Ryoo Seung-wan is called Korea's 'action kid' for his unique action and rough life style, and he directed films such as Crying Fist and The Battleship Island.

Watching Jackie Chan's Drunken Master turned him into a lifelong fan, and Ryoo spent his youth building his knowledge of and love for Hong Kong-style action films.

[3] He later dropped out of high school in 1992 and worked for six months to raise enough money to cover a year's worth of basic living expenses for his family.

After that he joined a private film workshop, and paid his tuition through several part-time jobs: as a construction worker, hotel janitor, vegetable cart driver, and even an instructor at an illegal driving school.

The 19-minute short's DP was Jang Joon-hwan (then a young film academy student), and it featured many familiar faces in the Korean indie scene, including character actor Heo Jong-soo and Lee Mu-young (future director of The Humanist).

In strikingly diverse styles but with a common narrative, these shorts were re-edited, combined and released in 2000 as Ryoo Seung-wan's feature directorial debut Die Bad.

[2] Critically acclaimed as powerfully visceral, gut-wrenching, and searingly angry, the film became an instant cult hit, earning attention for the Ryoo brothers.

In 2000 the now defunct Cine4M website released a short film by Ryoo alongside Jang Jin's A Terrible Day and Kim Jee-woon's Coming Out.

Coupling over-the-top voice dubbing with deliberately mistimed action, Dachimawa Lee was an enormous success online, making lead actor Im Won-hee a minor star and the Ryoo Brothers even bigger names.

The latter was contributed by Jung Doo-hong, occasionally an actor, but better known as the best action choreographer in the country, whose extreme realism balanced Ryoo's more fantasy-oriented cinematic sensibilities.

With No Blood No Tears a flop at the box office, it was a difficult period for Ryoo, who clearly felt betrayed by the same people who had put impossible expectations on his shoulders.

[7] Steadily impressing critics and audiences since his debut in 2000, Ryoo displayed amazing energy and range in the film, such that he often overshadowed his older, more prestigious colleague.

Finally stripping himself from genre tropes, he was able to draw an incredible emotional portrayal of two people winning the most important boxing game of their life: the match against their own inner demons.

More a story of survival than a simple sports drama, Crying Fist opened on April 1, 2005, against Ryoo's old friend Kim Jee-woon's A Bittersweet Life, offering one of the best double-headers of 2005.

Five directors — Park Kyung-hee, Jang Jin, Jung Ji-woo, Kim Dong-won and Ryoo — contributed short films on a human rights issue of their choosing.

is almost one complete take of a man (Kim Su-yeon) with multiple prejudices that lead him to cast off every one of his "friends" and fellow patrons who are sharing the communal space of a late night restaurant.

[3] Waiting to secure funding for his first zombie film Yacha, Ryoo decided to take his friend Jung Doo-hong for another challenge, making one last salute to the pure action flicks he grew up with and gave him his nickname.

His 2010 film The Unjust, a tale about corruption among policemen and prosecutors, received rave reviews for its seamless storytelling interspersed with action sequences, social commentary and powerhouse performances from Hwang Jung-min and brother Seung-bum.

Ryoo's next movie The Berlin File was an espionage thriller about a North Korean spy who is betrayed and cut loose when a weapons deal is exposed.

In 2015, Ryoo wrote and directed Veteran, an action film about an amoral and powerful third-generation business tycoon doggedly pursued by a detective investigating the mysterious injuries of a truck driver.Ryoo said, "Because (the movie) is about the world I know and the story about people I know, it was comfortable for me.