Biography: Park Chan-ok

Park Chan-ok is a South Korean director and screenwriter. She wrote and directed the award-winning films “Jealousy Is My Middle Name” (2003) and “Paju” (2009). She was born in Gurye County, South Jeolla Province, South Korea, in 1968. Park Chanok studied theater and film at Hanyang University before going to the Korea National University of the Arts for postgraduate studies. He began his independent film career with Generation Blue Films, where he directed many award-winning short films. Cat Woman & Man (1995), To Be (1996), which won First Prize at the 1st Women’s Film Festival in Seoul. The Audience Award at the Hanover Film Festival, Heavy (1998), which won the Sonje Award at the 3rd Busan International Film Festival, and Performance Experience (2001) are some of her short films (1999). She also worked on Jung Ji-short woo’s A Bit Bitter (1996) and Hong Sang-Virgin soo’s Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors as an assistant director (2000). Jealousy Is My Middle Name, Park’s first feature film, received critical acclaim. Also, in 2002, it won the New Currents Award at the 7th Busan International Film Festival and Best Screenplay at the 24th Blue Dragon Film Awards and the 32nd International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Tiger Award in 2003.

Variety compared Park to one of Korea’s finest writers, Hong Sangsoo, for the strong display of human emotions. The film’s sarcastic, slightly humorous but empathetic language called him an “excellent debut.

Describing his approach, Cinematographically as” less, “distant,”  his long-awaited second feature film is a meticulous examination of human nature and emotions by portraying people affected by pain and their relationships. This film is present in the Busan International Film Festival’s New Currents Competition Section. It was honored with the NETPAC Award (jury members described it as a “fine example of passionate, high-quality filmmaking”). In the titular city of Paju, a grim, foggy locale that was once a longtime military garrison and is now a developing urban. It is a realistic portrait of modern Korean society through the eyes of a young woman who suspects that her former democratic activist brother-in-law may have had something to do with her sister’s mysterious death and eventually fall for him. Paju was also the opening picture of the 39th Rotterdam International Film Festival and won the Special Jury Award at the 13th Deauville Asian Film Festival, the NETPAC Award at the 4th Asia Pacific Screen Awards, and the Special Jury Prize at the 13th Deauville Asian Film Festival. (the first Korean film selected for the opening of the Dutch Film Festival). Park got a nomination for Best Director at the 46th Baeksang Arts Awards and was awarded Woman Filmmaker of the Year at the 10th Women in Film Korea Awards in 2009. Park featured in Heo Chul’s documentary Ari Ari the Korean Cinema in 2012 and has worked as a production consultant on several independent films.