"Numerous times I lie in bed at night and imagine the cruellest torture. I imagine the most miserable ruining of that person's life. After that, I can fall asleep with a smile on my face. As long as it stays in the realm of imagination, the crueller the better - that's healthy. I'd like to recommend it to you all as well. I hope my films can help in any small way to help your imagination become at least a little bit crueller." (PCW)

Park was born in Seoul on the 23th August of 1963, and as a consequence of the non-admission to the Faculty of Aesthetics of Seoul, he chose the Catholic University of Sogang where he got a degree in Philosophy. During his studies he devoted himself to the cinema by publishing critical essays and reviews, and he finally founded the student circles named “Movie Gang”, where he met his future wife. In 1988 he shyly entered the cinema world, but in 1990 his friend Kwank Jae-young (“Windstruck”, “My Sassy Girl”), who was a debutant director at that time, wanted him to be his assistant. Park bustled around (doing translations, delivering advertising materials in the cinemas…) to get enough money to carry out his first movie. That dream became true in 1992. Unfortunately “The Moon is the Sun’s dream” had no success, and as Park started again to scrape together some money for his following project, he faced the darkest period of his career. He wrote cinematographic critical essays, took part in television programmes, worked as shop assistant in a video library…
Then he had the chance to work with two big producers of those years, Lee Joon-ik (founder of Cineworld and, more recently, director of the multi-awarded “The King and the Clown”) and Jo Cheol-hyeon (who leads the Tiger Pictures along with Lee of Cineworld). It’s “Anarchists”, a movie which deals with the 20’s, the years of the Japanese occupation, and the provisional government of Shangai, issues that are not very common out of Korea. Park, which along with the others had previously visited the Chinese city, for a possible Chinese-Korean collaboration, was invited to become the director, but he refused because he wanted to concentrate on his second feature film “Trio” (1997). After five years since its debut Park proved a quite good mastery of the camera, but the movie was not well welcomed by the audience and Park’s short career almost stopped there. But without losing heart he started to propose the script of “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” to various producers, but he didn’t get any results. “Judgement” (1999), a short film which is an extreme attempt for Park to be taken into consideration, achieved its aim when it was chosen for the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival. Once again Cineworld asked Park (in collaboration with Lee Moo-yeong) to take part in the writing of the script, which was originally created by the producers with a clumsy attempt, but which had a potential that the new couple of writers was able to bring out. And they turned it into a very original sharp and dramatic black comedy. It was “The Spy” (1999), which was directed by the rising Jang Jin (“Righteous Ties”, “Murder, Take One”).
Despite the quality and the potential of the movie the result in the theatres was disappointing, and it was also due to the unfair competition of the colossal “Matrix”.
It marked the beginning of a critical period for Cineworld. In 2000 Park was asked again to take care of “Anarchists”, which had not a director yet, but unfortunately he had to refuse again because he received a more attractive proposal. “Anarchists” would be directed by Yoo Yong-shik with the script by Park and Lee. This time it was a very important production for Park – a big film production house, Myung Films, and a remarkable amount of money - which could potentially change his whole career. And that’s how it went.
Based on a novel by Park Sang-yoon, “J.S.A. - Joint Security Area” (2000) is a political-military mystery story set on the boundary line between North and South Korea. It’s a movie filled with humour and human warmth, a big personal and commercial success unanimously earned among the critics, the audience and the international film festivals, which made Park a very important author. Park worked again with Lee Moo-yeong for the script of “The Humanist” (2001), a bitter and scathing noir comedy which features dehumanized characters and where, for the first time, his “dark side” appears. Then, he looked for a producer for his movie. With “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” (2002), Park definitively established himself as one of the unquestioned masters of the contemporary Korean cinema, creating a little masterpiece made of fatality and despair which aroused controversy, but that was appreciated quite everywhere and carried away the audience of the world’s film festivals. Along with Lee, Bae Chang-ho, Kwak Jae-yong, and Lee Young-jae he founded the EGG Films, a society with the aim of promoting the independence and the safety of the Korean film-makers through long term contracts. The first outcome of it was “A Bizarre Love Triangle” (2002), written by Park and Lee and directed by the latter, a funny and irreverent movie with some happy intuitions. Subsequently Park participated in the omnibus “If You Were Me” (2003), a movie with six episodes on a common theme (the discrimination in society), directed by six different directors, funded by the government, where Park contributed with “N.E.P.A.L.”, acronym for “Never Ending Peace And Love”, a pseudo-documentary which reveals the paradoxical situation of some immigrants in the modern South Korea. However, shortly after this, the aesthetics of violence and the vengeance theme overbearingly came back, when Park carried out his most important work, “Old Boy” (2003), winner of the Grand Jury prize, and distributed in many nations around the world. It was an instantaneous classic based on the anime created by Garon-Nobuaki. In 2004 he participated in the episodic horror “Three…Extremes” for which he shot an intense and visually strong story of treason and vengeance with a disruptive meta-cinematographic load: “Cut”. In 2005, after collaborating to the script of the amusing and bittersweet comedy “Boy, Goes to Heaven”, he definitively established himself with “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance”, his fifth feature film, which was shown to the Venice Film Festival, and was recognized as an impressive example of symbolic cinema without compromises, with an actual and controversial plot. It was the height of his artistic-expressive maturity. The “final chapter” of the ideal trilogy of vengeance owed its conception to some Park’s rash declarations which he could not shirk from. And here is the current final chapter: “I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK” (2006).
Park, ignoring the market rules which would like “more of the same”, worked in countertendency, rejecting any label, and choosing a delicate subject, both for the theme he chose (insanity) and for the light and sweet way he dealt with it. Nowadays Park is one of the most important film-makers in the Korean cinematographic scene, with an international consent (he was in the jury at the 62th Venice Film Festival and the American remake of “Old Boy” is forthcoming) and he’s supported by some affectionate friends, directors like him, which besides producing collaborations of every kind, they also exchange their ideas and promote the independence and the originality of the film-makers.