The best Kim Hyun-sook’s action movies

The film follows the lives of four childhood friends: Joon-seok, the leader, whose father is a powerful mob boss; Dong-su, whose father is an undertaker; class clown Jung-ho; and Sang-taek, an exemplary student. The story is the director's experience about his friends, a semi-autobiography set in his hometown, Busan. When it was released it was the highest-grossing Korean movie of all time.

Gang-cheol is a legendary street fighter in Busan, who cleaned up his act to care for his sick mother. Things are going well for him, and he's happy in a budding relationship with Su-ji, vacationing in the seaside town. As their relationship grows, Gang-cheol is dragged into the criminal underworld when he sees Busan gangsters Sang-gon and Hwi-gon re-staging the accidental death of a Yakuza mobster as an accident and an old friend, Jong-su, gives him up to the Busan gang. Knowing he's desperate for money for his mother's operation, Sang-gon proposes that Gang-cheol works for him. Gang-cheol refuses, but when Jong-su gives the deed to Gang-cheol's how to Sang-gon as collateral for a private loan, Gang-cheol is left with no choice, but to bite the bullet.

This biopic tells the true story of Korean boxer Kim Deuk-gu (played by Oh-seong Yu). Born into poverty, Kim used boxing to free himself from his bleak surroundings, eventually becoming the world's top lightweight. Tragically, Kim's life was cut short when he died from a blood clot in his brain during a championship fight with Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini. Directed by Kyung-Taek Kwak, this film co-stars Min-seo Chae, Seung-won Yun and Byeong-seo Kim.