Told from the POV of a young junior high school student (Ryu Deok-hwan) from an urban lower-middle-class family whose greatest desire in the world is to own a pair of Nike sneakers, its authentic but droll character observations remain surprisingly warm and touching.

Underlying them is a sense of pathos about class differences based on consumption patterns of the '80s, when Korea was first becoming an out-and-out consumer society and its people were beginning to be defined by what they buy and own.

[6] Park's first feature film Welcome to Dongmakgol attracted more than 8 million viewers in 2005, making it the second highest-grossing movie that year and among Korean box office's highest of all time.

[3] Park's long-gestating second feature was originally titled Kwon Bob (권법), with Jo In-sung cast as a high school student with superhuman strength who battles injustice in a small town, but it was delayed when investor CJ Entertainment pulled out after the box office failure of Sector 7 in 2011.

The project was revived in 2013, and the sci-fi fantasy blockbuster, retitled The Fist, is the largest Korea-China co-production yet with 30% of the US$20 million budget coming from the China Film Group and Pegasus & Taihe Entertainment.