Kim Joon-seong (김준성)

'Scam' Is Smart Investment

Source | 2009/01/29 | 0 comments | Permalink |

By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter

The box office can be as difficult to predict as the stock market, and South Korean cinema in particularly is suffering amid the global financial crisis. "The Scam", the country's first stock market movie, will undoubtedly prove to be a smart investment. Unlike its scamming characters, newcomer director Lee Ho-jae-I invests the right way, with a solid, "inflation-free" script and the magic chemistry of a talented cast.

The crime drama draws in viewers without becoming too technical, as it is more about the human desire for wealth than financial matters. Losing tens of millions of won in the stock market can be only a click away on the Internet. "Click", and hopeless debtors head to the Han River.

Hallyu star Park Yong-ha (SBS's "On Air") sheds his sleek image to play Hyeon-su, a victim of such a fatal click. After losing everything, he spends five years glued to the computer screen as an unshaven, full-time "ant" (individual investor). He eventu...| More

Director Explores Korean-American Identity

Source | 2007/11/20 | 0 comments | Permalink |

By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter

By bringing to Korea "West 32nd" ― a gritty, street-style crime film that delves deep into the underworld of New York Koreatown ― director Michael Kang explores the Korean-American identity, including his own. It is a continuation of the directorial concerns from his feature debut piece "The Motel"

"I needed this much time to get the film made, I needed `West 32nd' to be my second film. I think it was a personal journey, and it was a personal challenge, too, to make the film", Kang told The Korea Times in a recent interview in Seoul.

Growing up in the suburbs of New England, the award-winning director had never been exposed to such a large Korean community until he moved to New York for college.

"It was very jarring to me, my relationship with that community. I would walk around in Flushing (Queens, New York) and look like anybody else but I felt like I didn't belong there. That's what I very much wanted to explore (in `West 32nd'...| More

"West 32nd" Breaks Down NY Koreatown

Source | 2007/11/15 | 0 comments | Permalink |

By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter

It gets down-and-dirty like the gritty streets of New York. In "West 32nd", Korean-American director Michael Kang gives the classic detective genre a fresh twist as he tells the untold story of a Korea that exists in the heart of the Big Apple.

West 32nd Street is the geographic location of New York Koreatown (K-town) near the Empire State Building. But even those who are familiar with the "noraebang" (karaoke), stationary stores and "seoleongtang" (Korean beef broth) restaurants lining the strip will be shocked to know that there lies a whole new world beneath it all -- where Korean gangsters and "organized" mayhem reign.

While snippets of Koreatown have began to appear (fleetingly) as an exotic backdrop in Hollywood films like "Collateral" (2004) and "Shoot 'Em Up" (2007), it remained a relatively unexplored territory, and "West 32nd" breaks it down, once and for all.

In the dark corner of K-town, a bar owner Jin-ho (Jeong Joon-ho) is shot t...| More

A Fresh Look at Korean-American Issues

Source | 2007/11/09 | 0 comments | Permalink |

You may start to watch "West 32nd", a new film by Korean-American director Michael Kang, without much expectation, sitting comfortably in your chair. But at a certain point you will find yourself on the edge, realizing that this is not the sort of independent art movie where the ethnic Korean director tries to identify his roots as an eternal outsider.

Whether you call them "diaspora films" or simply Korean-American movies, these films usually appeal only to a minority of fans. These ethnic Koreans belong to the mainstream neither in Korea nor America. To break down that barrier, Michael Kang has decided to make a thriller.

Three gunshots ring out from a Korean bar on New York's West 32nd Street. A 14-year-old Korean-American boy is arrested on the spot for killing the manager of the bar, played by Jeong Joon-ho. The boy's sister Lila (Grace Park) tries to prove her brother's innocence, and second-generation Korean American lawyer John Kim (John Cho) takes the case as a way to ge...| More