Kim Ki-young (Korean: 김기영; October 10, 1919 – February 5, 1998) was a South Korean film director known for intensely psychosexual, melodramatic, and grotesque films, often centred on female characters. Born in Seoul and raised in Pyongyang, he developed an interest in theatre before moving south after World War II, where he studied dentistry while continuing to work in theatre. During the Korean War, he made propaganda films for the United States Information Service, and in 1955 used discarded equipment to produce his first two features, whose success led him to establish his own production company.
Kim established himself with The Housemaid (1960), now regarded as one of the greatest Korean films. Despite South Korea's heavy censorship and depressed market of the 1970s, Kim produced some of his most significant work, including Insect Woman (1972) and Iodo (1977). His career waned in the 1980s, but he became a cult figure in the early 1990s, and a retrospective at the 1997 Pusan International Film Festival brought renewed attention to his work. He and his wife died in a house fire in 1998 while he was preparing a comeback film. Directors including Im Sang-soo, Bong Joon-ho, and Park Chan-wook have cited Kim as a formative influence.
Kim Ki-young was born in the Gyo-dong neighborhood of Seoul—now part of Gyeongun-dong in Jongno-gu—on October 10, 1922. His family had lived in Seoul for several generations, and his grandfather was a guard at Gwanghwamun. Kim's family was well-educated and artistically inclined. His father, Kim Seok-jin, was an English teacher, and his mother, Han Jin-cho, was also a teacher and a graduate of Gyeonggi Women's College. Both painted as a hobby. The family had two daughters, and Kim Ki-young was their only son. One of his sisters graduated as an art major from Seoul National University, and the other majored in dance at Ewha Womans University. His sisters encouraged the young Kim to develop his own creativity. The family moved to Pyongyang in 1930, where they stayed for the next 10 years. At Pyongyang National High School, Kim showed exceptional talent in music, painting and writing, and his studious nature earned him the nickname "Professor of Physics". While still a student, one of Kim's poems was published in a Japanese newspaper, and he was awarded first prize in a painting competition.
Despite his artistic talents, Kim's main interest was medicine, and he applied for entrance into medical school upon graduation from high school in 1940. When he failed to gain admittance, Kim moved to Japan, planning to study and save up money to reapply for medical school. The theater and cinema grew into lifetime interests at this time. Kim often went to Kyoto, where he attended many stage productions and saw many international films. Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) and Fritz Lang's M (1931) made a particularly strong impression on him, and their influence was to show in his mature film style.
Kim returned to Korea in 1941, initially planning to work as a dentist, but instead immersing himself in the study of drama. At this time he was particularly interested in classical Greek theater, Ibsen and Eugene O'Neill. To avoid conscription by the Japanese into the military, Kim returned to Japan briefly before 1945. He returned to Pyongyang where he studied Stanislavsky's theories of acting and founded a theatrical group called "The Little Orchid". In 1946 Kim enrolled in Seoul Medical School, Seoul National University, and graduated with a major in dentistry in 1950. While attending university, his theatrical activities continued. He founded the National University Theater in 1949, and with this group staged many works of the Western theater, including Ibsen's Ghosts, Čapek's Robots, Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, and works by Chekhov and O'Neill. The main actress Kim worked with while at the university was Kim Yu-bong, who would later become his wife.
Kim was an intern at Seoul University Medical Clinic when the Korean War broke out. He went to Pusan on June 1, 1951, the day the North Korean army retreated. In Pusan, Kim met Oh Young-jin, a fellow Pyongyang National High School graduate. Oh, who would later write the screenplay to the popular film The Wedding Day (1956), was producing newsreels for the Korean News through the Bureau of Public Information, and helped Kim get a job writing screenplays with this organization. With Oh's help, Kim got a job working for the United States Information Service in Jinhae. The job helped shape Kim's life in several ways. With the increase in pay he received from the U.S.I.S., he was able to marry Kim Yu-bong in 1951, and their first son, Kim Dong-won, was born in 1952. They would have a daughter born in 1955 and a second son, Kim Dong-yang, born in 1958. The two remained married for the rest of their lives. Kim Yu-bong supported her husband's filmmaking career through her dental practice, giving him a unique degree of independence among Korean filmmakers of his era to pursue his own personal visions. At a career retrospective during the last year of his life, Kim commented, "My wife's support has been unflagging over the years, even if, at times, she has seen one of my films and cried 'What have you done with my money?' But at rare moments like this retrospective, she becomes very emotional, recognizing that finally it has all been worthwhile."
Kim filmed about 20 documentaries for the U.S.I.S. with such titles as Diary of the Navy and I Am a Truck for "Liberty News". The latter title was given an award by the U.S. State Department. The training and equipment Kim gained while working on these propaganda newsreels for the U.S.I.S. also enabled him to direct his first commercial film, Box of Death (1955). Kim used expired film stock and a manually operated camera from the U.S.I.S. to make this debut feature, an anti-communist melodrama about war orphans. The film, now lost, showed stylistic influences from the Italian neo-realists and was the first Korean film to employ synchronous sound.
With the success of this first film, Kim was able to direct his second feature, the historical costume drama Yangsan Province (also 1955), again using primitive equipment obtained from the U.S.I.S. Although Kim claimed to have based the film on a traditional song he learned from his mother, no exact source for the story has been found. It is suspected that the director made up the story himself, modeling it on traditional stories such as Chunhyangjeon, Lee Kyu-hwan's remake of which had recently become a major success, stimulating a rebirth in Korean cinema. After Lee's Chunhyangjeon, Yangsan Province was the second most successful Korean film of 1955. Though a popular success, critics of the time were not kind to Yangsan Province. Yoo Do-yeon called the film a "work of bad taste," and Heo Baek-nyeon said that it "debases the dignity of Korean cinema." As his only surviving film of the 1950s, Yangsan Province sheds considerable light on Kim Ki-young's early career. In an era in which Korean film critics considered realism to be important, the now-lost ending to Yangsan Province, in which two dead lovers ascend to heaven on a beam of light, was harshly criticized. In light of Kim's later career, critics today believe that this cut scene displays some of the most recognizable characteristics of Kim's mature style such as an interest in the fantastic, and a jarring blending of genres. Other motifs that were to be explored in depth in Kim's later work can also be found in Yangsan Province, such as animal imagery, particularly the use of hens as a representation of fertility and sexuality.
In 1956 Kim started Kim Ki-young Productions, and began making melodramas, the most popular film genre in South Korea at the time. His first independent production was Touch-Me-Not (1956). In 1957, Kim was living near the red-light district of Yongsan, and the atmosphere of this neighborhood influenced his films, A Woman's War and Twilight Train (both 1957). With First Snow (1958), Kim moved from melodrama to a more socially conscious realism. Defiance of a Teenager (1959) and Sad Pastorale (1960) followed in this style. Defiance of a Teenager was one of Kim's most successful and respected early works, and he attended the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1960 for a showing of this film.