Na Hong-jin says fear of Korean war sparked Hope
Na Hong-jin was convinced in 2017 that war would break out on the Korean peninsula. That dread became the starting point for Hope, his alien-invasion film.
He explained the link during a masterclass at the Busan International Film Festival on 8 October, in a session billed “Na Hong-Jin, A Genre of His Own.” The talk started at 11:00 at Culture Hall (9F), Shinsegae Centum City, as listed by BIFF. The festival’s 2026 edition runs from 6 to 15 October, and its 31st edition hosted the session.
Na said news reports at the time described United States fighter jets and bombers flying in and out over Pyongyang through the night, according to Variety. He expected fighting to start in early 2018. He thought it could follow soon after the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
Hope centres on shape-shifting aliens attacking a South Korean border town, as described by NPR. Na said quieter research also fed the film. Fishing trips with strangers on the east coast of Gangwon province left a mark. One encounter gave him the name Yang-bae for a character played by Eum Moon-suk.
BIFF notes that Hope played in Competition at Cannes, the festival’s main contest, calling it a monumental moment in Korean cinema history.
He traced his earlier films to chance meetings and street-level reporting. The Chaser began on a night watching football with friends in a local bar, where he spent the night drinking with detectives at the next table. One drunk detective told him that serial killer Yoo Young-chul had once set a fire and escaped after police took him into custody in Mapo.
The Yellow Sea started with reports of a killing a day in the same place in Garibong-dong, an area with a dense Korean-Chinese population. Na flew to Yanbian to research that world. There he met a well-known gangster and spent long hours listening to his stories.
For The Wailing, which deals with ritual and suspicion in a village, he grew close to a member of a shaman’s family. A shaman here means a practitioner called on to deal with spirits and misfortune. Na then spent several months living alongside shamans at a mountain hermitage.
He also described his working method in plain terms. Before writing, he fixes the genre and the rhythm. He called that choice irrevocable. On set, he sees himself less as an author and more as a supervisor watching every element in the frame for a crew of 200, with space coming first.
What makes this stand out is the pattern. Small encounters feed large stories: a bar chat, a news bulletin, a fishing boat. For viewers, that offers a way into Hope beyond its border-town premise.
