‘Colony’ Yeon Sang-ho: “Only Jeon Ji-hyun got a neat makeup job? Most characters’ faces look clean”

〈Colony〉 director Yeon Sang-ho clarified an apparent misunderstanding that only Jeon Ji-hyun had a neat makeup job.

Director Yeon Sang-ho, who directed the film 〈Colony〉, held a roundtable interview on May 26 at an undisclosed location in Jongno-gu, Seoul. At the scene, Yeon said the response that Jeon Ji-hyun’s face as Kwon Se-jung looked too clean was a misunderstanding he had behind the scenes.

“I watched the movie again more carefully in response to that. Seo Young-cheol (Ku Kyo-hwan) also has a clean face. If you look from the back, there isn’t a person whose face looks dirty,” he explained. He added that only Choi Hyun-seok, played by Ji Chang-wook, had blood splattered on him, saying, “Se-jung doesn’t really have to end up with blood splattered on her,” while expressing his own sense of unfairness.

Yeon also recalled the moment he marveled at Jeon Ji-hyun’s aura. “At the end, Kwon Se-jung ended up wearing just a white shirt and jeans. I thought, as the main character, can she really dress so she looks that unimposing? But when we shot it, she didn’t look unimposing. Her physique is gangster,” he said. He also added, “What bothered me was that we set her up as an outsider in academia as a character where individuality matters. And then, because it’s Jeon Ji-hyun, you’re saying an outsider like that? That’s the feeling I got.”

〈Colony〉, which opened on May 22, tells the story of Kwon Se-jung (Jeon Ji-hyun), who gets caught up in a terrorist incident caused by genius biologist Seo Young-cheol, and that of a survivor.