Park Chan-wook

Park Chan-wook
박찬욱
Park in 2013
Born	(1963-08-23) 23 August 1963 (age 60) Seoul, South Korea
Other names	Bakridamae (박리다매)
Alma mater	Sogang University, Seoul, South Korea
Occupation(s)	Film director, screenwriter, producer
Years active	1992–present
Notable work	The Vengeance Trilogy Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance Oldboy Lady Vengeance Thirst The Handmaiden Decision to Leave
Spouse	Kim Eun-hee ​ (m. 1990)​
Children	1[1]
Relatives	Park Chan-kyong (brother)
Awards	Best Director at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival
Honours	Eun-gwan Order of Cultural Merit (2022)
Korean name
Hangul	박찬욱
Hanja	朴贊郁
Revised Romanization	Bak Chanuk
McCune–Reischauer	Pak Ch'anuk

Park Chan-wook (Korean: 박찬욱; IPA: [pak̚ tɕʰanuk̚]; born 23 August 1963) is a South Korean film director, screenwriter, producer, and former film critic. He is considered one of the most prominent filmmakers of South Korean cinema as well as 21st-century world cinema.^[2] His films, which often blend crime, mystery and thriller with other genres, and have gained notoriety for their cinematography, framing, black humor and often brutal subject matters.^[3][4]

After two unsuccessful films in the 1990s which he has since largely disowned, Park came to prominence with his acclaimed third directorial effort, Joint Security Area (2000), which became the highest-grossing film in South Korean history at the time and which Park himself prefers to be regarded as his directorial debut.^[5][6] Using his newfound creative freedom, he would go on to direct the films forming his unofficial The Vengeance Trilogy: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), a financial failure that polarized critics, followed by Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005), both of which received critical acclaim and were financially successful. Oldboy in particular is regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, and helped establish Park as a well-known director outside his native country.^{[7][8][9][10][11]}

Most of Park's works following The Vengeance Trilogy were also commercial and critical successes both in South Korea and internationally, such as the horror film Thirst (2009), the psychological thriller The Handmaiden (2016), which earned Park the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language and the Cannes Film Festival's Vulcain Prize for the Technical Arts, and the romantic mystery film Decision to Leave (2022), which won the Best Director award at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.^[12] Conversely, I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK (2006) was a financial disappointment while his sole English-language film Stoker (2013) received positive reviews but was seen as inferior to his works in Korean. The English-language miniseries The Little Drummer Girl (2018), which he directed all episodes of, was lauded by critics. In 2024, he co-created and directed episodes of the historical drama miniseries The Sympathizer.