Biography: Park Chul-soo

On November 20, 1948, Park Chul-soo was born in Daegu, South Korea, as a film director, producer, screenwriter, and sometimes actor from South Korea. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was one of Korea’s most active directors. After his graduation, Park attended Sungkyunkwan University on a scholarship. He temporarily worked as a teacher in his hometown of Daegu after graduating. He started his film career as a crew worker for Shin Film before directing Captain of the Alley in 1978, which received a mediocre response. But his second picture, The Rain That Falls Every Night, which was released the following year and told a story of a lady who falls in love with a boxer who raped her, brought him popularity. He specialized in sentimental and refined melodramas during this point in his career. His 1985 thriller Mother, starring Youn Yuh-Jung as a mother on a killing rampage after her college student daughter is raped and commits suicide, is still regarded as Korean cinema’s quintessential masterpiece in the rape-revenge genre the 1970s and 1980s.

At the Grand Bell Awards that year, it received numerous awards, including best picture. Park’s films focused on women, sex, and repressed urbanites throughout his career, while his method of expression fluctuated between outrageous and delicate. Park was probably the first filmmaker to popularise South Korean cinema abroad when the picture “301,302” became one of the first contemporary Korean films to be screened theatrically in North America. Farewell My Darling (1996), filmed primarily with hand-held cameras and Push! Push! (1997), which likewise dealt with women’s wants, illustrates his ongoing experimentation.

Park began his career in the 2000s with provocative sex games, notably the graphic Green Chair (2003). This story tells the real story between a high school boy and a woman in their thirties. He has directed low-budget dramas about male sexuality—relationships, such as Red Vacance Black Wedding (2011) and BED (2013). While dangerous to his professional future, he was a passionate supporter of the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival, despite becoming an outsider of the traditional South Korean film business.

On February 19, 2013, Park was crossing a roadway in the city of Yongin when a drunk driver struck him. Park had recently finished post-production on a new film named Love Conceptually and contributed the short film Illusion to the omnibus A Journey with Korean Masters.

In March 2013, his final feature film, Eating, Talking, Faucking, was released posthumously.