LEE Hark-joon entered the documentary field after his career as a journalist. When he was a student, LEE made a short film which was invited by the International Film Festivals. After graduating from college, he started his career as a newspaper reporter. LEE had visited Afghanistan in 2001 after hearing advices that he should have a lot of experience in order to become a film director. He built a career as a war correspondent there. Since returning to Korea, he has engaged i...More

LEE Hark-joon entered the documentary field after his career as a journalist. When he was a student, LEE made a short film which was invited by the International Film Festivals. After graduating from college, he started his career as a newspaper reporter. LEE had visited Afghanistan in 2001 after hearing advices that he should have a lot of experience in order to become a film director. He built a career as a war correspondent there. Since returning to Korea, he has engaged in investigative journalism. The first topic was about civilians killed by soldiers during the Korean War. Since 2007, LEE has been focusing on the North Korean defectors' human rights issue. He began to shoot documentaries to increase the credibility of his newspaper articles. LEE has won several ournalism awards both at home and abroad for his documentary series , <Crossing Heaven's Border>. He got the Korean Journalist Awards, the Korean Newspaper Awards, and the Monte Carlo Television Festival(Golden Nymph). LEE also was nominated for the Emmy Award and the Banff Awards six times. His debut documentary film was about K-pop. <9 Muses of Star Empire> was invited to various international film festivals including the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam(IDFA). However, LEE felt limited in his ability to direct documentary films. He eventually started to work as assistant director of the late famous K-drama director Kim Jong-hak at his age of 40's and studied how to combine documentary and K-drama for a year. His second documentary film, which started after much effort, is <A Good Business>.Less