Fake HOST 2 Viral Video Confuses Fans and Websites

: Video; 07 August 2014

Fake HOST 2 Viral Video Confuses Fans and Websites

Lee Juwon`s "A Monster in Han-River in South Korea" video.

Author: Kim Song-ho and Keith Aiken Special Thanks to Juwon Lee

A SCIFI JAPAN EXCLUSIVE

In 2006, writer/director Bong Joon-ho`s monster movie THE HOST (??, Gwoemul) became the highest-grossing film in Korean box office history. The movie also drew a considerable amount of international attention, playing to enthusiastic audiences at the Cannes International Film Festival and AFI Fest. THE HOST`s critical and commercial success quickly launched talk of myriad spinoffs. Even before the film had played in the United States, Universal Studios had acquired rights to do an American remake. In 2007 Chungeorahm Film, the production studio behind the original movie, announced plans for the Korean sequel THE HOST 2 and television series. In 2008 came word that Chungeorahm was partnering with Stoneman Films to make a Chinese version of THE HOST 2, separate from the Korean sequel. None of these projects have yet to see the light of day, though THE HOST 3D, a 2D-to-3D post-converted version of the first film, did premiere at the 2011 Busan International Film Festival.

The abundance of delays for THE HOST sequels have likewise spawned an inordinate amount of misinformation and false reports, particularly from English language news sources dealing with the language barrier. In 2009, several outlets announced the first image from THE HOST 2 had been released... but the picture was instead from a CGI test by Macrograph, a Korean company signed to work on the film. Then in late 2012 came reports that footage from THE HOST 2 had been posted online... again, this was nothing more than a Macrograph test produced for the 2011 World IT Show, a year and a half before. The latest example comes with reports that an English subtitled video entitled "A Monster in Han-River in South Korea" had been released for THE HOST 2, apparently by a digital compositor who had worked on the first film. The news was posted on a handful of websites plus the Internet Movie Database. But a closer examination proves that "A Monster in Han-River in South Korea" is simply a cleverly made fan film. The joke is immediately apparent to anyone who speaks Korean, as the video`s English subtitles don`t come close to matching what is being said onscreen. Bong Joon-ho -- who is not involved in making THE HOST 2 -- is actually discussing the rules for a film competition for which he was a juror. And the man in the office/library appears to be an economist, for he is talking about reforming a `chaebol`, a Korean term for `business conglomerate`. The maker of this video is Juwon Lee, a Korean graduate student majoring in a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts at Purchase College: State University of New York. Mr Lee recently answered some questions about "A Monster in Han-River in South Korea"... SciFi Japan: Could you tell us about the origin of the video? Juwon Lee: The video is one of my recent body of work, which consist of absurd story lines derived from mass media sources like movies or video games. I push these obviously fictional materials into a state of hyper-reality by capturing and re-editing video footage from Internet sources. With this mix of sources I construct videos with believable story lines, similar to documentaries or nightly news programs. Currently I am working on a fictional documentary about a different theme -- other than the monster of the Han River -- which I haven`t uploaded yet.

For scenes [in "A Monster in Han-River in South Korea"] of talking heads speaking in my native language -- Korean -- I supplied English subtitles with false translations that simply propel the fake narrative. And I deliberately inserted some clues from which the viewer could tell the video is fake. For example, the creature is ridiculously larger than the river bridge. And some of the background music is just a slow tempo version of the theme from the Studio Ghibli animated film PONYO. SciFi Japan: Have you participated in the production of the first THE HOST movie? Or do you have any connection to the upcoming sequel? Juwon Lee: Some website misconstrued that I was, or am a staff member for the upcoming one movie, but I am a totally different person with the same name. I don`t have any connections with THE HOST, other than I was a member of the theater audience. SciFi Japan: Could you share the response after you released the video? Juwon Lee: I have never thought about it going viral, but it was very interesting to see such unexpected reactions. One friend said I should let the website [which first ran the news about the video] know that it was a fake documentary, and some have suggested I contact the movie production company. But mostly we were just surprised at how unpredictable the internet was and are simply enjoying this situation. No one was more surprised than I was. Just one night after uploading it, the number of views skyrocketed far beyond my expectations. That made me wonder so I checked our statistics on Youtube. And when I read the article on the news site I laughed uncontrollably for quite some time. One of the expressions from the article has become a catchphrase in my studio: "Do the math, kids!!"

For more information on THE HOST, THE HOST 2, THE HOST 3D, the Chinese sequel, and the American THE HOST remake, please see the previous coverage here on SciFi Japan: