Na Hong-Jin told a Busan International Film Festival masterclass audience that his film “Hope” grew out of a conviction, around 2017, that war was about to break out on the Korean peninsula. At the time, Na said, news reports were describing U.S. fighter jets and bombers flying in and out over Pyongyang through the night. He expected fighting to start in early 2018 or soon after the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
That sense of foreboding, he explained, is one of two ingredients he needs before he will commit to a project. The other is the unease he feels around people. He has come to see their words as a mix of truth, distortion and outright lies, regardless of whether any ill intent lies behind them.
The session at the 31st edition of the festival was billed under the title “Na Hong-Jin, A Genre of His Own.” Na planned it as an hour-long walk through his process, followed by half an hour of audience questions. He pitched it at the students he expected in the room. He described an upbringing that fed directly into his work.
His mother read horror novels, mysteries, thrillers and comic books, and sent Na and his brothers to bookstores to buy them, handing the books down once she had finished. His father’s job took him to Japan often. Na had a Walkman before he started preschool, and it kept being replaced each time older neighborhood boys took it from him.
Na studied crafts at university, working with wood, metal, dyes and ceramics, because flat, two-dimensional drawing had come to bore him. Na said he does not go hunting for material. He waits for it to find him while he spends time with all kinds of people.
One of them, drunk, told him that serial killer Yoo Young-chul had once set a fire and escaped after being taken into custody by police in Mapo. Na said he had not known about the incident and was shocked. Na’s research took him by plane to Yanbian, where he met a well-known gangster and spent long hours hearing his stories.
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