Born in 1972, Kim Hyun-seok was a college student studying business administration at Yonsei University when he wrote the screenplay for A Good Day to Fall in Love.
His second screenplay Agency, written while Kim was doing his mandatory military service, won him Best New Screenwriter at the prestigious Grand Bell Awards, but it was never made into a film.
After that, Shim Jae-myung welcomed him to her production company Myung Films, and he wrote If the Sun Rises in the West (1998), which was directed by Lee Eun and starred Im Chang-jung and Ko So-young as a baseball umpire and an actress who fall in love.
[1] Despite his screenwriting success, Kim wanted to pursue directing, so he majored in filmmaking at the Graduate School of Advanced Imaging Science, Multimedia & Film at Chung-Ang University.
[6] Starring Uhm Tae-woong, Choi Daniel and Lee Min-jung, Kim's fourth film Cyrano Agency became a critical and commercial success; a sleeper hit at 2.7 million admissions, it further cemented his reputation for making intelligent, character-driven romantic comedies told from a male perspective.
[10] Kim said he had no idea how much energy and expense went into a single action sequence, calling the experience "daunting" and that he now "understood (why) Korean filmmakers have steered clear of the genre."