Yoon Jong-chan majored in Film at
Hanyang University, and upon graduation he joined the crew of Kim Young-bin's
No Emergency Exit (1993) as an
assistant director. In 1995, Yoon went to the United States to attend
Syracuse University, where he earned his
MFA in Film Directing. While at Syracuse, he directed three
short films about memory and fate,
Playback (1996),
Memento (1997), and
Views (1999), which won numerous awards at film festivals both in Korea and abroad. Yoon returned to Korea in 2001, and first taught in the film department of
Hoseo University. He then made his
feature directorial debut with
Sorum (meaning "
gooseflesh" in
Korean). About damaged people living in a dilapidated apartment complex (particularly a taxi driver who has an affair with a battered housewife, played by
Kim Myung-min and
Jang Jin-young), local critics praised
Sorum as a stylish, atmospheric, deeply challenging, and intelligently written
horror film. Yoon won Best New Director at the
Busan Film Critics Awards and the
Baeksang Arts Awards, while
Sorum won three awards at
Fantasporto, including Best Director for Yoon, Best Actress for Jang, and the Special Jury Prize. For his next film,
biopic Blue Swallow (2005), Yoon again cast Jang in the leading role as
Park Kyung-won, a real-life Korean pioneering female aviator who lived in the 1920s and 1930s (the film is named after Park's beloved
biplane). Yoon proved that he could handle an ambitious, big-budget project, and the () blockbuster had overseas locations in Japan,
El Mirage (California), and
Changchun (China), included 1,100
CGI-enhanced aerial scenes, and employed 1,000
extras. But the film became mired in controversy when certain conservative internet reporters accused Park of being a pro-
Japanese collaborator and alleged that the film had
whitewashed its protagonist, to which Yoon responded, "I don't have any intention to embellish her or depict her as a independence fighter in my film. I just wanted to show a tragedy of a woman who had to choose her dream over her country." Despite excellent reviews and Park's biographer pointing out factual errors in these accusations, it resulted in the under-performance of
Blue Swallow at the box office. Yoon made his first foray into
digital filmmaking with
I Am Happy, adapted from the novel
Mr. Cho Man-deuk by
Lee Cheong-jun. He shot the
ironically titled
romance film on
HD for six weeks, and cast
Hyun Bin and
Lee Bo-young as a
megalomania-afflicted patient and his nurse who find more comfort inside a
psychiatric ward than their reality outside.
I Am Happy was the closing film of the 13th
Busan International Film Festival in 2008 and was released in theaters in 2009. In 2013,
Han Suk-kyu and
Lee Je-hoon starred in Yoon's fourth film
My Paparotti, about a troubled teen and his temperamental music teacher, who missed his chance at fame as an
opera singer in his youth and sees himself in his new student. It won the Grand Prize at the 27th Fukuoka Asian Film Festival. ==Personal life==