FILM · 2019 · SOUTH KOREA
Parasite
- Directed by
- Bong Joon Ho
- Runtime
- 133 min
- Studio
- Barunson E&A
- Original title
- 기생충
42 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
All unemployed, Ki-taek's family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.
Summary: TMDB
All facts (42)
- #001
The idea for Parasite began in 2013, when a theatre actor friend encouraged Bong Joon Ho to write a play while he was working on Snowpiercer.
- #002
Bong Joon Ho drew on his early twenties experience as a tutor for the son of a wealthy Seoul family, considering turning it into a stage production.
- #003
Bong Joon Ho chose the title Parasite for its double meaning and had to convince the film's marketing group to use it.
- #004
Bong Joon Ho said the title Parasite can refer both to the poor family infiltrating the rich house and to the wealthy family, who leech off the poor family's labor because they cannot wash dishes or drive themselves.
- #005
Han Jin-won, Bong Joon Ho's production assistant on Snowpiercer, expanded that treatment into three separate drafts of the Parasite screenplay.
- #006
Bong Joon Ho returned to Parasite after finishing Okja and completed the script.
- #007
Han Jin-won is credited as a co-writer of Parasite.
- #008
Bong Joon Ho cited the 1960 Korean "domestic Gothic" film The Housemaid as an influence on Parasite, noting its story of a middle-class family whose stability is threatened by a disruptive household helper.
- #009
The story of Christine and Léa Papin, two live-in maids who murdered their employers in 1930s France, was an influence on Parasite according to Bong Joon Ho.
- #010
Bong Joon Ho's own experience tutoring for a wealthy family informed Parasite; he described feeling as though he was infiltrating the private lives of strangers and imagined friends doing the same one by one. Moon-gwang's peach allergy was inspired by a university friend of Bong's who had that allergy.
- #011
Darcy Paquet, an American living in South Korea, wrote the English subtitles for Parasite directly with Bong Joon Ho.
- #012
Paquet translated jjapaguri, the dish a Parasite character cooks, as ram-don, a blend of ramen and udon; the English release labels the packages "ramyeon" and "udon" so viewers can see how the name was formed.
- #013
Paquet substituted Oxford University for Seoul National University and WhatsApp for KakaoTalk in the subtitles, choosing Oxford over Harvard because of Bong's affinity for the United Kingdom and because Harvard seemed too obvious.
- #014
Paquet wrote that humor requires immediate comprehension, so an unfamiliar word causes the joke to be lost.
- #015
Principal photography on Parasite started on 18 May 2018 and wrapped on 19 September.
- #016
Parasite was filmed in and around Seoul and in Jeonju.
- #017
Hong Kyung-pyo, a prominent South Korean cinematographer who had collaborated with other notable directors, served as Parasite's director of photography.
- #018
Parasite was shot using the Arri Alexa 65 camera paired with an Angénieux zoom lens.
- #019
The Parks' house in Parasite was a specially constructed set: its ground floor and garden were built on an empty outdoor lot, while the basement and first floor were constructed on a soundstage.
- #020
Editor Yang Jin-mo said the main floor of the house was built on a backlot, with green screen outside the second floor, and that everything beyond the garden was VFX when shooting from inside toward the exterior.
- #021
As part of scripting Parasite, Bong Joon Ho designed the home's basic layout, describing it as its own universe in which each character and team has spaces to take over, infiltrate and keep secret.
- #022
Production designer Lee Ha-jun based the house's form and function on how the fictional architect Namgoong Hyeonja, created as its designer and previous owner, would have designed it; the set was built for the 2.35:1 aspect ratio with wide, deep rooms rather than height.
- #023
Production designer Lee said the sun was an important factor when building the outdoor set for Parasite. He explained that the sun's direction was a crucial consideration while searching for outdoor lots.
- #024
According to Lee, the positions and sizes of the windows on the outdoor set had to be determined by remembering the sun's position during the desired time frame.
- #025
Lee said the cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo had specific requests regarding color for practical lighting on Parasite, wanting sophisticated indirect lighting and the warmth of tungsten light sources.
- #026
Before the set was built, Lee and the cinematographer visited the lot several times to check the sun's movement, and they decided on the set's location together.
- #027
The semi-basement flat where the Kim family lives in Parasite, along with its street, was constructed on a set, partly because the production needed it for the flooding scenes.
- #028
For Parasite, Lee Ha-jun invented backstories for the Kims' neighbours and placed details about those residents along the street to make its appearance more authentic.
- #029
According to editor Yang Jin-mo, Bong chose to shoot Parasite without traditional coverage.
- #030
To create more editing options from a limited number of shots, editor Yang Jin-mo sometimes stitched together different takes of the same shot.
- #031
Yang Jin-mo edited Parasite using Final Cut Pro 7, a program not updated since 2011.
- #032
Parasite was made for a colour release, but a black and white version was completed before the film's world premiere at Cannes.
- #033
The monochrome edition of Parasite premiered on 26 January 2020 at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
- #034
The black and white version of Parasite was shown again at the International Film Festival Rotterdam from 29 to 31 January 2020.
- #035
The monochrome version of Parasite also received a limited release in some countries.
- #036
Parasite's score was composed by South Korean composer Jung Jae-il, who described it as minimalist piano pieces punctuated with light percussion that set the film's tense atmosphere.
- #037
The music for Parasite carried a baroque texture, drawing on excerpts from Handel's opera Rodelinda and Gianni Morandi's 1964 Italian song "In ginocchio da te".
- #038
Parasite's score was recorded mostly through computer sounds.
- #039
The soundtrack for Parasite was released in Korea in digital and physical formats by Genie Music and Stone Music Entertainment on 30 May 2019.
- #040
Milan Records issued the Parasite soundtrack internationally on 11 October 2019.
- #041
The Parasite soundtrack's English titles differ in names and nouns from the English subtitles translated by Paquet.
- #042
Sacred Bones Records, a division of the American film production company Neon, and Waxwork Records released the Parasite soundtrack on double-vinyl in multicolour variants on 14 February 2020.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia Parasite (2019 film) — Wikipedia
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