Kim Seong-hun

Kim Seong-hun is a South Korean film director and screenwriter best known for the 2014 crime thriller A Hard Day and for directing the first season of Netflix’s Korean period-zombie series Kingdom. Before his breakthrough as a feature director, he worked in production roles, including as an assistant director. His feature directorial debut was How the Lack of Love Affects Two Men (2006), a romantic comedy starring Baek Yoon-sik and Bong Tae-gyu. A Hard Day, released in Korea in 2014, follows detective Go Geon-soo, played by Lee Sun-kyun, whose attempts to conceal a fatal traffic accident lead him into a mounting struggle with an Internal Affairs officer, Park Chang-min, played by Cho Jin-woong. The film premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. Its tightly escalating plot and darkly comic tone made it an important critical and commercial success for Kim. At the 51st Baeksang Arts Awards, he received the Best Director prize in the film category for A Hard Day. The movie later generated official remakes in several territories, including China’s Peace Breaker, France’s The Beast, and the Japanese film A Hard Day. Kim moved to streaming television with Kingdom, whose first six-episode season debuted on Netflix in January 2019. Written by Kim Eun-hee and adapted from her webcomic The Kingdom of the Gods, the series is set in Korea’s Joseon period. Ju Ji-hoon plays Crown Prince Lee Chang, who investigates a mysterious illness affecting the king and encounters an epidemic that turns the infected into undead creatures. The cast also includes Ryu Seung-ryong as the powerful Cho Hak-ju and Bae Doona as physician Seo-bi. Kim directed season one; the second season, released in 2020, was directed by Park In-je. Kingdom was Netflix’s first original Korean series and helped bring Korean genre television to a wider international audience. In 2023 Kim directed Ransomed, a film starring Ha Jung-woo and Ju Ji-hoon. Set in 1987, it centers on a South Korean diplomat, Min-jun, who travels to Lebanon after receiving a coded message from a colleague kidnapped years earlier. There he relies on Korean taxi driver Kim Pan-su, and the pair attempt to complete an exchange amid armed factions. Ransomed reunited Kim with Ju Ji-hoon, after their work on Kingdom. It opened theatrically on August 2, 2023. The film combines a diplomatic rescue mission with a road-movie structure, and its central partnership drives the action forward under pressure.