Je-yong Lee

E J-yong (; born September 5, 1966) is a South Korean film director and screenwriter. His feature films include An Affair (1998), Untold Scandal (2003), Dasepo Naughty Girls (2006), and Actresses (2009). Early life E J-yong (his preferred stylized, phonetic spelling; more conventionally romanized as Lee Jae-yong) was born in Daejeon, South Chungcheong Province in 1966. He studied Turkish at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. After graduating from university, he went backpacking around the world in the late 1980s and fell in love with cinema. E said, "I saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit in Germany, Au revoir les enfants in London, and Barry Lyndon and Pelle the Conqueror in Australia. After I came home, I had to choose a job and movies were the only thing I was interested in. I couldn't imagine wearing a suit and working in a bank." E entered the Korean Academy of Film Arts in 1990 and studied filmmaking. Career He first became known for his 19-minute short film, Homo Videocus (1990) which he co-directed with Daniel H. Byun (Byun Hyuk), and which won the Prix Recherche (Research Prize) and Prix de la Jeunesse (Youth Jury Prize) at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, and the Best Short Narrative award at the 1992 San Francisco International Film Festival. E went on to make other short films such as My Mother's Summer and Time in the Mirror. In 1994 his documentary project, The Story of a City, was stopped in mid-production due to problems with the production company. Finally breaking his long silence in 1998, he presented his feature film debut An Affair, about a woman who starts an affair with her sister's fiance. It won great acclaim both from audiences and critics for E's minimalist, sophisticated sense of directing. The film, which resurrected the career of actress Lee Mi-sook, was presented at the third Pusan International Film Festival, and went on to become the seventh highest-grossing Korean film of the year. An Affair won the Grand Prize at the 1999 Fukuoka Asian Film Festival, as well as the Asian Cinema Kaleidoscope Prize at the Newport Beach Film Festival, and the Critics Prize and Best Artistic, Technical, or Creative Contribution at the Verona Film Festival.