EMPRESS CHUNG is set to be the first major feature animated entirely in communist North Korea to see a wide release in a capitalist country when it opens in South Korea on Friday, reports REUTERS. It will open in Pyongyang on Aug. 15, the same day the Korean peninsula was freed from Japanese colonial control and was divided into North and South Korea by the Allied forces. The film directed by Nelson Shin will be the first to open jointly in North and South Korea.
"We made it together. We will watch it together. I couldn't be happier," Shin said.
EMPRESS CHUNG is a Korean folk tale about a young girl who sets out on a mission to regain her blind father sight by battling a monstrous sea god. The North Korean version will contain different voice over actors from the North in an effort to maintain the North's dialect.
Shin who also heads AKOM Production Co., the South Korean animation studio that animates THE SIMPSONS also produced the film.
The reason Shin turned to skilled North Korean animators was because the estimated cost for animators in North Korea is about one-seventh that of other low-cost centers such as China, according to industry reports.
The film took eight years to produce and Shin had to work through his Chinese office to legally work with the North Korean animation house SEK Studio. Shin first met with SEK at a trade show in Singapore.
"The market economy is coming to North Korean animation," Shin told REUTERS.
State-owned SEK Studio was founded in 1985 and has grown into one of the largest animation studios in the world with a staff of more than1,500. The studio has produced animation for Italian, French and Spanish companies in addition to making its own TV shows featuring cuddly animals that live in a cutesy world.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
