Veteran director Park killed by drunk driver

The late director Park Chul-soo

By Kim Tong-hyung

Veteran movie director Park Chul-soo, whose 1995 work "301, 302’’ was one of the first Korean films to earn a theater release in the United States, died Tuesday after being hit by a drunk driver near his home in Jukjeon, Gyeonggi Province. He was 64.

After studying economics at Seoul’s Sungkyunkwan University, Park worked as a teacher in his hometown of Daegu after graduation before pursuing his passion in films.

His first work as director, "Captain of the Alley’’ (1978), opened to a lukewarm reception. But success came his way through his second film released the following year, "The Rain that Falls Every Night,’’ a story about a woman who falls in love with a boxer who raped her.

His 1985 thriller, "Mother,’’ featuring star actress Yoon Yeo-jeong in the role of a mother on a killing spree after her college student daughter is raped and commits suicide, is still considered as Korean cinema’s definitive work in the rape-revenge genre that was popular in the 1970s and ‘80s. It won several categories at the Grand Bell Awards that year, including best film.

Women, sex and repressed urbanities continued to be main themes of Park’s movies throughout his career, although his style of expression frequently altered between outrageous and subtle.

His 1996 work, "Farewell, My Darling,’’ which portrays a family’s experience as they hold a traditional three-day funeral for an elderly man killed after falling off a bicycle, remains his most critically acclaimed work. It received the Best Artistic Contribution Award at that year’s Montreal Film Festival.

“301, 301,” released a year earlier, tells the story of two women who share the same apartment building but take very different approaches to food, sex, and the challenges of modern life.

At the time of his death, Park was working on a new film titled "Love Conceptually.’’ He is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter.