With the success of Korean cinema over the past two decades, it has seen a growing number of professionals from the industry working in Hollywood and elsewhere as the pool of talent grows. Famous examples include Park Chan-wook who made his Hollywood debut Stoker (2013) that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, Kim Jee-woon who helmed The Last Stand (2013) starring Arnold Schwarzenegger while Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 is released in January.

The high production values in Korean content are also attributed to the wealth of talent that are involved in films; from cinematographers to production designers and visual effects artists. This is also getting noticed overseas with cinematographers such as Chung Chung-hoon working on Hollywood productions while animators – long been in demand with the animations for The Simpsons outsourced to Korea in the 1990s – also playing a role in Hollywood’s animation industry.

This week we profile some of the talent that have made their mark in other film industries beginning with directors (Park Sunghoo) before also examining other professionals – cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon, screenwriters Bo Yeon Kim, Hansol Jung, animators Hye-sook Kim and Hyun Sook Shim, and visual effects artists Seungseok Kim, Seyool Soon, Kim Ki-beom, Choi Jong Jin and Hwang Jung-rok

Jujutsu Kaisen: Zero 

Directing - Park Sunghoo

Standing out for working in the Japanese anime industry is Park Sunghoo who began his career as an animator on the television series Terror in Resonance (2014) and then on Yuri on Ice (2016) before directing Garo: Vanishing Line (2017-2018). He also is credited as a director on The God of High School (2020), Jujutsu Kaisen (2020-2021) and Ninja Kamui (2024).

Having studied at the Chiyoda Institute of Technology and Art in Narashino, Chiba in the 2000s, he has spent much of his career in Japan in one of the world’s leading animation industries.

It was his work on the first season of the dark animated series Jujutsu Kaisen that brought him further attention, along with the film Jujutsu Kaisen: Zero (2021) produced by Toho that he also directed. It was a box office hit generating a whopping $196.2m globally screening in the North America on 1,500 theaters, and it was also released in the UK. It was the highest grossing film in Japan in 2021. The prequel also pulled in 664,000 admissions in Korea.

Park is well-positioned as a renowned animator as Japanese animation becomes increasingly popular in the West, not least the United States, while in Korea, a number of anime have struck a chord including The First Slam Dunk (2022) and Suzume (2022).

Last Night in Soho

Cinematography - Chung Chung-hoon

As a frequent collaborator with Park Chan-wook having worked as a cinematographer on his films from Oldboy (2003) until The Handmaiden (2016) it is unsurprising that Hollywood has paid close to attention to his work. The famous hammer sequence in Oldboy that was shot by Chung over one take is one of the most memorable scenes in Korean cinema from that era.

He also worked as leading cinematographer on Ryoo Seung-wan’s The Unjust (2010), Lee Joon-ik’s Blades of Blood (2010) and Battlefield Heroes (2011) along with Park Hoon-jung’s New World (2013).

His first credit on a Hollywood film was Park Chan-wook’s Stoker (2013) that was praised for its cinematography. Since then, he has been director of photography (DP) on several American projects including Dito Montiel’s Boulevard (2014) starring the late Robin Williams, Andy Muschietti’s horror film It (2017) based on Stephen King’s famous novel.

He also played a key role behind the scenes as DP on Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho (2021) that is gloriously shot in London’s West End. Wright known for his films such as Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007) is fond of Korea’s filmmakers and its industry making it a particularly compelling collaboration.

One of Wright’s most recent Hollywood films was Paul King’s well-received Wonka (2023) featuring one of the industry’s most bankable stars Timothée Chalamet that generated $632.3m globally. It also proved popular in Korea accruing 3.5 million admissions with Chung also receiving local media attention for his role as cinematographer.

He is repped by United Talented Agency and appears to be mostly working in Hollywood with his last Korean project Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden (2016).

Pachinko 

Screenwriting - Bo Yeon Kim & Hansol Jung

Gifted in creative writing, Bo Yeon Kim has demonstrated her talent in American television shows working on the acclaimed series Star Trek: Discovery (2017-2020). She also wrote three episodes of the post-apocalyptic show Sweet Tooth (2021-2024) that is set in a world where most of the human population has been wiped out by a virus.

Spending much of her childhood living in five different countries, her understanding of cultures and languages has been a great asset. Her career has included teaching English, working as a translator, and also translating traditional Korean opera from Korean into English. Heavily influenced by American television along with her background in studying anthropology at Bryn Mawr College, it put her on a path to becoming a writer.

Also distinguished in her field of writing is Hansol Jung who co-wrote with Soo Hugh episode three of the Apple series Pachinko (2022), based on the novel by Min Jin Lee. Jung also wrote the third episode of the Netflix miniseries Tale of the City (2019).

Like Bo Yeon Kim, she has resided in different parts of the world. Jung spent much of her childhood in apartheid-era South Africa before moving back to Korea when she was 13. At 20, she studied at New York University as an exchange student before embarking on post-graduate programs at Pennsylvania State University and Yale.

Specializing in translation, her resume includes over 30 translations of English-language musicals into Korean; from Dracula to Evita. She was also involved in an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet that was commissioned by Alliance Theatre in the US. Her future writing credits include a television adaptation of the novel How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang.

Encompassing work initially in translation before moving on to high profile television shows, the two writers are some of the first Koreans to play an increasingly important role in the scripting of American television. It thereby further demonstrates the wealth of talent has emerged from South Korea.

Inside Out 2

Animation - Hye-sook Kim and Hyun Sook Shim

The Pixar animation Inside Out 2 (2024) directed by Kelsey Mann has become the biggest box office hit so far this summer selling over 8 million tickets to become the studio’s most popular film in Korea.

The coming-of-age film that goes inside the head of its protagonist Riley focusing on a series of emotions as she hits puberty also became the first film of 2024 to hit one billion dollars globally in box office revenue.

The success of the film has also put the spotlight on those involved in the feature, which includes Korea’s very own Hye-sook Kim, a senior animator at Pixar and fellow animator Hyun-sook Shim. It is indeed not uncommon to see Korean names listed in the credits at the end of Pixar films.

The pair are veterans at Pixar and have worked on films such as Lightyear (2022) and Elemental (2023), which also struck a chord in Korea accruing 7.2 million admissions – in part because of its cultural ties to Korea through its story that was inspired by the director’s (Peter Sohn) experience growing up as the son of Korean immigrants in New York.

Alita: Battle Angel 

Visual Effects - Seungseok Kim, Seyool Soon, Kim Ki-beom, Choi Jong-jin and Hwang Jung-rok

Film as a visual medium requires thousands of professionals as blockbuster film-making is a labor intensive process. Given Korea’s technical prowess and the fact that the industry has built a strong infrastructure from which much talent continue to emerge, it’s not surprising to see Korean professionals involved in the visual effects industry in Hollywood.  

The studios are keen to promote this in Korea when releasing a film that was illustrated when Wes Ball’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) hit screens in May with Seungseok Kim, a senior facial modeler, and Seyool Soon, a motion capture tracker, talking with the local press. They work at Weta FX, a digital and animation studio based in New Zealand.

It is indeed not the first time a South Korean visual effects artist has worked on the Planet of the Apes series. Kim Ki-beom, computer graphics supervisor at Weta Digital, undertook this role on Matt Reeves’ War for the Planet of the Apes (2017). Weta is one of the world’s most revered visual effects studios having rendered the effects for films including Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003) and King Kong (2005). Kim Ki-beom is the studio’s first Korean computer graphics supervisor. He has also participated in this supervisory role on Alita: Battle Angel (2019) that was produced by James Cameron.

Cameron’s box office juggernaut Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) also featured Korean talent with CG Supervisor Choi Jong Jin and senior artist Hwang Jung-rok both contributing to the film’s ground-breaking visual effects that involved over 2,000 professionals.  

Editted by Shim Eunha

Written by Jason Bechervaise