(Korean Movies) Children…, 2011

March 26, 1991 around 8 am
Five elementary school students disappear from the mountain behind Dalseo-gu, Daegu

Total number of search mobilizations, military, civil and civilian: 300,000 people
Search period 10 years and 8 months

15 years later 2006
..Expiration of statute of limitations

they still haven't come back

We remember this incident as the “disappearance of the frog boy.”

A true story about the disappearance of a frog boy
<Children… >

[ About movie ]

<Memories of Murder>, <That Guy's Voice> and <Children… >
The last 'Frog Boy Disappearance Case' of Korea's three major unsolved cases is made into a movie.
'The Hwaseong Serial Murder Case' in which 10 women were murdered one after another in Hwaseong City, Gyeonggi Province from 1986 to 1991; And in 1991, in Dalseo-gu, Daegu, five children who went out to catch salamanders disappeared at once in the 'disappearance of the frog boy'. These three incidents that shocked the Republic of Korea are called the three major unsolved incidents in Korea. ‘The Hwaseong Serial Murder Case’ and ‘Lee Hyung-ho’s Kidnapping Murder Case’ have been made into two films, such as ‘Memories of Murder’ and ‘That Guy’s Voice,’ respectively, to remind the audience of the forgotten incident, as well as to convey a social message. delivered and raised awareness.

Mystery missing true story <Children… > deals with the last remaining 'frog boy's disappearance' among Korea's three major unsolved cases. The 'disappearance of the frog boy' is a shocking case that left a deep sadness in the hearts of the people among the three unsolved cases, and a number of suspicions and mysteries persist. Therefore, even though 21 years have passed since this year, the children who disappeared at the time, those in their 20s and 30s who were the same age, and the middle-aged generation who came across the incident through news and newspapers retain the memories of this incident intact to this day, so they are not afraid of the movie news. is showing great interest. As such, the movie “Children… > will deliver thrills, tension, and a heavy reverberation with a sincere story and a mysterious case development that connects the genealogy of <Memories of Murder> and <The Voice of That Guy>.

Stories that could not even be contained in the news unfold realistically!
A true story about the disappearance of the frog boy vividly.
On March 26, 1991, on the morning of a temporary holiday due to the election of the National Assembly member, an unbelievable incident occurs when five children go out of the house and disappear at once. Since then, numerous suspicions related to the missing children begin to abound, and parents who have lost their children give up all their livelihoods and travel all over the country with the belief that they can find their children. As such, the 'disappearance of the frog boy' has a broader ripple effect than other unsolved cases in that it contains numerous stories surrounding the incident as well as the case of the disappearance of as many as five children.
The movie "Children… > focuses on this fact, and realistically and sincerely depicts the story between the characters who tried to uncover the truth of the incident from the day the actual children disappeared. The documentary PD who jumped into the case to catch the scoop, and the National Science University professor who pointed out the culprit according to his hypothesis, seem like characters from a very cinematic setting, but their stories are all based on facts. In addition, the film is different from previous works based on true stories as it depicts the story of parents who suffered great sorrow in the process and the way they view the events around them without distorting the facts as they are. <Children… > is different from the documentary-style, event-oriented, true-story films that delivered only a strong social message, it focuses on the emotions of characters that were not able to capture other stories and news hidden behind the incident. In this way, <Children… > will remind the audience of the forgotten event, and at the same time convey the desperate situation and tense moments in their hearts.

Park Yong-woo, Ryu Seung-ryong, Sung Dong-il, Seong Ji-ru, Kim Yeo-jin!
A total set of Korea's representative actors who act with the heart!
Mystery and true story <Children… > Korea's representative actors gathered in one place. Park Yong-woo, who has met the audience with a new transformation every time, Ryu Seung-ryong with a thousand-faced face, Seong Dong-il acting out of the box, acting out of the box, Seong Ji-ru melting into the character itself for each role, Kim Yeo-jin with natural acting skills, etc. The five actors who showed amazing character digestibility are the main characters. The five actors, who gave high confidence to the audience with their performances that were not limited to genres, are in <Children… > shows the essence of acting with the heart.

First, Park Yong-woo plays Kang Ji-seung, a documentary producer who jumps into the case to catch a scoop, Ryu Seung-ryong plays Hwang Woo-hyuk, a professor who pointed out the culprit with his hypothesis, and Seong Dong-il takes on the role of Park Kyung-sik, a detective who cannot give up his children. They each have different reasons, but they take on three characters that have one thing in common: they are looking for children, and they inhale the audience with their performances that cannot take their eyes off of them for even a moment. In addition, Seong Ji-ru is a father who has given up everything to find a child, and Kim Yeo-jin is a mother who has dried up even tears. Director Lee Kyu-man, who grabbed the megaphone for this work, said that each character could be completely completed through the process in which the emotions of the characters he drew in his head gradually materialized through the actors' performances. did not spare much praise for it. The five actors, who give deep trust to the audience with their solid performances that have been verified through numerous works, make the audience feel the ‘disappearance of the frog boy’ 21 years later with their sincere acting with their hearts. will be.

Director Lee Kyu-man, who created a new wind in the thriller world!
Capturing the 'Frog Boy Disappearance Case' with 3 years of persistence and sincerity
In the summer of 2007, "Awakening during surgery (a patient who was under general anesthesia during surgery wakes up during surgery and feels all the pain of surgery, but the body is immobile, the most terrible pain that a human can feel)" Director Lee Kyu-man, who made his debut through the mystery thriller <Return>. Having made a debut in a genre that is not easy for a feature-length debut, he received high marks from critics and audiences for his own sensuous images, unique directing skills, and attention to detail.

After his first feature film <Return>, director Lee Kyu-man chose 'The Frog Boy Disappearance Case' as the subject of his next film, which caused a stir in the Republic of Korea in 1991. When he was 20 years old, he became interested in the fact that the 'disappearance of a frog boy', which he encountered through the media, was closed as an unsolved case, leaving only countless rumors, and decided to make it into a movie. Director Lee Kyu-man, who entered the planning stage in earnest, began to investigate the incident and was very concerned about the fact that this incident is a true story and has a strong tragic nature. However, after writer Hyunjin Lee, who worked with the screenplay, set the center of the story, he added flesh to the story based on the facts he found through the data and the emotions he felt himself. <Children… > was born. In this way, the true story of 'The Frog Boy Disappearance Case', completed with the persistence and sincerity of director Lee Kyu-man, <Children… > shows the story after the disappearance of children on March 26, 1991, moving the audience's intelligence and emotions.

[ Special Page ]

1) Parents are the culprits?!
One day while the investigation was ongoing, a call came to the home of one of the five children. That you are the missing child. At the time, the home phone had a tracking device installed, but the child's mother could not accidentally press the tracking device. A psychology professor who started researching the data with this incident led to pointing out these parents as the culprits under various circumstances.

2) An accident committed by USFK?!
At the time, there was a USFK base near the mountain behind the village where the children went to catch salamanders. Since the shooting training of American soldiers was frequently conducted here before the incident, many hypothesized that the children who went to play in the mountains may have been killed by bullets from inside the American base.

3) You were kidnapped by a spy?!
In 1997, six years after the disappearance, the Choi Jeong-nam couple's spy case occurs. With this incident as an opportunity, as it was revealed that three high school students who went missing in 1978 were abducted by North Korea, the possibility that the frog boys were also abducted by North Korean agents has been strongly raised.

4) Not an accident, but a runaway?!
In this mysterious case where five children disappeared at once, people speculated that the children had run away. It was because the five children had good motor skills to be kidnapped or harmed by anyone. Due to these runaway rumors, countless reports have been pouring in that children are living in a parrot somewhere.

5) Other reports and absurd hypotheses
In addition to this, reports of children being sold to deep-sea fishing boats and absurd hypotheses were constantly raised. Among them, the abduction theory of a UFO that was abducted by aliens and the theory of a monster that was trained to suck human blood are considered the most absurd hypotheses.

[ Production Note ]

No. 1 mission! Capture the events of 21 years ago as they are!
Nationwide locations for on-site reproduction!
<Children… > reproduces the situation at the time of the incident as it is, not only in the story but also in terms of visuals. Director Lee Kyu-man, who directed this work, invested a lot of time and effort to visually capture the sincerity of dealing with the case while dealing with the 'disappearance of the frog boy', which remains the most tragic case among the three major unsolved cases in Korea. . First, he went through the process of collecting data for the scenario, and based on the vast amount of data, he began to search for a place where he could recreate the incident, and work to capture the incident as it was 21 years ago.

<Children… > The filming took place in Seoul, Anseong, Cheongju, Jincheon, Daejeon, Jeonju, Namwon, and Gimje. Among these cities, many places, such as deep mountains, sailor ponds, and country roads, selected solely based on 'how similar they are to the site of the time 21 years ago', are ordinary places that we can often pass by. It was reborn as an optimal place that can be visually reproduced. One special thing is the fact that only the 3rd episode was filmed in the last week of March before starting the full crank-in on June 28th. This is a means to vividly capture the fact that the time when the children actually disappeared was March 26, when the spring spirit was rampant, and it is also a part that confirms the efforts of director Lee Kyu-man and the staff who put a lot of effort into reproducing the scene. Because of all the staff who traveled across the country for each scene like this, <Children… > viewers will be able to vividly feel the 'disappearance of the frog boy', 21 years after the incident occurred.

Build realism beyond movies!
A set making machine that melts into reality as it is
<Children… > Among the various places in the story, the place you should pay attention to is the house of Jong-ho, one of the missing children. This is the place where Jong-ho's parents are suspected of being the culprit after Jong-ho's disappearance. And what is most noteworthy is that Jongho's house is not an actual building, but an open set installed in a village in Cheongwon-gun, North Chungcheong Province. It is said that this set was actually so real that the residents of the village did not even realize it was a set. In addition, all the actors who visited the filming site were surprised by the set that was melted into reality, saying that at the time of their first visit, they didn't notice the open set of visuals that might have been there and just passed it.

The Jonghojib set was able to be born thanks to the tenacious effort of the art team more than any other part. The art team staff, who had been thinking a lot with director Lee Kyu-man from the time of the screenplay, shared all the facts of the incident and the new stories hidden in it, making them forget that it was a set, not a 'simple movie set'. I decided to make a set with the same visuals as the house of . Director Lee Kyu-man and the art team had to go through a detailed examination of not only the set but also the alleyways in order to reproduce the whole neighborhood exactly as it was at the time, and even went through the process of getting permission to shoot from the villagers. In particular, director Lee Kyu-man said, “I saw tattered shoes under the floor that the camera could not reach, and I thought, ‘You are working with a great art team. He also applauded Completed with the art team's insistence on the visual aspect and the strong support of director Lee Kyu-man, the set of Jongho-jip is expected to capture the audience's attention at once with detail and realism beyond the movie.

The hottest scene in Korean film history is born!
Jongho house search scene filming machine completed with explosive energy
<Children… > contains another tragedy that occurred between the characters who tried to uncover the truth of the incident from the day the actual children disappeared. The most shocking and tragic case is that the parents of the missing child were identified as the culprit, and in the end, every corner of the house was searched with the parents' permission. The movie "Children… Among the many incidents surrounding the 'disappearance of the frog boy', > shows the circumstances of the incident that the news could not cover in detail and the grief of the parents while dealing with this case in depth.

This scene was filmed in the set of Jongho's house, which is reproduced exactly like the missing child's house. At the time of the incident, in the same way that the search operation was conducted in the presence of many media outlets as well as the villagers, this filming was also conducted with a mob scene (crowd scene). In particular, the part that director Lee Kyu-man paid the most attention to in this filming volume is the casting. Because it was the most important scene in the story and emotional aspects, even the minor actors who scoop up the filth in the bathroom of Jongho's house were selected through auditions one by one. Although there was only one line of dialogue for this role, director Lee Kyu-man also revealed that he gave it more importance than any other casting in order to maximize the tension of this scene. In addition, as an extension of casting, director Lee Kyu-man met each actor individually before filming and went through the process of practicing acting rather than reading. The search scene for Jongho's house, completed through this process, will leave a strong impression enough to remain as the hottest scene in Korean film history. As director Lee Kyu-man said, 'Just as if you add seasoning to the meat, the flavor spreads by itself, when 100 people act, if 50 perform well, the other 50 will automatically immerse themselves in the acting'. You will be able to feel the explosive energy of the staff and staff.

Neither the heat nor the heavy rain can stop them!
On-site story of hot sincerity and pleasant laughter
<Children… > started filming in earnest on June 28, 2010, when it was extremely hot. The key to filming, which started at the end of June, was the sweltering heat and sudden heavy rain. In the summer of 2010, the weather was particularly fickle, so all the staff and actors had to go through a lot of physical hardship. In addition, since the subject of 'The Frog Boy Disappearance' contains a strong tragic atmosphere, a serious atmosphere was formed that made the staff hold their breath while the camera was running. However, despite the physical limitations caused by the weather and the serious atmosphere stemming from the cinematic characteristics, all the actors and staff did not lose their pleasant smiles and went to the filming.

Around July, when we were filming on the set of a family house installed in a rural village, the weather was so fickle that it often rained in the middle of filming. What was even worse was that, since the set itself was an open set, no cooling facilities were properly equipped except for one air conditioner that blows air from an aluminum tube. Moreover, the actors wore long-sleeved costumes to capture all four seasons of the year, so the heat felt more intense. Even in this situation, the actors and staff gave each other the seat in front of the air conditioner, which is the coolest spot on the open set, and instead, everyone chased the scorching heat with a bag of ice. Director Lee Kyu-man said that he was worried that everyone's concentration would be disturbed due to the weather, but the teamwork was able to show even in a harsh environment due to the atmosphere of the set where they enjoyed a bag of ice and everyone's sincerity towards the work. <Children… > The atmosphere of the filming site created a positive synergy effect for both actors and staff, and became the driving force for the creation of the best work.