Bae Chang-Ho Movies

Hard-won lessons of loss and redemption are at the heart of this low-key drama set in South Korea in the mid-'70s. Kim Tae-seok (Bae Chang-ho) is an itinerant blacksmith who travels from village to village, taking his services wherever they might be needed. He stops for a meal at a diner operated by Mrs. Jinju (Kim Ji-ye), and they strike up a conversation in which Tae-seok relates the story of his life. Tae-seok once had a wife, Gwi-ok (Seol Weon-jeong), and a child, and he longed to give up his nomadic lifestyle for more stable employment. His best friend Deok-su (Gweon Beom-taek) is eager to help, and offers to let Tae-seok use his house as collateral for a loan to set up a business. But Tae-seok developed a gambling problem that caused him to lose his money, his business, his family, and his best friend, and since then he's been on the road and on his own. As Tae-seok returns to the road, he happens upon a young woman named Shin-yeong (Kang Gi-hwa) who is traveling to her father's funeral. The two travel together for a while, and as they get to know one another they discover they have something unexpected in common. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Bae Chang-ho directs this sumptuously-photographed, subtly-told drama about the ill-fated life of one woman during the 20th century. The film opens in the 1920s when a teenaged Sun-yi (star and co-screenwriter Kim Yu-mi) is married off to the ten-year-old son of a provincial doctor. Though harassed by her traditionally minded in-laws, Sun-yi patiently goes about her duties until her husband returns from college with an attractive, fashionably dressed "classmate." When she learns that her husband's new friend is pregnant, Sun-yi quietly packs her belongings and leaves. Later, she is running a small distillery all by herself. When Duk-sun (Kim Myeong-kon), an itinerant potter, stops by, a wary relationship develops between the two. Unfortunately, just as the deeply suspicious Sun-yi is about to open her heart to him, Duk-sun is killed in an accident. The film's final act finds a middle-aged Sun-yi barely eking out a living. In spite of this, she takes in a young woman and her son. When the young woman is carted off by a thuggish man claiming to be her husband, Sun-yi adopts the child. This film received rave reviews and a Special Jury prize at the 1999 Benodet Film Festival in France. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

In this standard melodrama, the elusive Green Card is the third protagonist in the relationship between a South Korean sailor who wants to stay in the U.S. and a barmaid who contracts marriages to Koreans only until they get their resident status. The sailor has a pregnant girlfriend in Korea who is conveniently an ocean away, so he spends his time checking out the Asian-American women on the West coast. His plans to marry into Green Card status hit a snag when he runs into the barmaid who has done this before, and their relationship becomes a strange mixture of mercenary self-interest and real attraction.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide