Audio transcription

Park’s debut film offered a startling realist intervention by focusing its story on the difficult lives of two struggling artists – billboard sign painters whose dangerous occupation clearly emblematizes the struggles of the working class in post-boom Korea. Made during a time of still heavily imposed censorship and adapted (uncredited) from a story by Taiwanese writer Huang Chunming, whose work was banned at the time in Korea, Chilsu and Mansu is an underappreciated example of political cinema. Although Chilsu and Mansu fared quite poorly at the box-office the film has since then become an undisputed classic of contemporary Korean cinema, considered by many as the first authentic expression of the Korean New Wave. – HG