A director returns to set

Lee Chang-dong, seventy-two, is filming Possible Love in Gunsan, South Korea, his first feature in eight years. He moves at the unhurried pace of a novelist, his original vocation.

A real strike becomes fiction

Possible Love is based on SsangYong Motor's two thousand nine layoffs at a factory in Pyeongtaek, just south of Seoul. The company laid off a third of its workforce, some twenty-six hundred people.

Workers fought back and died

Workers staged a sitdown strike and barricaded themselves on the factory roof. Police descended from helicopters and beat them with billy clubs. Many workers subsequently died by suicide.

“If you aren't willing to talk, you might as well kill us!”

The film's emotional core

The story centers on Ho-seok, a fired welder, and his wife Mi-ok, plus their son Cheol. A second couple, filmmaker Ye-ji and her wealthy husband Sang-woo, document the aftermath.

Lee's literary approach to cinema

Lee's work embeds political consciousness with a literary approach, unlike the commercial Korean New Wave. He uses vérité style with endogenous light and sound, trying to get actors not to act.

Born into poverty and struggle

Lee was born in nineteen fifty-four in Daegu, the fifth of six children in an educated but impoverished family. His father was a leftist who opposed the pro-U.S. military government.

A cousin's gift changed everything

During elementary school, a cousin offered Lee a deal: do your homework and I'll bring you a book. Western classics like Jules Verne's Two Years' Vacation sparked his imagination.

Theatre and art under censorship

Lee's brother introduced him to Shakespeare and Ionesco. At twelve, Lee watched a reading of Misery and Nobility and felt transfigured. Art seemed elevated even amid poverty.

Censorship under military rule

Lee came of age under military dictator Park Chung-hee, who imposed a midnight curfew and strict censorship. A poster for the Stairway Literature Club was rejected for having too much red.

Tragedy and political awakening

In nineteen eighty, Lee learned that Chun Doo-hwan had sent armed troops to crush a democratic uprising in Gwangju, killing hundreds of civilians. Lee felt sick with guilt for his ignorance.

Personal loss and artistic vision

In nineteen eighty-five, Lee's firstborn, then a preschooler, died in a traffic accident. His personal agony fused with despair over the military government's crackdowns on democracy activists.

A virus destroys his fiction

While polishing a screenplay for A Single Spark in nineteen ninety-five, the Michelangelo virus destroyed Lee's hard drive. All his novellas and stories in progress were gone.

“It was, like, I guess I shouldn't be writing fiction.”

Lee fights for Korean cinema

In the nineties, Lee joined the Screen Quota Watch Group, demanding that South Korea enforce a law requiring theatres to show domestic movies for at least one hundred forty-six days per year.

A trade deal threatens Korean film

Around nineteen ninety-eight, South Korea negotiated a bilateral investment treaty with the U.S. The screen quota emerged as the deal-breaker. The Korean side refused to liberalize it.

Lee becomes minister of culture

In two thousand three, populist human-rights lawyer Roh Moo-hyun became President. Members of the Watch Group recommended Lee as minister of culture. He got the job but soon faced conflict.

Lee makes a difficult choice

Roh wanted to negotiate a huge trade deal with the U.S. and would scale back the quota as an olive branch. Lee, viewing the decision as inevitable, made the announcement.

“We express serious disappointment in Lee Chang-dong as minister.”

Korean cinema thrives despite quota cuts

Roh halved the quota, and the U.S. and Korea signed a multibillion-dollar free-trade agreement. Yet the domestic market share of Korean movies rose from sixteen percent in nineteen ninety-three to nearly sixty percent today.

Burning wins at Venice

Lee's two thousand eighteen film Burning, co-written with Oh Jungmi, starred Steven Yeun and won the critics' award at Cannes. It was about a young man's rage and a mysterious arsonist.

Netflix funds the comeback

Despite Lee's stature, he had trouble securing funding for Possible Love. Netflix Korea provided the budget and agreed to give it a brief theatrical run before it hits the app in November.

Possible Love wins at Venice

At the Venice Film Festival in September, Possible Love won the Grand Jury Prize. Netflix threw its weight behind the project with publicists and retrospectives in New York and Los Angeles.