Special Program in Focus: Those Beautiful Years, Ahn Sung-ki, 1984
Whale Hunting
고래사냥
Director BAE Chang-ho
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Travel/Road MovieComing of Age
Weary of college life, Byeong-tae (Kim Soo-chul), a philosophy student, leaves home to wander the streets. At a police station, he meets Min-woo (Ahn Sungki), a beggar, who leads him to a red-light district where Byeong-tae falls in love with a sex worker named Chun-ja (Lee Mi-sook). Helping Chun-ja escape the brothel after she expresses her wish to return home, the trio set off towards the south with nothing to their names. Constantly singing the beggars’ ballad and delivering long tirades that, “a beggar owns nothing,” Min-woo never dismisses Byeong-tae’s dream to, “catch a whale.” Though appearing as light as a feather, Min-woo harbors a deep despair in his eyes, subtly hinting at his past as a student activist. It is entirely thanks to Ahn Sung-ki’s performance that audiences naturally warm up to a character caught between such extreme lightness and gravity. Portraying a youth despised by the world, he metaphorically reflects the spirit of the era.
Born in 1953 in Daegu. He made his feature directorial debut with People in the Slum (1982), then followed it with a string of box-office hits including The Flower at the Equator (1983), Whale Hunting (1984), and Deep Blue Night (1985), establishing himself as one of the leading directors of 1980s Korean cinema. Bae went on to broaden his body of work with films such as Our Joyful Young Days (1987) and Dream (1990), and in 1994 he founded Bae Chang-ho Productions, through which he produced and directed The Young Man (1994), Love Story (1996), and The Last Witness (2001), among others.
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
