Director Yu Hyun-mok's long-lost 'Im Kkeok-jeong' unearthed in US

Film that went missing after 1961 release discovered at US Library of Congress

A scene from the movie "Im Kkeok-jeong" (Korean Film Archive)

Renowned South Korean film director Yu Hyun-mok's 1961 film "Im Kkeok-jeong" has finally surfaced again at the US Library of Congress after being lost for over six decades.

The historical film was screened at the Cinematheque KOFA in Seoul on Thursday as part of a special retrospective celebrating the 100th anniversary of the filmmaker's birth.

"The US Library of Congress had a film titled 'General Rim Kog Jung,' which I thought could be a North Korean film. But it turned out to be director Yu's long-lost film that had been missing for over 60 years when I saw his name in the credits," Lee Ji-young, who is in charge of collecting films abroad at Korean Film Archive, recalled the moment when she found the movie during Thursday's event.

Released in December 1961, the film is based on a well-known novel of the same title written by Hong Myung-hee and stars some of the most famous actors at that time, including actors Shin Young-kyun, who played the lead role, and Um Aeng-ran.

However, the original film copy of "Im Kkeok-jeong" went missing at some point and KOFA does not know when it went missing or why it was lost.

To search for the movie, the KOFA, in 2021, began reviewing over 1,800 Korea-related films held by the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation — a top US archive that is part of the US Library of Congress that keeps and conserves old films and recordings.

A year into the effort, KOFA discovered a 35mm film reel of the movie at the Packard Center.

The film then underwent a year-long restoration process, with the physical repair and digital scanning done in the US, while post-production tasks like color correction and sound cleanup were completed in Korea.