FILM · 2019 · SOUTH KOREA
Gisaengchung
102 archived facts 8 topics 1 source Last reviewed Nov 2026
102 Interesting Facts About Gisaengchung
Interesting Facts (20)
- #001
The gym in the film is the same place where Bong Joon-ho filmed the quarantine sequence in The Host (2006). He didn't realize it and was reminded by a member of the crew. "Oh fuck!" was his reply.
- #002
Asked if there's greater meaning to the Park family's appreciation of Native American paraphernalia, Bong Joon-ho suggests that it's no deeper than someone deciding to wear a Che Guevara tee-shirt.
- #003
Because of his respect and fascination with black & white cinematography, director/writer Bong Joon Ho announced that he would re-release his acclaimed film in just such a B&W version in January 2020. This special presentation of "Parasite" was planned to debut in the Rotterdam Film Festival, with US screenings to follow in NYC and Los Angeles as well as small art house theaters in other cities like the Granbury in Ft. Worth Texas.
- #004
Bong Joon-ho has shown black & white versions of Parasite and Mother (2009), and Tony Rayns asks him why. "I can not suppress my desire to have my own black & white movie." Bong revealed. Criterion's new Blu-ray of Parasite features the b&w version as an extra feature.
- #005
Asked if he himself has a scholar's stone (as seen in the film), Bong Joon-ho replies that he's no fan of the real ones. "I hate something heavy." His father collected them, though.
- #006
When the Parks leave on vacation and the Kims take over the house, the poorer family celebrates with food and drink. The alcohol opens the door to some ambiguity, though, regarding the Kim family's tight relationship as friction grows between them. "Ambiguity makes audiences very nervous, and there is some tension," says Bong Joon-ho.
- #007
Tony Rayns asks about the arrow sticking out of the little boy's behind, and Bong Joon-ho laughs. "Please don't misunderstand, not every Korean nine-year-old boy has something on the butt." It was a detail he just added to his storyboard of the scene even though it isn't in the script.
- #008
The family that Song Kang-ho's character, Ki Taek, works for in the film shares the same family name as his character in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002). His character in that film is called Park Dong-jin and is a rich businessman similar to Park Dong-ik from this film.
- #009
There are two Native American headdresses in Da-Song's room. This is what Ki-teak and Mr Park wear at the birthday party at the end of the movie.
- #010
The rich lady hesitates when shaking hands with the driver. When the driver shakes her hand himself, she asks him if he has washed his hands. This little moment highlights the disparity between the rich and poor in the film showing that the rich do not treat the poor as equals. While there may have been some tone of disparity, it is important to note that the driver had just handled what appeared to be a bloody tissue from someone with TB.
- #011
After the film received an eight-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, Bong Joon Ho took the microphone and said, "Thank you. Let's all go home." He later explained that the screening had ended close to midnight and he and the cast were so hungry that they had been whispering to each other about getting something to eat during the applause.
- #012
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 11 mins) In the movie, Ki-woo's forged certificate of enrollment shows it's supposedly from Yeonsei University, director Bong Joon Ho's alma mater.
- #013
Contains a major spoiler — show
The white & red face painting by the boy resembles the man in the basement and the movie's final scene.
- #014
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 53 minutes) The Kim mother Chun-sook (Jang Hye-jin) is seen throwing a hammer in the lawn of the Park house. She had won a medal in this athletic event. This medal can be seen in the beginning of the movie in her house and collected by Mr Kim during the flood.
- #015
Contains a major spoiler — show
There's a couple scenes where there are 10 chairs at the dinner table. Not only does it make a statement about the rich having more than plenty to go around. But this foreshadows that the Parks had enough to share between themselves, the Kim family, and the maid and her husband.
- #016
Contains a major spoiler — show
(At around 1:18:00) When the wife and kids of the Park family were walking up the stairs as they came home from their camping trip, the staircase lights did not light up as Geun-se was tied up in the basement at the time.
- #017
Contains a major spoiler — show
The Park couple engage in some heavy petting and fully-clothed handy-work while on the couch, and Tony Rayns mentions it's as explicit of a sex scene as Bong Joon-ho has ever filmed. "I'm not that perverted guy," says Bong. "I'm a very light and pleasant man."
- #018
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 10 mins) When Ki-Woo asks about the tutoring job near the beginning of the film, a bus passes behind him. This bus was timed by the director to pass as he asks the question.
- #019
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 1h 35 mins) When Song Kang-ho's character (the father) is running through the streets in the rain, you can see him slightly roll his ankle and wince in pain.
- #020
Contains a major spoiler — show
Da-song's birthday party at the end was supposed to be "Native American themed", with the masked Dong-ik and Ki-taek as the "evil Indians" pretending to attack "Jessica" (Ki-jeong). In a tragic example of dark irony, however, Ki-jeong is lethally wounded by the crazed Geun-se, whose face is smeared with food and blood in a way to resemble Native Americans war paintings.
Production Story (17)
- #021
When it comes to scenes featuring long conversations between characters, Bong Joon-ho is inspired by the works of Martin Scorsese and the Coen Brothers, whom he views as masters of such things.
- #022
Bong Joon-ho is not sure why he named the rich father's company Another Brick, but he thinks it might have been because he was a huge fan of Pink Floyd when he was in high school.
- #023
On almost all of his films, Bong Joon Ho has worked closely with American translator Darcy Paquet, a Korean resident and "cinephile" blogger of Korean movies, and gives him tremendous credit for their collaboration, especially for the astute way he enhances the American English quality of script and subtitles.
- #024
The name ram-don was invented exclusively for the film and designed for English speakers, being a combination of ramen and udon. That would explain why the housekeeper did not know the dish, which for her would have another name: jjapaguri.
- #025
Bong Joon-ho has shown black & white versions of Parasite and Mother (2009), and Tony Rayns asks him why. "I can not suppress my desire to have my own black & white movie," Bong revealed. Criterion's new Blu-ray of Parasite features the b&w version as an extra feature.
- #026
The onscreen title uses spirals in its script where normally there would be circles, and Bong Joon-ho says it originated with the original poster design. The artist did it there, and the filmmaker loved it "because a spiral feels like a parasite in our body."
- #027
In the South Korean version, Ki-jung makes Ki-woo a fake diploma for Yonsei University, while in international versions, the fake diploma is for Oxford University. Bong Joon Ho felt that international audiences needed to understand the immaculate pedigree the fake résumé promised.
- #028
Bong Joon Ho revealed that the idea for Parasite originated in 2013 and spent several years developing in his mind before he finally wrote the screenplay, a process he completed in just four months.
- #029
Director Bong Joon Ho chose his long-time collaborator Song Kang-ho and Choi Woo-sik, who was in Bong's last film Okja (2017), before picking any other actors of the movie while writing the script. Bong also said that if Song had declined, he wouldn't have made the movie, as he couldn't think of another actor playing the part.
- #030
At the Munich Film Festival, Bong Joon Ho said that he does not like screenwriting and that it makes him nervous and insufferable to his family. The idea for Parasite had existed since 2015, and the final script was written in three and a half months.
- #031
Tony Rayns points out how Bong Joon-ho films, Parasite in particular, never stop to deliver exposition and instead build their story on the move. "I was very inspired by George Miller's Mad Max Fury Road. That movie never stops, all physical action and movement, it just keeps going going going, but all the background information and story occurs quite naturally."
- #032
The ram-don dish is popular in South Korea, but Bong Joon-ho added the sirloin into it for the film's wealthy characters. "I never tried it."
- #033
"As a screenwriter," says Bong Joon-ho, he really hates elements like CCTV recordings, mobile phones, and other technological advancements that get in the way of story.
- #034
Asking them to refrain from spoilers, Bong Joon Ho released "A word of pleading" for international press before the Cannes premiere of the film.
- #035
The song over the end credits is called "A Glass of Soju" and features lyrics written by Bong Joon-ho. "Please try this song in karaoke, so I can earn some money from it," he stated.
- #036
Ki-woo's job, at-home tutor, was chosen because director Bong Joon Ho realized that sadly the job is the only way that families from two extreme ends of the class spectrum in modern-day South Korea can cross their paths convincingly in the story arc.
- #037
Contains a major spoiler — show
"A Glass of Soju," the first end credit song, is written by Bong Joon Ho and sung by Choi Woo-sik. The original title was "564 Years," which is the number of years Ki-woo would have to work to earn the money to buy the house.
Behind the Scenes (16)
- #038
According to editor Yang Jin-mo, he edited the film in Final Cut Pro 7 - an editing program that Apple stopped supporting in 2011, on a computer that hasn't had a software update since 2014. He received an Oscar nomination for his work.
- #039
The Parks' house, said in the film to be designed by a fictional architect named Namgoong Hyeonja, was a set completely built from scratch.
- #040
In an interview with Korean magazine Cine21, Director Bong Joon Ho spoke of his experience in filming in a hyper-rich Korean home. He said his hand literally shook from anxiety when he was returning a trash can that was used as a prop: the trash can was of high-tech variety that stayed silent even when the lid was being closed and cost as much as US $2,500.
- #041
Tony Rayns asks about the arrow sticking out of the little boy's behind, and Bong Joon-ho laughs. "Please don't misunderstand, not every Korean nine-year-old boy has something on the butt." It was a detail he just added to his storyboard of the scene even though it isn't in the script.
- #042
The gym in the film is the same place where Bong Joon-ho filmed the quarantine sequence in The Host (2006). He didn't realize it and was reminded by a member of the crew. "Oh fuck!" was his reply.
- #043
Real trees are expensive, so half of the ones seen encircling the Parks' back yard are created via CG composites.
- #044
Director Bong Joon Ho said that for a scene that featured the mother and daughter, the mother's best performance was the third take and the daughter's the fifth, so editor Yang Jin-mo split the shot in half to stitch together the best performance for each actor.
- #045
A wide aspect ratio of 2.35 was chosen to accommodate the capture of a large family group in a single frame, says director Bong Joon Ho.
- #046
Bong Joon-ho storyboards everything, which means he never has to shoot coverage shots because everything is planned out precisely.
- #047
The trash can in the Parks' house costs $2,300 in real life. Bong Joon Ho chose it because it doesn't make any noise and opens very smoothly. Still, he was baffled by the cost, saying: "What the fuck? What kind of idiot would buy a trash can that's going to smell anyway?"
- #048
The wealthy family's home was built for the film, but only the first floor is real as the second floor of the exterior is CG. The interior of the second story, along with the basement, is a soundstage.
- #049
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 10 mins) At around 10 minutes, when Ki-Woo asks about the tutoring job near the beginning of the film, a bus passes behind him. This bus was timed by the director to pass as he asks the question.
- #050
Contains a major spoiler — show
For the flood scene of the "poor" house, a face mud mask was used to give the sewage water its brownish look.
- #051
Contains a major spoiler — show
The Kim family's house, alleyway and entire neighborhood were all built on a massive set that doubled as a water tank, so that the whole thing could be flooded.
- #052
Contains a major spoiler — show
The Park couple engage in some heavy petting and fully-clothed handy-work while on the couch, and Tony Rayns mentions it's as explicit a sex scene as Bong Joon-ho has ever filmed. "I'm not that perverted guy," says Bong. "I'm a very light and pleasant man."
- #053
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 4 mins) Following the scene with the Kims folding pizza boxes, the CEO tells them 1 out of 4 are rejected, followed by a long shot of the family. One out of four of the family members end up "rejected" in the end.
Characters & Cast (3)
- #054
When Choi Woo-sik was approached by Bong Joon Ho for the role, the director gave him almost no details about the story or his character. His only specific instruction was to "stay thin."
- #055
Song Kang-ho agreed to star in the film without knowing anything about his character, the plot, or its subject matter. He accepted the role immediately because of his long-standing trust in Bong Joon Ho, with whom he had worked for approximately 20 years.
- #056
When Choi Woo-sik was approached by Bong Joon Ho for the role, the director gave him almost no details about the story or his character. His only specific instruction was to "stay thin."
Easter Eggs & References (18)
- #057
The family that Song Kang-ho's character, Ki Taek, works for in the film shares the same family name as his character in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002). His character in that film is called Park Dong-jin and is a rich businessman similar to Park Dong-ik from this film.
- #058
One of the books on the shelf is about Alfred Hitchcock. In an interview, Bong Joon Ho said that Hitchcock greatly influenced the movie, and that the Bates motel in Psycho was a key inspiration.
- #059
The film makes several nods to Alfred Hitchcock throughout. Stairs are used as a motif, voyeurism is used as characters watch scenes through windows 14 times, and most obviously there is a brief glimpse of an out-of-place Alfred Hitchcock collection in the Parks' home.
- #060
The architect of the Park mansion shares the same family name with Song Kang-ho's character in Snowpiercer (2013), i.e. Namgoong. Song is a regular cast member of Bong Joon Ho's films.
- #061
Film critic and commentator Tony Rayns points out some similarities in scenes between this film and Bong Joon-ho's earlier work: the fumigation in Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), the shaking pizza boxes in Tokyo! (2008). Bong replies, "Tony, you are the man who knew too much. I am very uncomfortable with it."
- #062
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 53 minutes) At around 53 minutes, the Kim mother, Chun-sook (Jang Hye-jin), is seen throwing a hammer on the lawn of the Park house. She had won a medal in this athletic event. This medal can be seen at the beginning of the movie in her house and is collected by Mr. Kim during the flood.
- #063
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 19 mins) At around 19 minutes, the peculiar self-portrait made by her young son, which Mrs. Park (Cho Yeo-jeong) proudly shows off to Ki-Woo (Choi Woo-sik) on his first visit to the Parks, bears a very strong resemblance (altered, of course, to resemble a child's work) to the wild-eyed painting by the eccentric Mrs. Antony (Marion Lorne) of St. Francis, which her mad son Bruno (Robert Walker) finds amusing, in the classic Alfred Hitchcock film Strangers on a Train (1951). That this resemblance is probably not coincidental is attested to by the numerous Hitchcockian themes and tropes scattered throughout this film, as well as the very prominent placement of a Hitchcock video in one shot.
- #064
Contains a major spoiler — show
A throwaway line early in the film about how the housekeeper eats so much, almost as if she's eating for two, is one of many sly nods to the narrative surprise in the film's second half with the man in the basement. Bong Joon-ho thanked Tony Rayns for being the first person to mention that to him over the entire press tour "from Cannes to Oscar."
- #065
Contains a major spoiler — show
There are a couple of scenes where there are 10 chairs at the dinner table. Not only does it make a statement about the rich having more than plenty to go around, but it also foreshadows that the Parks had enough to share between themselves, the Kim family, and the maid and her husband.
- #066
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 2h) At around 2 hours, towards the end of the movie, when Kim Ki-taek steals food from the fridge of the new house owners, the magnets which attach the pictures of the family to the fridge all show motifs related to Switzerland: the Swiss national flag, the flag of the city of Bern and three touristic hot spots in Switzerland (the Kapellbrücke in Lucerne, the Jungfraujoch and the Harderkulm). This might indicate that the family is actually from Switzerland and that Kim Ki-taek mistakes them to be from Germany because they speak German (which is spoken in Switzerland as well). Of course, they could also be Germans who traveled in Switzerland.
- #067
Contains a major spoiler — show
At around 1:18:00, when the wife and kids of the Park family were walking up the stairs as they came home from their camping trip, the staircase lights did not light up because Geun-se was tied up in the basement at the time.
- #068
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 11 mins) At around 11 minutes, in the movie, Ki-woo's forged certificate of enrollment shows it's supposedly from Yeonsei University, director Bong Joon Ho's alma mater.
- #069
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 1h 14 mins) At around 1 hour and 14 minutes, the song playing in the background when the Kims get possession of the Parks' house is "In ginocchio da te" by Gianni Morandi. In the 1960s, Morandi was a star in Italian "musicarello" movies: it was usually a comedy genre, focused on the differences between poor and rich classes, just like Parasite is.
- #070
Contains a major spoiler — show
The white and red face painting by the boy resembles the man in the basement and the movie's final scene.
- #071
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 1h 35 mins) At around 1 hour 35 minutes, when Song Kang-ho's character (the father) is running through the streets in the rain, you can see him slightly roll his ankle and wince in pain.
- #072
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 2h) At around 2h, Kim Ki-taek talks about how the house was sold to foreigners. There are visual references to Switzerland, but in the American subtitles, he thinks they're German: "It turns out Germans eat more than just sausage and beer". In the German dubbing, he says they're Americans: they "don't have just burgers and Coke in the fridge".
- #073
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 4 mins) At around 4 minutes, following the scene with the Kims folding pizza boxes, the CEO tells them that 1 out of 4 are rejected, followed by a long shot of the family. One out of four of the family members ends up "rejected" in the end.
- #074
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 1h 14 mins) The song playing in the background when the Kims get possession of the Parks' house is "In ginocchio da te" by Gianni Morandi. In the 1960s, Morandi was a star in Italian "musicarello" movies: it was usually a comedy genre, focused on the differences between poor and rich classes, just like Parasite is.
Deeper Meaning (20)
- #075
Asked if there is a deeper meaning behind the Park family's appreciation of Native American paraphernalia, Bong Joon-ho suggests that it is no deeper than someone deciding to wear a Che Guevara T-shirt.
- #076
When the Parks leave on vacation and the Kims take over the house, the poorer family celebrates with food and drink. The alcohol opens the door to some ambiguity, though, regarding the Kim family's tight relationship as friction grows between them. "Ambiguity makes audiences very nervous, and there is some tension," says Bong Joon-ho.
- #077
Scholar's stones or landscape rocks are known as "suseok" in Korean, have a deep history in East Asia. The director's father collected them when he was younger. The practice of collecting these attractively shaped stones dates back thousands of years, but they became a fixture of Korean society during the Joseun dynasty (1392-1897), when they were commonly displayed on the writing tables of Confucian scholars -- hence their English name: "scholars rocks."
- #078
Stairs and vertical structures are a motif that runs through the entire film, which highlights the social divide between Parks and Kims. In fact, director Bong Joon-ho called the project a "staircase movie" while filming it.
- #079
The rich lady hesitates when shaking hands with the driver. When the driver shakes her hand himself, she asks him if he has washed his hands. This little moment highlights the disparity between the rich and poor in the film, showing that the rich do not treat the poor as equals. While there may have been some tone of disparity, it is important to note that the driver had just handled what appeared to be a bloody tissue from someone with TB.
- #080
Bong Joon Ho designed the wealthy family's house so that its architecture and multiple levels were directly connected to the film's narrative structure and its depiction of class divisions.
- #081
The "scholar's rock" given in the film was chosen specifically to represent wealth, aspiration, and burden at the same time.
- #082
Architects in Asia utilize feng shui in their designs. The first few minutes of the film are devoted to showing how the Kim family lives in a T-junction, a road formation that can lead to extreme poverty or extreme wealth.
- #083
Bong Joon-ho not sure why he named the rich father's company Another Brick, but he thinks it might have been because he was a huge fan of Pink Floyd when he was in high school.
- #084
The onscreen title uses spirals in its script where normally there would be circles, and Bong Joon-ho says it originated with the original poster design. The artist did it there, and the filmmaker loved it "because a spiral feels like a parasite in our body."
- #085
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 7 mins) At around 7 minutes, when the suseok rock that is gifted to the Kims as a charm for wealth and good fortune appears, Chung-sook says they should have gotten real food instead. This represents how hope is portrayed in this film as a false reassurance: as encouraging as it is, if it can't give anything lasting or solid, then it is eventually worthless. This is shown by Geun-sae using the rock to smash down Kim Ki-woo and escape, and whose rampage destroys the Kims and Parks.
- #086
Contains a major spoiler — show
The scholar stone is meant to represent both the hope for upward social mobility, in a vein similar to the American Dream, and the burden of carrying such hopes, to the point that it literally bashes in Ki-woo's skull after it gives away his location, allowing the housekeeper's husband to attack him. Before the sequence at the party, the stone also floats in the sewage water for Ki-woo to find, suggesting in that scene that it is fake and hollow and cannot be used to dream of a better life, foreshadowing that it will be Ki-woo's, and the family's, downfall.
- #087
Contains a major spoiler — show
For Bong Joon Ho, Parasite is a tragicomedy that depicts the humor, horror and sadness that arise when you want to live a prosperous life together, but then you run up against the reality of just how difficult that can be.
- #088
Contains a major spoiler — show
In a 2019 interview with Vulture, filmmaker Bong Joon Ho explained the very ending of the movie and debunked the notion that Ki-woo might ever be able to become rich enough to buy the house and allow his father to emerge from its underground bunker: "Maybe if the movie ended where they hug and fades out, the audience can imagine, 'Oh, it's [possible] to buy that house,' but the camera goes down to that half-basement. It's quite cruel and sad, but I thought it was being real and honest with the audience. You know and I know - we all know that this kid isn't going to be able to buy that house. I just felt that frankness was right for the film, even though it's sad."
- #089
Contains a major spoiler — show
Da-song's birthday party at the end was supposed to be "Native American themed", with the masked Dong-ik and Ki-taek as the "evil Indians" pretending to attack "Jessica" (Ki-jeong). In a tragic example of dark irony, however, Ki-jeong is lethally wounded by the crazed Geun-se, whose face is smeared with food and blood in a way that resembles Native American war paint.
- #090
Contains a major spoiler — show
Bong Joon Ho's statement for the film: "For people of different circumstances to live together in the same space is not easy. It is increasingly the case in this sad world that humane relationships based on co-existence or symbiosis cannot hold, and one group is pushed into a parasitic relationship with another. In the midst of such a world, who can point their finger at a struggling family, locked in a fight for survival, and call them parasites? It's not that they were parasites from the start. They are our neighbors, friends and colleagues, who have merely been pushed to the edge of a precipice. As a depiction of ordinary people who fall into an unavoidable commotion, this film is: a comedy without clowns, a tragedy without villains, all leading to a violent tangle and a headlong plunge down the stairs. You are all invited to this unstoppably fierce tragicomedy."
- #091
Contains a major spoiler — show
The scholar stone is meant to represent both the hope for upward social mobility, in a vein similar to the American Dream, and the burden of carrying such hopes, to the point that it literally bashes in Ki-woo's skull after it gives away his location, allowing the housekeeper's husband to attack him. Before the sequence at the party, the stone also floats while in the sewage water for Ki-woo to find, suggesting for that scene that it's fake and hollow and cannot be used to dream of a better life, foreshadowing that it will be Ki-woo's, and the family's, downfall.
- #092
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 7 mins) When the suseok rock that is gifted to the Kims as a charm for wealth and good fortune, Chung-sook says they should have gotten real food instead. This represents how hope is portrayed in this film as a false reassurance, as encouraging as it is if it can't give anything lasting or solid then it's eventually worthless. This is shown by Geun-sae using the rock to smash down Kim Ki-woo and escape and whose rampage destroys the Kims and Parks.
- #093
Contains a major spoiler — show
(at around 19 mins) The peculiar self-portrait, made by her young son, that Mrs. Park (Cho Yeo-jeong) proudly shows off to Ki-Woo (Choi Woo-sik) on his first visit to the Parks, bears a very strong resemblance (altered, of course, to resemble a child's work) to the wild-eyed painting by the eccentric Mrs. Antony (Marion Lorne) of St. Francis, which her mad son Bruno (Robert Walker) finds amusing, in the classic Alfred Hitchcock film, Strangers on a Train (1951). (A clip from the Hitchcock scene is viewable on YouTube.) That this resemblance is probably not coincidental is attested to by the numerous Hitchcockian themes and tropes scattered throughout this film, as well as the very prominent placement of a Hitchcock video in one shot.
- #094
Contains a major spoiler — show
(Around the 2-hour mark) Near the end of the film, when Kim Ki-taek steals food from the new owners' refrigerator, all the magnets holding the family's pictures on the fridge show Swiss motifs: the Swiss national flag, the flag of the city of Bern, and three tourist sites in Switzerland (the Kapellbrücke in Lucerne, Jungfraujoch and Harderkulm). This may indicate that the family is in fact Swiss and that Kim Ki-taek thought they were German because they speak German (which is spoken in Switzerland). Of course, they could also be Germans who traveled to Switzerland.
Career & Awards (6)
- #095
It is included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.
- #096
After the film received an eight-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, Bong Joon Ho took the microphone and said, "Thank you. Let's all go home." He later explained that the screening had ended close to midnight and he and the cast were so hungry that they had been whispering to each other about getting something to eat during the applause.
- #097
The film has 6.8 million viewer logs on Letterboxd as of April 2026, the third-most of any film, after Interstellar (2014) (7.2 million) and Fight Club (1999) and Barbie (2023) (7.1 million each).
- #098
The film brought Bong Joon-ho a level of exposure and success that he hasn't known before, but he doesn't think it's affected him. "Still I don't know what happened, it's quite strange." He's writing the script for his next film and says it all feels the same as far as the process goes. He did send one of his Oscars to his mom's house, though.
- #099
It was voted movie of the year by Empire magazine in 2020. The last time a non-English language film topped their list was Let the Right One In (2008) back in 2009.
- #100
Italian actor/singer Gianni Morandi commented in an interview that he was overjoyed that the movie featuring his performance of the song "In Ginocchio Da Te" ("On My Knees Before You") won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Morandi called the film "exceptional" and director Bong Joon Ho "a genius". He also praised legendary Ennio Morricone, who did not compose the piece (its authors were Migliacci and Zambrini) but was responsible for its musical arrangement.
Life & Family (2)
- #101
Asked if he himself has a scholar's stone (as seen in the film), Bong Joon-ho replies that he is no fan of the real ones. "I hate something heavy." His father collected them, though.
- #102
Bong Joon-ho was never given an Americanized name like some of his fellow Koreans and like Mr. Park in the film who goes by Nathan, but he mentions that he learned his surname, Bong, has a meaning in the US. His first distributor in the US actually sat him down and explained what a bong is "and they actually gave me a real bong as a gift after the promotion of The Host." He adds that it caused him some trouble at the airport.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- IMDb
Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work