"If you ask why now, I didn’t start this thinking I had to do it at this exact time," he said. "It flowed naturally and felt more like a project I met by fate. That made me even more grateful — and I was thankful to work with good staff and actors."
For 'Jjanggu,' Jung Woo went beyond acting, taking part in the screenplay and serving as a co-director. He said being involved throughout the process gave him a closer look at how a film is completed.
"Actors sometimes don’t realize how much energy and care goes into postproduction," he said. "Experiencing it myself was fun, but it also reminded me how much effort it takes to finish a film."
Jung Woo said he does not consider 'Jjanggu' a sequel to 'The Wind,' even though the character returns.
"Strictly speaking, I don’t think it’s 'The Wind 2,'" he said. "It’s hard to call it that. If anything, since that character comes back, it can feel like a spinoff or a character movie. But it’s different from the kind of series people usually think of — it’s definitely not like 'The Roundup' 1 and 2, where it continues in that way."
In the film, Jjanggu’s friends — including Jang-jae (played by Shin Seung-ho) and Kkangnaengi (played by Jo Beom-gyu) — are grounded characters with a lifelike feel. Jung Woo said they were not created from pure fiction but grew out of people he has known and observed.
"Like with 'The Wind,' because I wrote this myself, I kept thinking of unusual friends I’d seen in real life," he said. "Jang-jae and Kkangnaengi look ordinary on the surface, but if you look closely, they’re not. I thought that sense of real life would be fun. I have even more unusual friends around me, and I’m a little disappointed I couldn’t fit them all into this film."
Jung Woo also recalled how 'The Wind' built a reputation beyond its theatrical run. He said it achieved meaningful results as an independent film and later gained wider, longer-lasting attention through IPTV and VOD, earning the label of an "unofficial 10 million" film.
"Back then, I didn’t even know what the break-even point was — how many people it was," he said. "To us, it was just a meaningful step. Once we went to Jeju for stage greetings and there were only four people sitting there. There were fewer audience members than us, so theater staff even filled seats. We still went around doing those greetings."
He said the routine was exhausting at the time, including taking selfies and signing for each audience member after screenings.
"Honestly, it was hard," he said. "I didn’t really know the idea of fan service, and I didn’t know how to enjoy that time. But now it’s different. This time in Busan, taking photos and making memories with people felt really fun and I was grateful. I can’t control the numbers, so I see it as a process of thanking each person."
If 'The Wind' was based on Jung Woo’s story and turned into a screenplay by director Lee Seong-han, Jung Woo said 'Jjanggu' was a more direct effort to write out his own time. He said it began from the same autobiographical starting point, but this time he revised and refined the story more as a writer.
"Putting my story into writing isn’t easy," he said. "'The Wind' had the autobiographical label, but I felt it was closer to a series of episodes. Still, because my real experiences — including my father’s story — were in it, I think it had its own arc. This film also started from my story, but I adapted it more. I rewrote it five or six times, and as many as seven, getting help from people around me as I polished it."
Asked what changed most through the rewrites, Jung Woo said the process ultimately brought him back to the original direction.
"It’s not that it changed a lot from the first draft — in the end, I went back to the beginning," he said. "Even after about six rounds of adaptation, I returned to that first draft. The production company heads said, 'We knew this would happen.' But you can’t just do nothing and jump in. Going through the process made what was rough at first feel smoother."
Though he is credited as a co-director, Jung Woo said he is not treating directing as a firm plan or goal.
"I don’t have a specific plan for directing," he said. "I just keep writing scripts. I don’t know which script will become a film, but I write when I can and enjoy it. I really enjoyed being on set. It was tough and I could have gotten hurt, but thankfully I didn’t."
He said filming stayed within set hours, noting the importance of both cast and crew condition, and added that shooting in his hometown of Busan gave him more time with staff and actors.
"So I think we filmed with a grateful heart," he said.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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