Han Jun-hee: Safe Choices Are the Real Risk — SkimNews
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- Han Jun-hee delivered a Netflix Creative Asia masterclass at the Busan International Film Festival in conversation with Netflix Korea's Kim Kijae, ahead of the Nov. 20 Netflix release of his Korea-Japan thriller "The Blue Road."
- "The Blue Road" adapts the 2002 Korean-Japanese manga "Blue Road" by Edogawa Keishi and Kwon Ka-ya, stars Son Suk-ku and Nagayama Eita, and screens in BIFF's On Screen section.
- Han told the audience that bold gambles in Korean industry parlance are called "go or stop," and argued that "if you only make extremely safe choices, those safe choices can end up becoming the bigger risk."
- "Dead-End Job", Han's Netflix mystery-horror series premiering Oct. 30, follows a debt-burdened young man taking a part-time job paying 50 times the minimum wage at a staffing agency where every shift could kill him.
- Han has shifted into creator/producer roles, helping launch emerging directors Yoo Soo-min ("Weak Hero Class 1") and Kim Da-min ("Dead-End Job") at a time when "debuts getting harder to land in Korea."
- On "The Blue Road", Han worked with Korean and Japanese crews — calling Korean teams "flexible, adaptable and fast" and Japanese crews "very meticulous and precise" — and said initial misunderstandings gave way to compromise as each crew learned from the other.
Why it matters: The masterclass doubles as a pre-launch platform for two upcoming Netflix series, while also surfacing Han's emerging role as a creator-producer who launches debut directors in a Korean pipeline where directorial debuts are getting harder to land. His "The Blue Road" model — a Korea-Japan co-production shepherded by a Korean showrunner working with both crews — offers a template for cross-border Asian projects Netflix is actively cultivating.
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