to keep making films regardless of budget and format.” Unfortunately this resolution did not become a reality. 

Compared to filmmaker LEE Soo-yeon who had been struggling to get her project off the ground, CHUNG Yoon-chul admitted to more than a decade of personally folding two or three projects due to difficulties he ran into development stages. Unlike the usual dramas in his filmography dealing with the pending reality of the time, he opted for costume drama in his latest film, WARRIORS OF THE DAWN. But he claims that this isn’t anything out of the blue, “Nothing has changed from the past regarding the distressed reality of the people. Eventually, my film is about finding oneself amongst all the misery. WARRIORS OF THE DAWN also displays the universal qualities of a coming-of-age drama.”

 

The common impressions of the changed Korean film scene expressed by these three filmmakers making their comebacks after long breaks are the new digitalized system practiced in recent film shoots and the standard insurance contracts that have taken effect. Filmmaker PARK Kwang-hyun states, “Compared to the past, we cannot shoot over 12 hours, and crew members now seem clearer about expressing what’s on their minds.” Filmmaker CHUNG Yoon-chul also sees this as a positive transition.