Jung Jin-woo, pioneering Korean director and producer, dies at 88
Jung Jin-woo, a pioneering South Korean director and producer whose socially conscious melodramas helped define Korean filmmaking from the 1960s through the 1990s, died on Sunday at a hospital in Seoul, his family said. He was 88.
Jung made his directorial debut with "The Only Son" in 1962 at the age of 25. He was the youngest person to have directed a feature film in South Korea at that time. A string of commercial hits followed, including "The Secret Meeting" (1965), "The Student Boarder" (1966) and "Early Rain" (1966) -- romances influenced by the French New Wave that established him as one of the country's most bankable directors.
His early films explored the anxieties of a nation still divided after the Korean War, from the split of the peninsula to the widening gap between social classes. In the 1970s and '80s, he shifted focus to the lives of women in a rapidly industrializing South Korea, directing a series of homespun melodramas that became massive hits.
Among them were "Does Cuckoo Cry at Night" (1980), a parable about simple rural life overtaken by modern desires starring Jeong Yun-hui, and "Adultery Tree," which was invited to the Venice International Film Festival in 1985.
His international profile had taken root even earlier. "Long Live the Island Frogs" (1972) screened in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Following criticism from local press that the film's post-dubbed dialogue looked stiff and out of sync, Jung championed the adoption of live sound recording in Korean filmmaking. His 1978 film "Scholar Yul-Gok and His Mother Shin Sa-Im-Dang" was one of the first in the country to use imported equipment for the technique, which soon caught on across the industry.
Jung was equally active off the set. In 1967, he co-founded the Korean Film Directors Association, an industry body representing the country's filmmakers. Two years later, he set up his own production house Woojin Film, which went on to produce nearly 100 titles including those by the celebrated director Im Kwon-taek.
In 1985, he opened Cine House, one of the earliest multiplex-style theaters in Seoul's Gangnam district. It was among the first theaters to open south of the Han River, where new housing and commercial districts were springing up.
In 1993, the French government honored Jung for his contributions to the arts at the Cannes Film Festival. He received a lifetime achievement award at the Grand Bell Awards in 2014, and the Busan International Film Festival held a retrospective of his work that same year, screening eight of his films.
His final film as director was "Mugunghwa" (1995), which underperformed at the box office and led to the closure of Woojin Film the following year.
Several of Jung's films, including "Early Rain," "A Student Boarder" and "Long Live the Island Frogs," can be streamed with English subtitles on the Korean Film Archive's YouTube channel.
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