Bong Joon Ho봉준호

Bong Joon Ho (봉준호) is a South Korean film director, screenwriter and producer, born on September 14, 1969, in Daegu. He studied sociology at Yonsei University, then film at the Korean Academy of Film Arts.¹ His first feature as director, Barking Dogs Never Bite (플란다스의 개), came out in February 2000. Seven more followed: Memories of Murder (살인의 추억, 2003), The Host (괴물, 2006), Mother (마더, 2009), Snowpiercer (설국열차, 2013), Okja (옥자, 2017), Parasite (기생충, 2019) and Mickey 17 (미키17, 2025). He has a writing credit on all eight.² Snowpiercer, Okja and Mickey 17 are Hollywood co-productions made largely in English; Warner Bros. Pictures released Mickey 17 in South Korea on February 28, 2025, and in the US on March 7.¹

Parasite won the Palme d'Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, in 2019, the first for a Korean film. At the 92nd Academy Awards on February 9, 2020, Bong won Best Picture (with producer Kwak Sin-ae, 곽신애), Best Director and Best Original Screenplay (with Han Jin-won, 한진원), and the film also won Best International Feature Film for South Korea. Those five wins are the most for any director on DabPop's count of Korean directors' wins at Cannes, Venice, Berlin, the Oscars and the Emmys.⁵ In 2021 he was president of the jury at the 78th Venice International Film Festival.¹

At home, his films have won Best Film at the Blue Dragon Film Awards three times: The Host in 2006, Mother in 2009 and Parasite in 2019. Only Park Chan-wook (박찬욱), Im Kwon-taek (임권택) and Kim Soo-yong (김수용) have more, with four each.⁶ The Host sold 13,019,740 cinema tickets in South Korea and ranks #8 on DabPop's list of the highest-grossing Korean films by admissions; Parasite ranks #25 with 10,316,367. He is one of five directors with two films on that list.⁴ Worldwide, Parasite grossed $258.1 million, the first of his films to pass $100 million.³