Bong Joon-Ho

Bong Joon Ho (born September 14, 1969) is a South Korean filmmaker. His work is characterized by emphasis on social and class themes, genre-mixing, dark comedy, and sudden tone shifts. The recipient of numerous accolades, Bong has won three Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, and five Asian Film Awards. In 2017, he was included on Metacritic‘s list of the 25 best film directors of the 21st century, and in 2020, he was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time and among the Bloomberg 50.

Bong first became known to audiences and gained a cult following with his feature directorial debut, the black comedy film Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000). He later achieved widespread critical success with his subsequent films: the crime thriller Memories of Murder (2003), the monster film The Host (2006), the science fiction action film Snowpiercer (2013), which served as Bong’s English-language debut, and the black comedy thriller Parasite (2019). The latter three are also among the highest-grossing films in South Korea, with Parasite being the highest-grossing South Korean film in history.

All of Bong’s films have been South Korean productions, although Snowpiercer, Okja (2017) and Mickey 17 (2025) are Hollywood co-productions with major use of the English language. Two of his films have screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival—Okja in 2017 and Parasite in 2019; the latter earned the Palme d’Or, which was a first for a South Korean film. Bong won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, making Parasite the first non-English language film to win Best Picture.

Personal Life

Bong was born on September 14, 1969, in Bongheok-dong [ko], Daegu, South Korea. He has three older siblings. His mother, Park So-young, was a housewife; his father, Bong Sang-gyun [ko], was a graphic designer, industrial designer, professor of art at Yeungnam University, and head of the art department at the National Film Institute. His father retired from Seoul Institute of Technology as a professor of design in 2007 and died in 2017. Bong’s maternal grandfather, Park Taewon, was an esteemed author during the Japanese colonial period, best known for his work A Day in the Life of Kubo the Novelist and his defection to North Korea in 1950. His older brother, Bong Joon-soo, is an English professor at the Seoul National University; his older sister, Bong Ji-hee, teaches fashion styling at Anyang University. Bong Joon Ho was raised as a Catholic, and his Christian name is Michael.

While Bong was in elementary school, the family relocated to Seoul, taking up residence in Jamsil-dong by the Han River. He later attended Jamsil High School, and lived in an apartment near the Jamsil Bridge at that time. One day, while at the apartment preparing for his college entrance exam during his third year at the high school (in 1987), Bong was reportedly startled by seeing out the window what he believed to be a monster crawling up a pillar of the Jamsil Bridge and then falling into the Han River. He was already desiring to become a film director at that point in time, and vowed to make a movie about a large creature living around the river someday. 19 years later, he fulfilled his dream when his monster movie The Host (2006) was released.

In 1988, Bong enrolled in Yonsei University, majoring in sociology. He also studied the English language while in college, and he credits Spike Lee‘s films with teaching him English profanity. College campuses such as Yonsei’s were then hotbeds for the South Korean democracy movement; Bong was an active participant of student demonstrations, frequently subjected to tear gas early in his college years. He served a two-year term in the military in accordance with South Korea’s compulsory military service before returning to college in 1992. Bong later co-founded a film club named “Yellow Door” with students from neighboring universities. As a member of the club, Bong made his first films, including a stop motion short titled Looking for Paradise and 16 mm film short titled Baeksaekin (White Man). He graduated from Yonsei University in 1995.

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