He began his filmmaking career as an assistant director on Yim Soon-rye's Three Friends (1996), Kim Ki-duk's Birdcage Inn (1998) and Bad Guy (2002), and Byun Hyuk's Interview (2000).
[2] He made his feature directorial debut in 2005 with The Peter Pan Formula, a coming-of-age film about a high school swimming prodigy who suddenly decides to quit, then faces skyrocketing credit card bills when his mother becomes comatose after a suicide attempt.
[6] In 2007, alongside fellow directors Park Soo-young and Kim Sung-ho, Cho joined Fantastic Parasuicides, an omnibus of three short films that center on people who undergo surreal experiences in the moment they decide to kill themselves.
[7] In Cho's segment "Fly Away, Chicken!," Kim Nam-jin played a suicidal police officer who witnesses two men sexually assaulting a woman, then later uses two of the three bullets in his gun to kill them, leaving the last one for himself.
[8][9] Cho then cast Kim Nam-gil and Hwang Woo-seul-hye in Lovers Vanished (2010), a moody melodrama about an HIV/AIDS-infected fugitive who becomes the chef of an emotionally withdrawn restaurateur.