TV
Yeon Sang-ho, "My father-in-law, the SF 'Jung_E' featuring a robot is 'absurd'"
On the 18th, I met director Yeon Sang-ho of the Netflix movie ‘Jeong-i’ at a cafe in Samcheong-dong, Seoul. Director Yeon Sang-ho directed and wrote the screenplay for this film. The main characters are Kim Hyun-joo as Yoon Jeong-i, a subject for brain cloning to develop combat AI, Ryu Gyeong-soo as Sang-hoon, the head of a research center who must succeed in developing combat AI, and Yoon Seo-hyun as the daughter of the human Yoon Jeong-i, team leader at a research institute developing brain cloning and AI technology. This is the late Kang Su-yeon.
Director Yeon Sang-ho said, "Before 'Jeong-i' was officially released, my father-in-law came to our house and he was curious, so I showed it to him and he said, 'Isn't that a bit too absurd a story?' He was someone who had survived zombies, but suddenly robots appeared." I laughed. He continued, "Anyway, the science fiction genre is unfamiliar in Korea. Even for me, the producer of the film, there is an unfamiliar aspect to science fiction films because there are characters who speak Korean. So, I think it may be even more unfamiliar to the general public. If that unfamiliar genre of science fiction were to be seen by our artisans, “I thought about something that even adults could accept comfortably,” he said. He also said, “I wanted to create a story that would be naturally accepted, except that this movie has a universal and not difficult theme, and that it is science fiction.”
Director Yeon Sang-ho said, "I don't think that just because it is a universal and natural narrative, the subject matter is shallow. In 'Jeong-i', Yoon Seo-hyun has a living mother. Although she is lying in a vegetative state in the hospital, the aging mother exists, so the replica robots were used. I don't think it's a situation where you can mistake her for a real mother. War hero Yoon Jeong-i, a war that is ending in vain, a daughter who is destined to disappear soon, and in various situations, the daughter wants to kill the cause of an AI robot that resembles her mother. “I think you will be able to feel this. That feeling is probably something that is difficult to imagine in general. I think it can only exist within the setting of science fiction,” he said. He continued, "I think I can imagine that. How would my mother have lived if it weren't for me? My mother was also well-known in the village for being smart, but she had to raise me... I imagine what it would be like to have that opportunity, but it doesn't happen in reality. That's not true. "I'm imagining it through science fiction. It has a universal narrative, but the subject matter is not light. My intention is to create a work that can be viewed comfortably, accepted naturally, and thought about," he explained.
When asked whether he originally liked science fiction, director Yeon Sang-ho said, "When I was young, there was a book called Human Science Fiction Short Stories. After reading that book in elementary school, I was introduced to the works of great writers. Among them, the one I read was a short story called 'The Crooked Robot' by Philip K. Dick. . A person runs away under the suspicion that it is an alien bomb, and later finds out that it is a real alien bomb. It contains a story related to one's identity. I tend to like such types of SF. This topic is a topic that people like my father-in-law who are unfamiliar with SF “I thought it could be easily conveyed to people,” he replied.
'Jeong-i' is a science fiction film that tells the story of people who try to develop the best combat AI by cloning the brain of the legendary mercenary 'Jeong-i' in order to end the war that broke out in the shelter where they migrated away from the Earth devastated by climate change. It will be released on the 20th.
Kim Ji-won, Ten Asia reporter bella@tenasia.co.kr
