Korea opens a film made with AI and a film about AI on the same Wednesday

On Wednesday, a man in a combat suit goes up against a physical AI robot to get his kidnapped father back, on cinema screens across Korea, and its makers say every frame came out of AI tools. Steelay, a 90-minute science fiction action film, was built with AI tools in six months for under 1 billion won, about $700,000, and its producers say it uses 13,000 generated outputs and not a single CG shot. The same day, Yeon Sang-ho of Train to Busan opens Silnagwon (literally Paradise Lost), a psychological thriller made the traditional way, in which a mother has to choose between her returning son and an AI son.

One film made by AI and one film about it, opening side by side, is a neat picture of where Korean cinema sits this fall. It is also a better story than the one doing the rounds in English. A Korea JoongAng Daily feature on Saturday said established directors including Min Kyu-dong, Yeon Sang-ho, Shin Yeon-shick and Lee Myung-se "are moving into AI", and that framing has started to travel as "big-name auteurs are developing AI features". We checked each name against Korean reporting, the distributors' announcements and the Busan festival program pages. Most of the veterans are making shorts or giving talks. The AI features are coming from somewhere else.

What the veterans are actually making

Kim Sung-soo, director of 12.12: The Day, is the one with footage. He showed part of Worm Train, his first AI short, on Kling's stage at the Asian Contents & Film Market in Busan on 11 October. We covered that panel last week, and the link is in the sources note below. Since then his producer, Creative Mango, has confirmed it is making the film with Kling's production support, and PD Journal reports a nine-person crew, four of them AI artists, with a release targeted for late October. It is still a short.

Shin Yeon-shick and Lee Myung-se, the Nowhere to Hide director, are on Creative Mango's slate too, but as part of The Collaboration 2026, a project run with the Seoul Independent Film Festival that pairs a veteran director with an AI director on each short. Yonhap lists seven veterans in total, and the shorts premiere at CGV Apgujeong in Seoul on Friday 27 November. That is a real commitment of time from people with serious credits. It is not a feature.

Min Kyu-dong has no AI project on record. He spoke at the Busan International Film Festival forum on 10 October on behalf of the Directors Guild of Korea, in a session called "Who Owns the Word 'Direction'?", and his line there was a defense of the job: "AI can make the pieces [scenes] well, but arranging the order of the pieces and filling the gaps between them is 'the domain of directing.'"

Yeon Sang-ho is the hardest case. JoongAng describes his next film, the mystery thriller Yeto, co-directed with Yun Young-woo and starring Moon Geun-young, Go Ah-sung and Kim Si-a, as one that "incorporates AI technology". When Showbox announced the wrap in August, it talked about distinctive visual effects and did not mention AI. Until Showbox or Yeon says how AI was used, treat Yeto as a live-action film with an unconfirmed AI component. His film opening this week is about AI, not made with it.

Where the AI features are coming from

Steelay was directed by Seol Woo-in, credited as AI general director, and Lee Han-wook, and co-produced by Raon Company Plus and Ainos Studio. The voices are real voice actors, lip-synced to the AI-made faces. Seol told the September press screening, in our translation of ZDNet Korea's report, that he believed the industry can only grow if work is put out into the world, and that even if the film is not entirely perfect, meeting an audience directly was the main goal. ZDNet's own review says the action and most dialogue hold up, while some line readings and transitions are awkward, image quality changes from scene to scene and the story is familiar.

Some English coverage bills Steelay as Korea's first generative AI feature, which it probably is not. Kang Yun-sung, who directed The Outlaws, opened Run to the West in CGV cinemas in October 2025. It ran 61 minutes, sold 28,000 tickets and then, Weekly Chosun reports, reached No. 1 among Korean films on Netflix a day after it landed there in June. Kang is now preparing Gulf of Aden, a military action film based on the 2011 rescue of a hijacked ship from Somali pirates. JoongAng calls it an AI action film starring Byun Yo-han. Kang's own account to Weekly Chosun is a hybrid: the actors' performances are shot live, and the large sea battles are mostly generated. He says the film is about 60 percent funded, shoots from next year and is aimed at cinemas in the second half of 2028.

Then there is Climax Studio, the company behind Hellbound and D.P., which announced two AI features at the Busan market: Wonso, a superpower fantasy billed as a Korean Star Wars, directed by Ahn Jae-hong, and Yogoejeon, a period action film in which Korea's traditional monsters fight Western vampires, directed by Jeong Choong-geun. "While judging an AI film competition in March this year, I concluded it had reached a commercial level," said Byun Seung-min, head of Climax Studio. "We are producing AI films by discovering new directors we've had our eye on among AI artists [directors] in Korea and abroad." Both are being considered for release next year. No budget or financier has been named.

The numbers, and whose they are

JoongAng says "the industry estimates" AI cuts visual effects costs by an average of 40 to 60 percent. No source is given, so read that as a sentiment, not a measurement. Kang's figure is narrower and his own: he told Weekly Chosun that AI cut the total cost of Gulf of Aden by 30 to 40 percent, because the money shots at sea no longer need source photography and frame-by-frame CG. Steelay's under 1 billion won is a producer's figure for a film whose box office starts on Wednesday.

One correction for anyone quoting the English piece. Its line that AI is "an irresistible trend and an opportunity" is credited to a "Byun Min-chul". The Korean original gives it to Byun Seung-min of Climax, the producer quoted earlier in the same article. The English version was translated with AI help, which is a small irony for a piece on this subject.

The hiring pattern is the story for creators

In practice, for anyone making work this week, the useful detail is who these productions hire. Every serious project on this list puts AI artists inside a conventional crew, and both of Climax's features went to directors it found among AI artists rather than through the usual route of shorts, festivals and assistant jobs.

• Byun says judging an AI film competition is where he made up his mind about the technology, so competition entries are working as a calling card in Korea right now.
• Kang says even a rough one-minute AI clip costs more than 1 million won, about $700, which is why he wants specialists who can write precise generation scripts, and why he sees camera, art and editing staff with a trained eye as the people best placed to become AI artists.
• Kim's Worm Train crew pairs four AI artists with an animation art director, an editor and a music director, the same job titles a live-action short would carry.

The veterans' own language protects authorship, and that matters for anyone whose name sits in the credits. Kim put it this way: "Even if the director doesn't shoot it himself, a Na Hong-jin film is a Na Hong-jin film, and a Bong Joon-ho film is a Bong Joon-ho film." Kang's version, in our translation, is that the expensive money shots go to AI while the drama stays with the actors, and the directors who blend the two well are the ones the industry needs. Wednesday's box office for Steelay will be the first real test of whether audiences pay for a film made almost entirely the new way.

Timeline

• Date: Oct 2025. What happened: Kang Yun-sung's Run to the West opens in CGV; 28,000 admissions; Source: Weekly Chosun
• Date: Mar 2026. What happened: Byun Seung-min judges an AI film competition and decides AI is commercial grade; Source: JoongAng
• Date: Jun 2026. What happened: Run to the West reaches No. 1 among Korean films on Netflix; Source: Weekly Chosun
• Date: Fri 21 Aug 2026. What happened: Showbox: Yeon Sang-ho's Yeto wraps, enters post (no AI mention); Source: Yonhap, Newspim, News1
• Date: Mon 7 Sep 2026. What happened: Steelay press screening, CGV Yongsan; Source: Maeil Business, ZDNet Korea
• Date: Sat 10 Oct 2026. What happened: Min Kyu-dong at the BIFF Forum for the Directors Guild of Korea; Source: BIFF Forum, JoongAng
• Date: Sun 11 Oct 2026. What happened: Kim shows Worm Train footage at ACFM; Climax announces Wonso and Yogoejeon; Source: JoongAng, PD Journal
• Date: Mon 12 Oct 2026. What happened: Gulf of Aden footage previewed to industry at the InnoAsia WIP Showcase; Source: ACFM, Weekly Chosun
• Date: Thu 15 Oct 2026. What happened: Creative Mango announces Worm Train and The Collaboration 2026; Source: Yonhap
• Date: Wed 21 Oct 2026. What happened: Steelay and Yeon's Silnagwon both open; Source: Cine21, CJ ENM on X
• Date: Fri 27 Nov 2026. What happened: The Collaboration 2026 shorts premiere, CGV Apgujeong; Source: Yonhap
• Date: H2 2028. What happened: Gulf of Aden target release; Source: Weekly Chosun

Sources and what is unconfirmed: Korea JoongAng Daily (17 Oct) and its Korean original in JoongAng Ilbo (15 Oct), both read in full; Yonhap (15 Oct); PD Journal (15 Oct); Weekly Chosun interview with Kang Yun-sung (18 Oct); ZDNet Korea (14 Oct); Maeil Business (7 Sep); Cine21 and Ainos Studio listings for Steelay; Showbox's August release via Yonhap; CJ ENM on X (12 Oct); the BIFF Forum and ACFM program pages. Link for QA (plain URL, our earlier Busan panel piece): https://thegenerated.com/notes/at-kling-s-busan-panel-filmmakers-say-ai-still-20261016 Quotes from Korean sources are our translations and are marked as such. Unconfirmed: the tools used by Climax, Steelay and The Collaboration 2026; whether Wonso and Yogoejeon are financed (Yogoejeon shares a name with a 2023 Climax series project); Silnagwon's official English title. We did not watch Steelay, Worm Train or the Gulf of Aden preview, and we did not contact the studios.