Kang Soo-Yeon Movies

This documentary tackles the emotional battle to protect South Korea's national film industry against the corporate juggernaut of the MPAA (which is backed by the U.S. government). From a high profile hunger strike by Korean directors in the summer of 1998 to the current stalemate after the issue was separated from general trade talks, the film focuses on Korea's use of screen quotas for local flicks (currently standing at 106, but this is bound to be reduced). While the MPAA sees Korea as a key market in its attempts to dominate all of Asia, Korean filmmakers regard local productions as central to Korea's sense of national identity. This film was screened at the 1999 Pusan Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Flattered that a young journalist has given a kindly review to his latest poetry, a married college professor invites her for a special dinner. It was not his intention to seduce her, nor hers to be seduced as she too is married, but by the end of the meal, the attraction between them is so strong, they rush to a motel for an evening of passion. This romantic comedy-drama from talented Korean director Lee Myung-Sae (First Love and Bitter Sweet) follows the winding and often rocky course of their love affair. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A well-known South Korean writer has been spending the last five years in France. For three of those years, he was having an affair with an ambitious woman writer. As he returns to be with his wife and family, he is picked up at the airport by the woman traveler, and at first he thinks she wants to resume the affair, something he is entirely willing to do. However, she maintains a level of impersonality which rebuffs him. When he gets to his home, he tries to persuade his wife to give him a divorce, but she refuses. Then he looks up the woman he had an affair with. Her earlier coolness is explained by the fact that she's marrying someone else, and her evasiveness by the fact that she stole one of the writer's unpublished articles and passed it off as her own, establishing her own reputation as a writer. Once those things are revealed, she is again willing to carry on her affair. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This, the first South Korean film ever entered in the Moscow Film festival (1989), tells the story of two women who have been attracted to the monastic life. Sun Nyog (Kang Soo-yeon), a big-hearted but rather innocent woman, gets low marks from the abbess at the nunnery for her apparent lack of discipline. When she saves the life of a drunk who tries to commit suicide, in his bleary gratitude he makes such a nuisance of himself that she is forced to leave the nunnery. Of necessity she becomes involved with the suicidal drunk, forgives him his early rape of her, and becomes fond of him. The other woman, Jin Song (Jin Yong-mi), a grim, ascetic type who is the abbess's pet, heads off into the mountains to do a long retreat in a cave. Unfortunately for her, the cave is already occupied by a brutal and lascivious old monk, who rapes her. Meanwhile, though the first woman, who has led a star-crossed life, returns to the nunnery to attend the dying abbess. At that time her superior spiritual qualities are recognized by all, and she is called "a true nun." ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this sometimes bizarre feature, a district governor sets out to clear away the debris of centuries of superstition in his area, his main target being the maker of talismanic phalluses which people buy to scare away bad spirits. There is a serious epidemic going on, and many are dying every day, but the official's efforts to appeal to reason are doomed to failure. He himself thinks he may have met the phallus-maker's wife in a previous life, and he is very drawn to her. Crossing genres, one explicit and gory scene shows a man being castrated. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi