Oh Seok Geun

Other Name: 오석근

Age: 63

Birthday: July 25, 1961

Nationality: South Korean

Gender: Male

A South Korean director, screenwriter and producer. He graduated in 1987 from the Korean Academy of Film Arts and gained experience while working as LEE Myun-se’s first assistant director for movies such as (1988) and (1990). He made his directing debut in 1991 with the melodrama , but had to wait until 1993 and his second effort to break through as a director. Despite the success of the film, he suddenly started questioning his career and decided to move back to his hometown, Busan. During the next months, he would get married, travel to Japan to prepare his next movie and help again LEE Myun-se on his next film (1995). His career took an unexpected turn, however, with a phone call. A group of movie industry figures who were planning to create in Busan a film festival, the first in Korea, needed urgently someone with a car to pick up KIM Dong-ho at the airport. OH secretly took the car of his main actor, went to meet KIM, and without he knew it, he was named as general manager of the Busan International Film Festival. Having at first accepted to assume this position only for the first edition, he ended up staying there four more years, thus playing a significant part in establishing the festival as the most important film event in Asia. He eventually quit in 2000 in order to resume his directing career, but his own project, titled , was canned just weeks ahead of filming. Sidus CEO CHA Jeung-je then let him direct a film he had been working on for a while, and so (2005) marked OH’s return to filmmaking after 12 years. He founded in 2008 his own film studio Balcon, with which he co-produced (2009) and (2010), the latter of which being an anthology film comprised of shorts from JANG Joon-hwan, Isao YUKISADA and Wisit SASANATIENG. In 2010, OH was put in charge of the Busan Film Commission, and later became deputy dean of the Asian Film Academy and president of the Asian Film Commissions Network. In the wake of the political scandal of 2016, which involved KOFIC for the creation of a blacklist of film industry people who had expressed their opposition to former President PARK Geun-hye’s government to which they would deny all kind of support, OH was named in 2018 as the new chairman of the institution. Under his term, KOFIC has been conducting major reforms in order to redefine the role of the institution, examine the misdeeds committed during the last government and restore its reputation. (Source: Korean Film Council).