Lee Si-yeon (이시연)

By Lee Hyo-won
Staff Reporter

While the "American Pie" trilogy cooked up a stir in the United States, Korea had its own version of a witlessly wholesome sex comedy, "Sex is Zero" (2002). It's always hard for sequels to live up to the glory of their predecessor, but such biting reality hit "Sex Is Zero 2" especially hard ― slapping the tasteless college story in the face over and over again.

In "Zero 2", the popular actors from the first installment reconvene and the narrative elements are tweaked here and there. Good-hearted Eun-sik (Im Chang-jeong) is a law student who, driven by his hormones, is more preoccupied with checking out miniskirt-clad legs in the library than preparing for the state exam.

Eun-sik seems doomed with bad luck, with unfortunate timing always labeling the innocent guy as a pervert. But mysterious workings of the univer...More

Sex comedy is not a familiar genre with Korean audiences, many of whom regard themselves as somewhat conservative, or deadly super-duper conservative. But "Sex is Zero", released in 2002, changed that conventional wisdom.

The toilet-humor-filled sex-or-die comedy pulled in a respectable 4.2 million viewers in 2002 and even ranked fourth at the box-office for the year. Since then, a handful of imitations have come out, but none of them have hit a jackpot -- yet.

All of this has apparently encouraged the production house which made the original "Sex is Zero" to forge ahead with a sequel. The logic, of course, is that people remembering the unabashed sex comedy will return to the theater, and, for the filmmakers of "Sex Is Zero 2", there seems to be nothing wrong with repeating the same formula -- plot, characters, sex-oriented scenes, and all that -- as long as a minimum box-office return is guaranteed.

This time around, ...More

By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter

An actress, who will feature in a Korean film scheduled to open next month, has drawn media attention because she has changed her gender.

Lee Si-yeon, 28, who previously went under the name of Lee Dae-hak, will appear in the sequel to "Sex Is Zero" to be released nationwide on Dec. 13. Reportedly, Lee underwent a sex change operation earlier this year. The actress is still legally registered as a male.

She has not made any contact with anyone since her sex change became known to the public Friday, "I am still afraid of showing up bef...More