A fictionalized account of a murder that took place on a secluded island in the 1980s involving rational and irrational horrors, the film sold over 2 million tickets nationwide.

[2] In his second feature, Kim shifted his setting to the big city, with blackmail thriller Handphone (2009) revolving around every urbanite's essential hardware, the cell phone.

Starring Uhm Tae-woong and Park Yong-woo, it fell short of both the commercial and critical successes of his first film.

[3] Set during the second Manchu invasion of 1636, Kim's third film War of the Arrows (2011) combined well-choreographed combat sequences and special effects, fast pacing, a tense plot and the thrill of the chase to tell the story of a master archer and his quest to rescue his sister from Qing Dynasty soldiers.

[7][8][9][10][11] Kim's follow-up in 2014 was another period epic, Battle of Myeongryang, Whirlwind Sea (released internationally as The Admiral: Roaring Currents), which depicted the legendary sea battle between 12 vessels of the Korean navy led by the most admired military figure in Korea, General Yi Sun-sin (played by Choi Min-sik), and 330 invading Japanese ships, which are eventually defeated.