Children... (Movie - 2011)

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There were high expectations for the movie “Children...” even before it hit theaters. Although the cast of well-known actors like Park Yong-woo and Seong Dong-il has drawn attention to the film, it is the story’s plot that has generated the most interest.

The film is based on a true yet unsolved murder case from the early 1990s that is known among Koreans as the “disappearance of the frog children.” In 1991, five elementary school students told their parents that they were going to hang out on a nearby mountain to catch frogs. They never came back.

In the movie, a TV producer, the devastated parents of the missing children, a professor and a detective all take different stances on the case and in the end one of the parents becomes a primary suspect. In reality, the case morphed into a national scandal.

Director Lee Kyoo-man, a rising star in the Korean film industry, is expected to present a compelling depiction of the case.

But just as the case hurt the parents in real life, the movie could touch off nerves - especially because the film depicts the parents as primary suspects in the case.

In style, “Children...” resembles the 2003 hit “Memories of the Murder,” which was based on another unsolved mystery of a serial killing in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi, in the early ’90s.

Audiences familiar with the case may have a difficult time with the plot, which gives the story a fictional ending even though the case remains unsolved to this day.