General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

A Single Spark (아름다운 청년 전태일)

A Single Spark (아름다운 청년 전태일, Areumdaun Cheongnyeon Jeon Tae-il) is a 1995 South Korean drama directed by Park Kwang-su that portrays the life of the labor activist Jeon Tae-il, a textile worker who set himself on fire in 1970 at the age of 22 to protest the government's failure to enforce its own labor laws¹^•². The film was released in South Korea on November 18, 1995, runs 96 minutes, and competed at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival¹^•³.

Key fact	Detail
Korean title / release	아름다운 청년 전태일, released November 18, 1995; 96 minutes; rated 15 and over¹
Director / production	Park Kwang-su; produced by Yoo In-taek for Cine 2000⁴
Screenplay	Lee Chang-dong, Kim Jeong-hwan, Lee Hyo-in, Hur Jin-ho, and Park Kwang-su⁴
Lead cast	Hong Kyung-in (Jeon Tae-il), Moon Sung-keun (Kim Young-su), Kim Seon-jae (Jung-soon)¹
Visual structure	Two intercut narratives, one in black and white and one in color⁵
Admissions	235,935 total admissions in South Korea¹
Festival	Competition section, 46th Berlin International Film Festival; Golden Bear nomination³^•⁶
Major awards	16th Blue Dragon Awards: Best Film, Best Director, Best Cinematography³

Spoilers

Subject and story

The film's historical subject is Jeon Tae-il (전태일, 1948–1970), a young worker in the sewing factories around Pyunghwa Market in Seoul's Cheonggye clothing district. After working as a tailor and organizing fellow workers to demand compliance with the labor standards law, he set himself on fire during a protest, burning a copy of the labor law together with his own body, to expose the conditions of garment workers⁷^•².

The film does not present a straightforward biography. It offers two narratives: the true story of Jeon Tae-il's life and activism, and the partly fictionalized efforts of Kim Young-su, a law-school graduate and labor activist who, five years after Jeon's death, is wanted by the police for anti-government activity and is writing a biography of Jeon while evading capture²^•⁸. Kim reads the diary handed over by Jeon's mother and interviews people who knew him, trying to move from a vague image of a martyr toward an understanding of the man and of what drove him to his final act³^•⁸.

A parallel present-day thread follows Jung-soon, a factory worker who lives with Kim and, while pregnant, endures repression and harassment as she tries to organize a union at her own factory⁷. As Kim's research brings Jeon's life closer, the film draws his own circumstances into overlap with Jeon's, and the synopsis frames his biographical work as a form of self-sacrifice in a dark political period³.

Production and style

Two timelines, two film stocks. The film intercuts its two stories in black and white and in color, with the Jeon Tae-il narrative running from 1965 to 1970⁵. A contemporary Korean newspaper review highlighted the contrast between black-and-white and color footage as the film's most striking device⁹. The self-immolation scene, the image used in the film's marketing, was completed in Australia¹⁰.

Financing. The production was largely financed by public subscription; the closing credits acknowledge nearly 5,000 names of contributors¹¹. The production company was Cine 2000, with Yoo In-taek as producer⁴.

The director. Park Kwang-su was born in Sokcho in 1955, studied at Seoul National University and at the ESEC film school in Paris, and debuted with Chilsu and Mansu (1988). His earlier features Black Republic (1990), Berlin Report (1991), and To the Starry Island (1994) had already won prizes at home and abroad⁴.

Reception and awards

The film drew 235,935 admissions in South Korea¹. It was submitted to the competition section of the 46th Berlin International Film Festival and nominated for the Golden Bear³^•⁶.

At home it swept major categories. At the 16th Blue Dragon Awards it won Best Film, Best Director, and Best Cinematography³. The 32nd Paeksang Arts Awards brought the screenplay prize, a Best New Actress award for Kim Seon-jae, and a technical award for the art team³. The 6th Chunsa Film Art Awards gave it Best Film, Director, Cinematography, Best Actor for Hong Kyung-in, and lighting, and the 34th Daejong Film Festival gave it a planning award³.

The film has remained in circulation as a reference point for Korean cinema's engagement with labor history. It screened in the Korean Panorama section of the first Busan International Film Festival in 1996⁴, appeared in later retrospectives such as the London Korean Film Festival's "A Century of Korean Cinema" in 2019⁸, and is available for free viewing on the Korean Film Archive's YouTube channel¹². It is also used in South Korean high-school labor-rights education programs alongside the 2021 animated film Tae-il¹³.

Context in 1990s Korean cinema

The film appeared in the early-to-mid 1990s, a period when Korean films began to treat political and social subjects that had previously been avoided¹⁴. Time Out's review describes it as a protest drama made well before later commercial films on Korea's authoritarian era, and as less a standard biopic than a meditation on Jeon's self-sacrifice seen through a 1970s radical's eyes, turning into an elegiac film about where life and art meet and diverge¹¹. A Korean academic study treats the film as an act of "memory struggle," examining the gap between the historical Jeon Tae-il and his screen representation¹⁵.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1990s › Drama films late 1990s › Released 1995 to 1998

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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