FILM · 2003 · SOUTH KOREA
Janghwa, Hongryeon
32 archived facts 6 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (32)
- #001
When the film was first released, it became both the highest-grossing Korean horror film of all time and the first Korean film to be shown in American cinemas.
- #002
The original screenplay included a subplot in which Moo-Hyeon, on the doctors' recommendation, installed security cameras throughout the house so he could monitor Soo-Mi's behaviour even when she was not at home. The doctors at the mental hospital would review the footage and see that Soo-Mi constantly talked to herself (and also revealed to viewers that Eun-ju and Soo-Yeon were never there). This was cut because the director felt it spoiled the film's mystery. One element of this subplot remains in the finished film, where Moo-Hyeon is shown handling a video camera in a brief scene.
- #003
The film was inspired by the famous Korean folk tale "Janghwa Heungryeonjeon"; although that tale has been adapted for film many times, this is not a remake of any of them and is its own original project.
- #004
The extended ending showed Soo-mi, after being readmitted to the institution, finally committing suicide by swallowing the entire bottle of pills so she could be reunited with her mother and sister. This was cut because it was considered too depressing. The film instead ends with Soo-mi smiling in her bed after her sister's ghost kills Eun-joo in their home, finally finding a kind of peace in the knowledge that her sister is still with her even in death. This extended ending was a nod to the original ending of the folk tale that inspired the film, Janghwa Hongryeon jeon, in which the two sisters are killed by their wicked stepmother but are reunited with their father when he remarries and has twins with another woman, the girls being reincarnated as the new baby girls.
- #005
A point of confusion for viewers is that Soo-yeon and Eun-joo were not real and existed only in Soo-mi's delusions (Su-yeon had died before the events of the film, and the real Eun-joo does not appear until later), while the ghosts of Su-yeon and the girls' mother were in fact real regardless of Soo-mi's psychosis. This is made clear when Eun-joo's sister-in-law has a seizure during the dinner scene and explains to her husband that it was triggered by seeing the ghost of a young girl (Su-yeon) under the kitchen sink. When the real Eun-joo returns home after Soo-mi is readmitted to the hospital, what she encounters in Su-yeon's old room is in fact her ghost, and after the wardrobe falls on her to crush her, the ghost immediately kills her as an act of revenge for leaving her to die.
- #006
While the girls talk on the veranda, Soo-yeon appears unable to whistle, or at least Soo-mi has the illusion that she cannot. In the final scene, a whistling sound is heard in Soo-mi's hospital room, and Soo-mi recognizes it as Soo-yeon, revealing that her ghost, who can whistle, made contact with her shortly before killing Eun-joo in her old room at the house. Soo-mi leans back with a faint smile indicating she has finally found peace, content in the knowledge that her sister is somehow with her even in death.
- #007
In the original story the sisters are named Janghwa and Hongryeon (Rose Flower and Red Lotus). In the film they are Su-mi and Su-yeon (which still mean Rose and Lotus).
- #008
Early in the film there are several clues implying that Soo-mi has dissociative identity disorder and that Soo-yeon and Eun-joo are merely products of her imagination; Soo-yeon has in fact died, while the real Eun-joo does not appear until later in the film: * As soon as Su-mi gets out of her car she turns and looks at the windows of her house and the swing set in the garden. Though seemingly trivial at first, these details relate to what happened on the day Su-yeon died. When Moo-hyeon brought his mistress Eun-ju home, the girls were sitting on the swings; the mistress, unaware that Su-yeon was crushed under the wardrobe, looked at Su-mi through the windows mentioned above after rushing outside following their argument. * Su-yeon tosses her hair as she gets out of the car. Su-mi makes the same movement when she enters her room and takes off her hat. * After the girls return home they first run to the lake and sit on the pier. Here Su-mi reads Su-yeon's palm and a serious expression forms on her face because she is reading her own tragic fate. * Moo-hyeon calls Su-mi only to come home from the pier and does not call out to Su-yeon. * When the girls enter the house and are greeted by their stepmother, what at first glance looks like a continuity error is actually foreshadowing. Eun-ju asks whether Su-mi feels better after being released, and in the first shot she is turned toward Su-yeon, but after she asks the question the scene cuts to Su-mi. This is because they are all the same person and Su-mi is simply talking to herself. * After the girls go upstairs, Su-yeon suddenly disappears when Su-mi enters her own room, even though she was following her in the previous shot. * When Soo-mi enters her room she puts her diary and other books on her desk but finds the same set already there beside them. * While "Eun-joo" folds the clothes and places them in front of Moo-hyeon's bedroom, the same set is already present, which Soo-mi admits she folded herself. * Su-mi has nightmares about Su-yeon being crushed under the wardrobe even though Su-yeon is still alive at that point in the film. * All the women in the house menstruate at the same time. * In one scene where all the characters are together, Moo-hyeon addresses them only one by one and never collectively, as if there were only one more character in the scene. * In several scenes Moo-hyeon talks to a woman on the phone; although the woman seems to already be in the house with him, based on the words they exchange it is implied that this woman is Eun-joo. * Moo-hyeon already knows that Sun-kyu and Mi-hee are coming to dinner, yet Eun-ju tells him that she invited them to their home for dinner. * Moo-Hyeon never communicates directly with Soo-yeon. * The fish corpse Su-mi finds in the refrigerator. For some this may seem like an unconnected jump scare that is never mentioned again, but Kim Jee-woon stated that it was meant to show how unstable Eun-ju was in putting the fish corpse in the refrigerator to frighten her, but given that she was never there, it was Su-mi who put it in the refrigerator to frighten herself, since she was displaying all these different personalities. * In the veranda scene Moo-Hyeon speaks only with Soo-mi and does not acknowledge the presence of Soo-yeon, who is out of frame. * While Su-mi wanders in the forest she senses something and sees nothing when she looks back. She was recalling her repressed memory of the day Su-yeon died, when she walked toward the forest after arguing with Eun-ju and looked back at her one last time. * In one scene the girls wash their sheets and nightgowns after staining them with menstrual blood. However, only one nightgown is shown hanging on the clothesline. * When "Eun-joo" is alone with Moo-hyeon, his brother and his sister-in-law at dinner, she recalls strange childhood stories that her brother does not remember. This is because the "Eun-joo" in this scene is actually Soo-mi enacting this split personality, so of course she would not have accurate childhood memories with a man who is not really her brother; these stories never happened and she is making them up. * Mi-hee's movements during her seizure scene are momentarily the same as those of Su-yeon suffocating her under the wardrobe (as revealed at the end), implying that Mi-hee may have been possessed by Su-yeon's ghost at that moment. * Both Soo-mi and "Eun-joo" flip through the family photographs in the same way in anger. * The ghost of the young girl frequently seen in the house bears an eerie resemblance to Soo-yeon, even though she appears alive alongside the other characters. * After the argument between Eun-ju and Su-mi ends with Su-mi sweeping the tea set off the table, Moo-hyeon goes to investigate the commotion in the kitchen and Eun-ju mysteriously disappears, seeing only Su-mi. * After Moo-hyeon explains to Su-mi that Su-yeon is dead, Su-yeon never appears again except in flashbacks and as a ghost. * Su-mi has a brief moment while taking her medicine before nodding and while beating the baby in the sack with the fireplace poker. She is struggling to sustain her delusions mentally and not see the truth. * Su-mi stabs Eun-ju's hand with scissors during their fight, but when Moo-hyeon finally returns home it is Su-mi's hand that is wounded, not Eun-ju's. * Su-mi and Eun-ju wear the same white nightgown with the same blood stains, while Eun-ju tries to strike her on the head with a statue as a harbinger that they are the same person.
- #009
The ending in which Eun-joo is attacked and killed by Soo-yeon's ghost was originally longer. The scene showed the rotting, diseased-looking ghost emerging from the dresser and slowly walking toward Eun-joo before transforming into Soo-yeon, who continues killing her. The film's ending was shortened because director Kim Jee-woon felt it removed the scene's subtleties. He wanted viewers to work out for themselves, based on the clues in the film, that the ghost was Soo-yeon, rather than having it explained to them directly.
- #010
According to Kim Jee-woon, the film should be watched from Su-mi's point of view rather than like a fly on the wall. You have to share these experiences and scenes of horror with her.
- #011
Lim Soo-jung, who plays Su-mi, originally auditioned for the role of Su-yeon. Ironically, the same thing would happen in the remake The Uninvited (2009), where Emily Browning auditioned for the role of the sister Alex before being cast as Anna.
- #012
The film opens with a scene in which Soo-mi is in a mental hospital and is questioned by a doctor about the day she was admitted, but Soo-mi refuses to answer. It is deliberately left ambiguous whether this scene is a flashback to the day she was hospitalized after Su-yeon and their mother died, or a flashback to later in the film after she suffers a mental breakdown at home and is readmitted to the institution. The scene's placement at the beginning was a deliberate misdirection, since the doctor asks her questions about her identity and who she thinks she is, foreshadowing Soo-mi's multiple personality. It is worth noting that the doctor in this scene shows Soo-mi the family photograph that she destroyed when she returned home, so either he took the original with him, it is a copy, or this detail is proof that the scene is her first stay in the hospital. There is also the alternative ending in which Su-mi commits suicide to be reunited with her sister. If we accept that as canon, then the scene is once again a flashback to her first stay in the hospital. There is also the fact that Su-mi finally smiles briefly after Su-yeon's ghost makes contact with her in the hospital before killing Eun-ju in their home. This shows that she finally finds some peace in knowing that her sister is still with her even in death, which means the opening scene is probably not a sudden progression.
- #013
When the film won critical acclaim in the United States, Kim Jee-woon received tons of offers to direct other films for Hollywood, but almost all the scripts sent to him were for horror films. He did not want to be pigeonholed as only a horror director, so he turned them all down.
- #014
Despite playing hostile roles as stepmother and stepdaughter in the film, Jung-ah Yum and Soo-jung Lim became close friends on set.
- #015
One story idea written from the original screenplay included a scene in which Soo-Mi poisons the pill bottle in an attempt to kill Eun-ju. This created a contradiction with the film's course, because Eun-ju is only a delusion of her mind and the pill bottle actually belongs to Soo-Mi, meaning she poisoned her own medicine.
- #016
Body count: 5 - the mother, Soo-yeon, Eun-joo and 2 pet birds. The mother commits suicide by hanging herself in the wardrobe, and Soo-yeon is accidentally crushed under the wardrobe when she knocks it over, the 2 birds' necks are broken by Soo-mi, and Eun-joo is killed by Soo-yeon's ghost for revenge.
- #017
When Eun-joo returns home and enters Soo-yeon's old room, her breath is visible and she is shivering rapidly. In supernatural events, drops in room temperature and a cold atmosphere are almost always a sign that a ghost is present; the same is true here for Soo-yeon's ghost, which appears to kill Eun-joo.
- #018
During the making of the film, colour was extremely important to Kim Jee-woon, because he used colour to convey to viewers which emotions the characters were feeling and which emotions the viewer should feel. The red floor in the kitchen was included at Kim's insistence, which surprised the art directors. The white in the hospital scene is meant to create tension, the colours in the dining room and furniture represent the dynamics between the characters, Moo-hyeon's grey hair colour and clothes represent his indifference, Su-mi's Eun-ju delusion wears warm red clothes to represent how evil she is, while the real Eun-ju wears black and dark colours representing her guilt over letting Su-yeon die.
- #019
The hands of the statue Eun-joo picks up as she prepares to beat Soo-mi to death are placed over its eyes, a symbol of Soo-mi's refusal to see the truth (the fact that her sister is really dead).
- #020
Kim Jee-woon had to cut more than 30 minutes of material from the film to tighten the pacing and improve its flow, and the scenes he most regretted cutting were those featuring Kim Kap-su as Moo-hyeon, as he felt the actor's best moments were left in the editing room.
- #021
The film uses a chiaroscuro lighting scheme built on contrasting light and shadow effects.
- #022
On 24 August 2013, the film's tenth anniversary was marked at the KOFA cinematheque in South Korea.
- #023
Su-mi and Su-yeon are meant to be only a few years apart in age and in their teens, with the latter the younger sister. During production, Lim Soo-jung was 22 and Moon Geun-young was 15. Yum Jung-ah, who played their stepmother, was 29 during production and only 7 years older than Soo-jung (though the film implies the father took her as his mistress because she was younger and more attractive than his wife).
- #024
For Kim Jee-woon, it was important that the two sisters (played by Lim Soo-jung and Moon Geun-young) have convincing chemistry as siblings so that audiences would sympathize with them. One of the things both actresses did to bond with each other was walk around the set in matching Hello Kitty slippers during breaks.
- #025
When Soo-mi confronts her mother's ghost in the bedroom, blood begins to flow from her vagina down her legs and a hand emerges from there. This is a symbolic harbinger of the fact that her daughter Su-yeon is actually dead and represents her lost child.
- #026
Two scenes were filmed but ultimately removed from the final cut (they were included as deleted scenes on the DVD and Blu-ray): in one, Moo-hyeon and Su-mi see a fan turn itself on even though it is not plugged in after they say Su-yeon is dead, and in the other Su-mi is visited by Su-yeon's real ghost. These were cut to make it explicitly clear early in the film that the ghosts are real, which made the film less ambiguous. They were also unnecessary, since Mi-hee's seizure is triggered by her seeing Su-yeon's ghost, which was already sufficient evidence at that point in the film that the ghosts are real.
- #027
A stunt performer played Su-yeon's ghost as seen by Mi-hee under the kitchen sink. The makeup process used to create the ghost's appearance took about 2 hours.
- #028
Inside the bloody sack that "Eun-ju" (later revealed to be Su-mi) drags around the house and whips was placed a female stunt performer, to give it the weight it needed and create the movements required for the sack to stretch and flail about. The stunt woman could only stay inside the sack for a few minutes before coming up for air.
- #029
The statue Eun-ju grabs to kill Su-mi was in fact a rather heavy marble carving, and the actress Yum Jung-ah could not lift it for the shot. The crew tried to help her lift it by grabbing it from opposite ends so she could perform the required take, but even when the camera moved in for a close-up, they could be seen in frame lifting it for her. Instead, an alternative method was used in which wires were threaded through both ends to lift the statue and carefully hidden in the shot.
- #030
Apart from flashbacks, the film's plot takes place over only 3 days.
- #031
The green wardrobe that topples over when Su-yeon finds her dead mother inside was bought for the film from an antique shop. According to director Kim Jee-woon, it cost only a thousand pounds, which was quite a cheap sum.
- #032
When Su-mi enters the bedroom, she sets her clock to 13:50, which is only 4 minutes short of the film's actual total running time (1 hour 54 minutes).
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