Byun Young-joo

Byun Young-joo (; born December 20, 1966) is a South Korean film and television director. Her films explore issues of women's rights and human rights.

Education Byun Young-joo graduated with a law degree from Ewha Womans University and did her graduate studies at the Department of Theater and Film at Chung-Ang University.

Career

Beginning She is a founding member of the women's feminist film collective "Bariteo," which was established in 1989. She worked as a cinematographer on Even Little Grass Has Its Own Name (Kim So-young, 1989), a short film about gender discrimination at work, and My Children (Doe Sung-hee, 1990), a documentary film about childcare in a poor neighborhood. Her first documentary Women Being in Asia (1993) centers on the sex trade in Asia, particularly the sex tourism of Jeju Island.

Byun is best known for her trilogy documenting the present and past lives of "comfort women" who were abducted and forced into sexual servitude by the Japanese army in World War II. Byun's efforts have lent a significant push to the women's demands for a formal apology and compensation from the Japanese government. At the same time, the films have drawn praise for their aesthetic and emotional power.

The first film in this series, entitled The Murmuring (1995), has become one of the most acclaimed documentaries in Korea's history, the first of its kind to receive a theater release in the country. Byun states that when she first contacted a group of comfort women and asked if she could film them, they refused emphatically. It was only after living together with them for one year that the director gained their trust and permission to make a film. This first documentary portrays the women leading their weekly protests at the Japanese embassy and fighting to overcome the sense of shame that has been planted within them and reinforced by an uncaring public.

Feature film debut and other works For her feature film debut, Byun adapted the Korean novel "A Special Day That Comes Only Once in My Life" by Jeon Gyeong-rin into the erotic drama Ardor (2002), about the reinvigorating effects of an affair on a woman's previously disenchanting life. Byun was also credited as one of the cinematographers for the documentary Repatriation (Kim Dong-won, 2004), which follows two North Korean political prisoners and their decade-long struggle to return home after their release.

Her sophomore feature effort Flying Boys (2004) is a coming-of-age romance that also portrays the struggles of the lower classes and sexual minorities. Byun had her young actors take about two months of ballet classes so they could grasp the basics of the form.

Commissioned as part of Ten Ten, the 10th anniversary project of the International Women's Film Festival in Seoul, her documentary short film The Wise Way to Remember the 20th Century (2008) is a meditation on the writings of Park Wan-suh and her legacy on the 20th century, specifically its impact on Byun as a filmmaker and other women artists of the present generation.

Her most recent film Helpless (2012) is based on the Japanese novel All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe, which pivots around a young woman who suddenly disappears just a few weeks before her wedding, but also talks about contemporary problems such as private loans, bankruptcy and credit rating. Byun won Best Director at the 2012 Baeksang Arts Awards and Women in Film Korea Awards, and at 2.4 million tickets sold, Helpless is her biggest box-office hit yet.

Series debut In 2024, Byun made her debut as a television series director through MBC's 14-episode drama Black Out. Produced by Hidden Sequence and began the pre-production in 2021, Black Out was developed under the working title Snow White Must Die, which is based on the German novel of the by Nele Neuhaus. It was reported that writer Seo Joo-yeon and director Lee Kyu-man would team up. Byun replaced Lee Kyu-man, who left the project while it was still being developed. Black Out had a world premiere in the Rendez-Vous section of the 2024 Canneseries and aired on MBC's Friday-Saturday prime time slot from August 16 to October 4, 2024.

For her next project, Byun directed eight-episode SBS drama The Mantis: Original Sin, which is an adaptation of the 2017 TF1 six-episode miniseries La Mante. It was adapted Lee Young-jong from on the 2017 TF1 series La Mante. Lead roles were portrayed by Go Hyun-jung and Jang Dong-yoon. It aired on SBS TV from September 5, to September 27, 2025, every Friday and Saturday at 21:50 (KST) and also available for streaming in Netflix.

Filmography Film YearTitleRoleNotes 1993 Women Being in Asia Director documentary 2004 Flying Boys

Series

Awards and nominations + Name of the award ceremony, year presented, category, nominee of the award, and the result of the nomination Award ceremony Year Category Nominee / Work Result Baeksang Arts Awards 2012 Best Director Helpless Busan International Film Festival 1999 Woonpa Fund My Own Breathing 2009 Kim Hak-sun Award Korean Film Critics Association 1996 Film Critics Special Award The Murmuring Taiwan International Documentary Festival 1998 Merit Prize Habitual Sadness Women in Film Korea Awards 2012 Filmmaker of the Year Helpless Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival 1995 Shinsuke Ogawa Award The Murmuring