A mother and her three daughters climb into a van in matching T-shirts. It looks like a family holiday to Gyeongju, Korea’s old royal capital. In the trunk, there is a man they have waited eight years to find.
That is the setup of The Journey to Gyeongju, which opens in Korean cinemas on August 26. Two of the four women will look familiar. Lee Jung-eun was the housekeeper in Parasite; Park So-dam was Ki-jung, the sister.
The trip is the alibi, the revenge is the point
Eight years ago the youngest daughter, Gyeongju, never came back from a school trip. On her birthday, the family drives to the city she was named after. The trip is cover; the man in the trunk (Byun Yo-han) is the reason.
Director Kim Mi-jo says the key is that these are “four women who can’t even kill a fly.” She gave her composers an exact ratio to work with: 30 percent tragedy, 70 percent comedy. A revenge film that intends to be funny.
That is the main trailer, in Korean without subtitles. The tone still comes through: a crime plot run by people with no talent for crime.
The director won Jeonju’s top prize with her debut
This is Kim Mi-jo’s first commercial feature. Her debut Gull (2020) won the Korean competition grand prize at the Jeonju International Film Festival and a special mention at San Sebastián.
Between the two films she worked as a script supervisor on other productions. She cast Lee Jung-eun after watching her act on one of those sets. Kim is also the youngest of four sisters herself, which explains a lot about this script.
Gong Hyo-jin, a fixture of Korean romantic comedy, plays the eldest daughter. She reportedly picked this script while turning down four others.
Festivals abroad saw it before Korea did
The film already has a small festival record. It won the audience award at the Florence Korea Film Fest and screened at Fantasia in Montreal and the Barcelona Korean film festival.
After the August 13 press screening in Seoul, local reviews ran warm. The recurring line: it makes you laugh, then it makes you cry.
Two caveats. Only 3,112 paying viewers have seen it so far, and a tone that swings between grief and comedy tends to split audiences.
It opens into a market one film owns
The market it enters is lopsided. As of August 19, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey held 71.5 percent of all advance bookings in Korea, fifteen days into its run.
The Journey to Gyeongju sits at 2.5 percent — fourth overall, but first among Korean films. Its advance sales grew 176.2 percent in a single day after the press screening.
The window is short. Korea’s Chuseok holiday season starts September 2, and the big local tentpoles arrive with it.
If you are outside Korea, the wait is open-ended
No international release date has been announced, and no streaming deal has been made public. For now, overseas festival programs are the only way to catch it — Fantasia and Florence suggest more will follow.
Rated 15+ in Korea, 111 minutes. Whether it can hold screens against The Odyssey is the thing to watch on opening day.
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