Director Cho Chul-hyun, who helmed the film "The King's Letters", has passed away after battling cancer. He was 67 years old.
According to film industry sources on October 8, Director Cho Chul-hyun passed away earlier that day at around 1:00 AM.
Born in 1959, Director Cho entered the film industry in 1987 upon joining the Korea Movie Distribution Corporation. Starting that year, he established himself as a prominent translator in Korean cinema, translating around 600 foreign films.
Later, alongside Director Lee Joon-ik and the late CEO Jung Seung-hye, he was compared to Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, and Guan Yu, forming a "troika" of Korean film planning that led fresh and highly artistic concept-driven movies across the industry.
Director Cho planned, produced, and penned the screenplays for numerous works, including "Once Upon a Time in a Battlefield", "The Spy", "Anarchists", "Battlefield Heroes", "Sunny", "Blades of Blood", and "The Throne".
Recently, after overseeing the directing, screenplay, and adaptation for "The King's Letters", he went on to plan and write the script for "Canvas of Blood". For "The Throne", he won Best Screenplay at the 35th Korean Association of Film Critics Awards, the 2nd Korean Film Producers Association Awards (2015), and the 21st Chunsa Film Art Awards (2016).
A memorial altar has been prepared in Room 303 of the Korea University Anam Hospital Funeral Home. The casketing ceremony will take place on October 9 at 3:00 PM. The funeral procession is scheduled for October 10 at 7:00 AM, with the final resting place at Seoul Memorial Park.
(SBS Entertainment News | Kim Ji-hye)