Na Hong-jin

Na Hong-jin is a South Korean film director and screenwriter whose three feature films have paired crime narratives with escalating dread. Born in 1974, he studied at the Korea National University of Arts and first attracted major attention with The Chaser, his 2008 feature debut. The film begins with Joong ho, a former detective turned pimp, searching for prostitutes who have disappeared after meeting a client. His investigation leads to Young min, a killer played by Ha Jung woo. Rather than presenting police work as clean heroism, the film traps its characters in administrative failures, mistaken assumptions, and a desperate race against time. The Chaser starred Kim Yoon-seok as Joong-ho and Ha Jung-woo as Young-min. It sold more than five million tickets in South Korea and received acclaim for its pursuit of a killer and bleak finale. Na's follow-up, The Yellow Sea, was released in 2010. It moves between Yanji in China and South Korea. Kim Yoon-seok plays Gu-nam, a taxi driver of Korean descent living in Yanbian. He accepts a contract killing in Korea, hoping to pay his debts and locate his missing wife. Ha Jung-woo plays the intermediary Myun-ga, whose instructions make Gu-nam prey for several competing forces. The film intensifies. The Yellow Sea returned Na to the Cannes Film Festival, where it screened in the Un Certain Regard section in 2011. His third feature, The Wailing, premiered at Cannes in 2016 and was released that year. Set in the rural county of Gokseong, it follows policeman Jong goo, played by Kwak Do won, after a series of murders and violent illnesses terrifies the community. Suspicion falls on a reclusive Japanese man played by Kunimura Jun. Hwang Jung min appears as Il gwang, a shaman hired by Jong goo's mother in law, while Chun Woo hee plays the enigmatic Moo myeong. The Wailing refuses to settle its supernatural conflict into a single reliable explanation; instead, it makes rituals, testimony, visions, and competing advice sources of danger. That ambiguity distinguishes the film from a conventional investigation story and has made its ending a sustained subject of discussion. Na co wrote the screenplay with Huh Jin ho and Park Yong min. In 2021, he served as producer on The Medium, a Thai and South Korean horror film directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun. The film uses a documentary style to follow a shaman in northeastern Thailand and her niece, whose possession becomes increasingly severe. Na has worked across borders.