Ha Giljong

I. Introduction

Ha Gil-jong was a South Korean film director, screenwriter and translator.

II. Career

He was born as the seventh child of a family with nine children in Choryang-dong, Busan, South Korea. His little brother Hah Myung-joong is an actor and film director. Ha lost his mother in 1945 and his father in 1950 when the Korean War occurred. Orphaned, Ha came to live with relatives. In 1956 he went to Seoul with one of his older brothers, and attended Jungdong High School in the following year. He befriended Kim Chi-Ha there who later became a famous activist poet.

In 1960, while Ha studied French literature at Seoul National University, he met Kim Seung-ok (novelist), Kim Hyun (literature critic), Kim Chi-su (poet and critic), Lee Cheong-jun(novelist), Yeom Mu-yung (literature critic) and Kim Ju-yeon (literature critic and scholar of German literature). After graduation, he briefly worked for Shin Film, Ha went to the United States in 1965 to study. Ha studied fine art and photography at San Francisco Academy of Art and entered UCLA graduation school where he acquired both a MA and MFA degree. During the time, he made several short films, and one of which is The Ritual for a Soldier.

Ha died of a stroke in 1979, aged 37.

III. Filmography