Bong Joon-ho trivia: 53 facts about the Korean director

Bong Joon-ho is a world-renowned South Korean director. He has garnered international acclaim and he is nominated for an Academy Award for directing.

So let’s dive into some trivia and facts about the famous director.

1. Bong Joon-ho was born on September 14, 1969
2. He is a South Korean film director and screenwriter
3. He garnered international acclaim for his second feature film Memories of Murder (2003)
4. Before achieving commercial success with his subsequent films The Host (2006) and Snowpiercer (2013)
5. Both of which are among the highest-grossing films of all time in South Korea
6. Two of his films have screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival
7. Okja, which premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival
8. And Parasite, which won the Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival
9. He became the first Korean director to win the Palme d’Or
10. Parasite also won Best Foreign Language Film at the 77th Golden Globe Awards
11. With Bong nominated for Best Director and Best Screenplay for his work
12. Following the film’s nomination for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards, Parasite became the first South Korean film to receive an Academy Award nomination in any category
13. For his work on the film, Bong received Academy Award nominations for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Picture
14. In 2017, Metacritic ranked Bong sixteenth on its list of the 25 best film directors of the 21st century
15. His films feature social themes, genre-mixing, black humor, and sudden mood shifts
16. Bong Joon-ho was born in Daegu, South Korea in 1969
17. He is the youngest of four children
18. His father was a graphic and industrial graphic designer, art director of the National Film Production and professor Bong Sang-gyun
19. He passed away in 2017
20. While his mother was a full-time housewife
21. But she was a second daughter of the renowned modern Korean author Park Taewon, Park Soyoung
22. Bong’s maternal grandfather, Park Taewon, was an esteemed author during the Japanese colonial period, most famous for his work A Day in the Life of Gubo the Novelist and his defection to North Korea in 1950
23. His older brother Bong Junsoo is an English professor at the Seoul National University
24. And his older sister Bong Jihee is a fashion designer and director of the International Culture Association
25. His wife is Jung Sunyoung
26. And his son is a movie director Bong Hyomin
27. While Bong was in elementary school, the family relocated to Seoul, taking up residence in Jamsil-dong by the Han River
28. Bong enrolled in Yonsei University in 1988, majoring in sociology
29. College campuses such as Yonsei’s were then hotbeds for the South Korean democracy movement
30. And Bong was an active participant of student demonstrations
31. Frequently subjected to tear gas early in his college years
32. Bong served a two-year term in the military in accordance with South Korea’s compulsory military service before returning to college in 1992
33. He co-founded a film club named Yellow Door with students from neighboring universities
34. As a member of the club, Bong made his first films
35. Including a stop-motion short titled Looking for Paradise and a 16mm short titled White Man
36. He graduated from Yonsei University in 1995
37. In the early 1990s, Bong completed a two-year program at the Korean Academy of Film Arts
38. While there, he made many 16mm short films
39. His graduation films Memory Within the Frame and Incoherence were invited to screen at the Vancouver and Hong Kong international film festivals
40. He also collaborated on several works with his classmates
41. Most notably as cinematographer on the highly acclaimed short 2001 Imagine
42. Directed by his friend Jang Joon-hwan
43. Aside from cinematography on Hur Jae-young’s short A Hat, Bong was also lighting director on an early short Sounds From Heaven and Earth by Choi Equan, and The Love of a Grape Seed
44. Parasite was released in South Korea by CJ Entertainment on 30 May 2019
45. And in the rest of the world by Neon in late-2019
46. It received widespread critical acclaim and earned $115 million at the worldwide box office
47. Becoming Bong’s highest-grossing release
48. For Parasite, Bong was nominated for Best Director and Best Screenplay at the 77th Golden Globe Awards
49. With the film itself winning Best Foreign Language Film
50. After graduating, he spent the next five years contributing in various capacities to works by other directors
51. He received a partial screenplay credit on the 1996 omnibus film Seven Reasons Why Beer is Better Than a Lover
52. Both screenplay and assistant director credits on Park Ki-yong’s 1997 debut Motel Cactus
53. And is one of four writers (along with Jang Joon-hwan) credited for the screenplay of Phantom the Submarine (1999)