Kyungmook Kim (b. in Busan) is a filmmaker, media artist, and educator based in Seoul. Ranging from video arts to documentaries and narrative films, their works explore the precarity of marginalized individuals such as queer individuals, sex workers, North Korean defectors, and prisoners. They began working as a columnist for several publications since 2001 and served on the editorial board of the independent film magazine “Independent Film” (2006-2007), as well as a committee member of the Association of Korean Independent Film and Video (2011-2012).
Their directorial debut was with “Me and Doll-playing” (2004) at the age of nineteen. Since then, they have engaged in various forms of cinema, including the ‘Things Trilogy’ consisting of “Faceless Things” (2005), “Stateless Things” (2011), and “Futureless Things” (2014). Their most recent works include the VR installation, “5.25m²” (2022). These films have been invited to and received awards at numerous international film festivals such as the Venice International Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the BFI London Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, and the New Museum, among others. Additionally, their works have been the subject of retrospectives at the Taipei Film Festival (Taiwan, 2012), the Festival du Film Coréen à Paris (France, 2012), the Black Movie Film Festival (Switzerland, 2013), and Indie Space (South Korea, 2016).
In 2015, they objected to the mandatory military service following their belief in pacifism, resulting in an eighteen-month in prison. They were paroled in 2016 after one year and three months of imprisonment in solitary confinement. In 2018, they studied new media in Film, Video, New Media, and Animation (MFA) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and had their first solo show titled “Quarantine” at Post Territory Ujeongguk in 2021, using the medium of VR and game engine. They are currently majoring in Visual Arts (DFA) at Yonsei University’s Graduate School of Communication & Arts and working on a feature film, “You and Our Millennium” (working title).
KyungMook Kim 