Korean characters, actors break into international mainstream

While it’s not at all unusual for Korean actors and Korean characters to dominate films and books from Korea, there’s been an increase in Korean characters in international media.

-Korean characters in international novels-

In “The Mirror of Cassandra,” a novel by the French writer Bernard Werber, one of the main characters is a North Korean defector named Ye-bin Kim. The book tells the story of Cassandra, an autistic orphan with no memory of her past, who is given the ability to see into the future. During the course of the novel, she meets a soldier, actor, shaman and North Korean defector.

Werber said he created the character of the North Korean to deliver the message that everyone has the right to free speech and that we should all listen to each other.

The genre-bending short story collection “Cloud Atlas” by British author David Mitchell prominently features a Korean character called Sonmi~451 in the last of its six stories. Told by six different individuals at six different points in time, the last story is set in a future where humans have been cloned.

Korean characters have been featured in novels and stories written by non-Koreans before, including in other works by Werber, but it is still unusual to have people of Korean ethnicity as major characters in their own right in internationally distributed novels.

-Korean actors in Hollywood-
Many of Korean actors have moved into the international film circuit and won roles in Hollywood films.

Korean actor and singer Rain (Jung Ji-hoon) played the lead in last year’s “Ninja Assassin” and won MTV’s award for “Biggest Badass Star.” He also made headlines at the 2010 Green Planet Movie Awards by winning awards for “Best International Entertainer” and “Asian Cultural Ambassador of the Year,” as well as making their list of “10 Outstanding Asians in Hollywood.”

Korean actor Lee Byung-hun played a supporting role in his first Hollywood movie “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.” Directed by Stephen Sommers and based on the Hasbro action figures, cartoons and comics, the film features Lee as the evil ninja Storm Shadow. His action scenes and charismatic style helped firmly establish Lee as a rising Hollywood star.

Korean superstar Jang Dong-gun stars in “The Warrior’s Way,” a cross-cultural fantasy that mixes action and romance with stunning visual effects. Produced by Barrie Osborne and directed by Sngmoo Lee, the film also features well-known actors like Geoffrey Rush, Danny Huston and Kate Bosworth. The story follows an assassin who flees to the American West, and combines Asian and Western elements. Jang is already one of Korea’s most popular actors, with a following throughout Asia, but this is his first foray into Hollywood. Thanks to “The Warrior’s Way,” he’s become better known internationally, and was interviewed on CNN.

By Oh Jun Kyung
korea.net Staff Writer