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Birthday:
10-10-1919
Deathday:
02-05-1998 (78 years)
Birthplace:
Seoul, South Korea
Biography
Kim Ki-young (October 10, 1919 – February 5, 1998) was a South Korean film director, known for his intensely psychosexual and melodramatic horror films, often focusing on the psychology of their female characters. Kim was born in Seoul during the colonial period, raised in Pyongyang, where he became interested in theater and cinema. In Korea after the end of World War II, he studied dentistry while becoming involved in the theater. During the Korean War, he made propaganda films for the United States Information Service. In 1955, he used discarded movie equipments to produce his first two films. With the success of these two films Kim formed his own production company and produced popular melodramas for the rest of the decade.
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Their works
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The Sea Knows
Producer
event1961 star_border 7
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A Korean man, forced into service in the Japanese army during WWII, marries his Japanese girlfriend despite everyone's objections. Later, he becomes the sole survivor when the Americans attack.
Yangsan Province
Screenplay
event1955 star_border 4.5
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The film is a historical melodrama about a high government official who wants to marry a woman who is engaged to marry another man.
The Housemaid
Screenplay
event1960 star_border 7.1
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A piano composer's family moves into a new house; when his pregnant wife collapses from working to support the family, he hires a hot housemaid to help with housework.
Ieoh Island
Director
event1977 star_border 6.7
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A company hopes to open a spa hotel named after Ieodo, a mythical island inhabited by the souls of drowned sailors. During a study trip to the proposed location of the hotel, a journalist disappears under mysterious circumstances. One of the contractors goes to Ieodo's neighboring island, populated by widows of the dead sailors, to unravel the mystery.
A Woman After a Killer Butterfly
Director
event1978 star_border 5.9
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A melodrama about a man who survives an attempted double suicide with a stranger while picnicking with friends. He goes on a cave expedition for a famous archaeologist where he discovers a skeleton several thousand years old. He meets the spirit of the skeleton in a dream, and then becomes romantically involved with the archeologist's daughter.
Woman of Fire
Director
event1971 star_border 5.4
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The lives of a composer and his wife, who live on a chicken farm, are thrown into turmoil when a femme fatale joins their household.
Goryeojang
Writer
event1963 star_border 7.1
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Prior to the adoption of Confucianism, it was the tradition to abandon one's parents on a mountainside if they were over 70 years of age. In the ancient kingdom of Goryeo, now modern Korea, a nobleman defies this tradition when he refuses to leave his mother to starve to death.
Love Of Blood Relations
Director
event1976
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North Korean agents are sent to Seoul to disrupt the visit of important international dignitaries.
Woman of Fire '82
Director
event1982 star_border 4.3
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Intrigue and murder on a small poultry farm outside of Seoul when a young maid starts working on the farm and is seduced by the local farm hand.
Promise of the Flesh
Director
event1975 star_border 4.5
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Mild-mannered and modest Sook-young looks like your usual middle-aged woman, but happens to be a man-killing murderess. On a train trip to Mokpo, she remembers an earlier trip as a prisoner on furlough accompanied by a menacing but kind butch female guard. On the train they meet Hoon, a young man who falls for Sook-young. The guard lets them be alone at a bizarre marriage in a hill-top graveyard.
Insect Woman
Writer
event1972 star_border 5.2
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A schoolgirl goes from braids to bouffant when her mother makes her a bar hostess/prostitute. She cures impotence for Professor Lee and becomes his concubine. His entrepreneurial wife is initially shocked but soon accepts the arrangement and even gives the girl an allowance.
The Housemaid
Original Story
event2010 star_border 6.4
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Eun-yi is hired as a maid in a mansion owned by a wealthy businessman. He quickly starts seducing his employee who seemingly has little choice but to comply with his sexual advances. Soon the women of the family plot against Eun-yi who must fight an equally devious battle to protect herself.
Beasts of Prey
Director
event1985 star_border 4.2
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A social drama about a man with an inferiority complex to his wife. When he seeks consolation in an extramarital affair, his mistress and wife conspire to set up a plan for sharing him
Lady Hong
Director
event1969
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A man is haunted by the ghost of his murdered girlfriend who tries to tempt him into the underworld. He is also visited by the girls dead mother who is furious with him for loving her daughter.
Be a Wicked Woman
Director
event1990 star_border 4
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Two housewives, wounded by their husbands' betrayals, meet by chance. They decide to carry out "exchange murders" and work towards the perfect alibis. Under what they know to be perfect plans, they kill each other's husbands. Although the police are able to prove that they're guilty, these two women are found innocent by the court of law.
Water Lady
Writer
event1979 star_border 1
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Jin-seok returns from the Vietnam war, injured and marries Sun-ok. But financial difficulties cause them to argue. One day, Sun-ok brings bamboo trees from her parents' home and succeeds in running a bamboo ware manufacturing company. Sun-ok has a stuttering problem and their son inherits the habit and he is sent to a special school. Meanwhile Jin-seok falls for Chu-wol and begins abusing Sun-ok...
Hunting of Fools
Writer
event1984 star_border 6
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Seok-ho is unable to overcome his fear that he will not graduate from college for only a limited number of the class will get their diplomas. Seok-ho tries to kill himself and ends up in a mental institution. Then he persuades his fellow patient, Hong-ik, to escape with him. After dealing with several incidents, they become miners. They meet a simple young woman. In order to construct an ideal land, they head for a deserted island in the South Sea. However, just before they're about to leave for the island, Seok-ho realizes that the island is a fantasy of an insane man so he runs off with the woman. Left behind, Hong-ik is disheartened but he gets together with the elderly innkeeper couple whose own son died of a mental illness. They head for the deserted island on a boat.
Transgression
Director
event1974 star_border 5
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Chim-Ae, an orphan, is saved by an old monk of Seo San Temple, Mu Bul Dang while he is wandering in war fires. Then he enters the priesthood and trains himself a mountaineering asceticism. When he becomes an eminent young priest, the last trial to receive the mantle of the preceding abbot applies on him. The old monk sends the fairest of the fair, Myo-Hyang of cottage Ni Am to Chim-Ae to form a connection with her. But Chim-Ae quickly removes his earthly desires towards woman and goes through this hardship by fasting meditation. However the old monk recognizes that love sprouted between two youngsters and shows Chim-Ae the face of transgression which he mentally violated without hesitation to make Chim-Ae and Myo-Hyang go back to mundane existence.
Soil
Director
event1978
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While working on a case with farmers, lawyer Heo Seung comes to believe that the rural development movement is the only lasting way to preserve the identity of the country. With conviction, Seung throws himself into the rural area. However, this position is against the Japanese occupation policies and eventually, even his wife, Yun Jung-sun, ends up leaving him. The Japanese judge Masaki Hiroshi determines that Seung's rural development activities are actually a rebellion against Japan. He has Seung imprisoned as an ideology criminal. After spending five years in jail, Seung returns to the country to see his wife, Jung-sun, continuing her husband's work and waiting for him.
Woman
Writer
event1968
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A man meets a woman on his hiking trip to Mountain Seorak, but she suffers from incurable diseases. He becomes infatuated with her hair. When he tells her about his feeling she promises him that she would leave her hair after she dies as part his heritage for the man. But when he looks for her later she is already dead, and her hair was already sold to another person. He meets another woman he becomes intimate with, but finds that she is his biological mother.
Ban Geum-ryeon
Director
event1981
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Seo Mun-kyung, a merchant in ancient China where polygamy is legal, monopolizes the salt sales business. The magistrate of the province collapse families of Hwa Ja-heo and Hwang Mu-dae through Mun-kyung. When Ja-heo's wife Byung-ah fakes her death and disappears with Ja-heo, Seo is angered. But when he sees Mu-dae's wife Ban Geum-ryun, he is satisfied and this causes Mu-dae to end his own life. Geum-ryun makes Seo's concubines Chun-ae and Kyo-ah lose their sight and she takes Byung-ah to Seo. When Byung-ah has Seo's baby, antagonism and jealousy grows between the two women. Geum-ryun's jealousy kills Byung-ah's whole family and also kills Seo. Geum-ryun chooses to join her husband in death.
Touch-Me-Not
Producer
event1956
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A historical melodrama about a love triangle within a group of bandits.
A Woman's War
Director
event1957
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A housemaid becomes pregnant by her employer's husband and she flees to the countryside to raise her daughter on her own.
Twilight Train
Director
event1957
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The rivalry between two families prevents budding love from being realized in the younger generation.
Boxes of Death
Director
event1955 star_border 4.2
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A village youth gets trapped inside a communist hideout with his home made timebomb and must escape before it goes off.
Elegy of Ren
Director
event1969 star_border 5
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Simon, a painter, regains the use of his hands thanks to therapy administered by Ren. Later, when Simon is kidnapped by communists and forced to paint a portrait of Stalin, Ren again helps him by assisting in his escape. Simon's wife, however, is less than pleased at their growing friendship and becomes determined to keep them apart.
Asphalt
Editor
event1964
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In the process of arresting a smuggler, the criminal's wife is killed. Twenty years later, the smuggler is released from prison and vows to murder the wife of the policeman who killed his spouse.
The Deaf Worker
Adaptation
event1980
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A deaf woman boarding with an elderly laborer suffers many hardships upon the latter's death. The old man's son offers to care for her, but she feels she must leave in order to protect the young man's reputation.
Free Woman
Director
event1982
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A Korean woman raised in Spain with European values towards life and romance finds living in her ancestral land stifling and it eats away at her vitality.
I Am a Truck
Director
event1953 star_border 8
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Worldy renowned for his masterpiece The Housemaid (1960), Kim Ki-young debuts with his first short film I Am a Truck (1953), which was sponsored by UN and made a year after the armistice of the Korean War. This film is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a soon-to-be powerful auteur and influential filmmaker in the post-war Korean cinema, if not the whole history of Korean cinema.
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