Jang dreamed of becoming a musician in middle school, but his ambition changed when he saw his first theater play in his freshman year of high school. As a high school student, he acted in more than 40 plays, receiving good reviews and a few awards for his performances. After majoring in theater studies at
Seoul Institute of the Arts, he joined the writing team for the
SBS variety show
Good Friends in the mid-1990s. He created his own portion
Hollywood Message, which he wrote and edited by himself, where he would take famous scenes from some of the most popular Hollywood films showing in theaters, and make parodies, add silly popups, mix scenes from different films together to form a bizarre, unique collage of images. Because of his contribution, ratings for the show surged to unexpected heights. In January 1995, Jang entered newspaper daily
The Chosun Ilbo's annual literary contest with
Cheonho-dong Crossroad, his first full-fledged script. Using three characters which would feature in most of his theater plays and early films (Hwa-yi, Dal-soo and Deok-bae), his new and creative brand of storytelling won over the judges, who awarded him the top prize. He wrote his first stage play
Heotang ("labor in vain") at the age of 21 while serving his military duty, and his followup
Clumsy People, not only granted him much praise, but was also a big success, and allowed actress Song Chae-hwan to win the Best Actress Award at the Seoul Theater Festival. At the same time, he was helping adapt Song Jae-hee's original into what became
A Hot Roof, a feminist comedy where a group of women from all walks of life protest their position in society from the roof of a building, while their husbands and the rest of the city try to cope with all that in the midst of one of the hottest summers Korea had ever seen. With his theater and film successes, Jang was finally able to move on to producing and his real passion, writing. But the huge flop of the 2003 melodrama
A Man Who Went to Mars (also known as
A Letter from Mars, which Jang wrote) brought the company's future to a serious crossroad: either focus on hot items or risk losing everything. Though the aftermath of the film's failure was felt even in 2004, romantic comedy
Someone Special had a decent box office performance despite the film's low budget, as well as glowing reviews for its stars
Lee Na-young and
Jung Jae-young. Jang then focused on adapting his successful 2000 theater play ''Leave When They're Applauding'' into the big screen. The result was 2005's
Murder, Take One, about a homicide case being broadcast live for 48 hours, a whodunit with a campy take on the ratings-obsessed media and the viewers' craze for
reality TV. But it would be another of the company's films that became one of the biggest critical and commercial successes of 2005. Adapted by Jang from his same-titled 2002 play,
Welcome to Dongmakgol is the story of a remote mountain village where North and South Korean soldiers as well as an American soldier are stranded during the
Korean War. The fantasy dramedy was the debut feature of
Park Kwang-hyun, one of several of Jang's colleagues from his theater days who joined Film It Suda. In August 2005 Jang served as theatre director for the first time on a play he didn't write himself. He directed his fellow
Seoul Institute of the Arts alumni in a staging of
Arthur Miller's
Death of a Salesman. The play commemorated the 43rd anniversary for Dongnang Arts Center affiliated to the institute and the 100th birthday of the late Yu Chi-jin, founder of the institute and the nation's first amphitheater. After his doing his takes on the gangster genre (2006's
Righteous Ties) and the melodrama genre (2007's father-centered
My Son), Jang wrote the witty script for Ra Hee-chan's
Going by the Book, about a mock bank robbery drill that turns embarrassingly real. He also injected an enhanced comic effect into the screenplay of
Public Enemy Returns, the third installment in
Kang Woo-suk's series on tough detective Kang Cheol-jung (played by
Sul Kyung-gu). His feel-good political satire
Good Morning President was the opening film of the 2009
Busan International Film Festival. At the
MBC Drama Awards that year, Jang won a Special Award for his 2008 radio show segment
Radio Book Club on
MBC Standard FM. His next films, 2010 ensemble comedy
The Quiz Show Scandal and 2011 melodrama
Romantic Heaven, though well-reviewed, were less successful at the box office. Besides being the
CEO of Film It Suda, he is also co-founder of the film production company KnJ Entertainment Inc. alongside friend
Kang Woo-suk. Jang was a judge on the first and second seasons of ''
Korea's Got Talent. He wrote and directed the first three seasons of sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live Korea'' and anchored SNL Korea's version of
Weekend Update. Jang says he believes satirical comedies can change society for the better. ==Filmmaking==