JUNG Do-ahn, born in 1958, is the CEO of special effects company Demolition, a household name in the Korean film industry. He had acquired such a reputation by the end of the 90s that some stuntmen and fight choreographers would even refuse to work with anyone other than him. Despite his notoriety among film professionals today, his career started off by chance, with no special training. In his teenage years, he hated so much his home and his school that his only wish was to ...More

JUNG Do-ahn, born in 1958, is the CEO of special effects company Demolition, a household name in the Korean film industry. He had acquired such a reputation by the end of the 90s that some stuntmen and fight choreographers would even refuse to work with anyone other than him. Despite his notoriety among film professionals today, his career started off by chance, with no special training. In his teenage years, he hated so much his home and his school that his only wish was to run away. And so, one day in 1975, he sold his bicycle and used the money to go to Seoul. There, he would barely survive for a while as a shoeshine boy and other odd jobs, and would often have to sleep on benches. While working as a waiter in Chungmuro, the historical home district of the Korean film industry, he met a special effects technician who offered to come with him, to which JUNG agreed without hesitation. The first movie he worked on was taekwondo action flick <Only Son For Four Generations> (1976). At first, he didn’t find his new job particularly interesting, as it involved not much more than carrying around mattresses and assembling trampolines. Yet, it eventually began to grow on him, and this has to do, in part, with his first experience with explosives. On the set of LEE Jang-ho’s war movie <The Green Pine Tree> (1983), he had to carry dynamite to mountain tops, plant them, detonate them on cue and run as far as he could. Although this made him realize the risks of his line of work, he also discovered its thrills. After more than a decade working in special effects, driven by the necessity to provide for his family, he resolved in 1987 to go independent and set up his own special effects studio, Demolition. However, film companies would never give such a dangerous job to a newcomer; he had first to prove his worth in one way or another, and so he chose to focus on sci-fi movies for kids, a popular B movie genre of the time for which quick and efficient work was more important than the realism of the effects. Starting with the <Wuroi-Mae From Outer Space> series, JUNG worked on the bulk of children movies produced in late 1980s. This gave him the opportunity to experiment with various techniques directly on the set, finding many tricks in the process. With his newfound reputation (he was nicknamed “JungGyver” for his ability to create anything from scratch), he was offered his first job on a big production in 1988, for <Bio-Man>. It is however his work on fantasy romance <The Fox With Nine Tails> (1994) that would make his name. In 1998, he received the Technical Achievement Award (shared with other technicians) at the Blue Dragon Awards for crime thriller <The Soul Guardians> (1998), a feat he reiterated two years later with firefighting drama <Libera Me> (2000). He has since taken part in some of the most spectacular Korean movies, constantly trying to step up his game. He has notably taken part in blockbuster action <Swiri> (1999), fantasy drama <The Legend of Gingko> (2000), war epic <TaeGukGi: Brotherhood> (2004), Manchurian western <The Good, The Bad, And The Weird> (2008), action drama <The Man From Nowhere> (2010), historical action <The Tiger> (2016) and action thriller <The Villainess> (2017), and remains today a frequent recipient of Korean accolades.Less