# Haeundae
**Haeundae** (해운대), released internationally as *Tidal Wave*, is a 2009 South Korean disaster film directed by Yoon Je-kyoon (윤제균) in which a mega-tsunami strikes the Haeundae beach district of Busan during the summer holiday season. It was the first large-scale disaster production in Korean cinema and became the fifth Korean film to sell more than 10 million tickets, finishing 2009 as the year's biggest domestic hit with over 11 million admissions.[1](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20090074) • [2](https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/entertainment/films/20090824/haeundae-attracts-10-mil-audience)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director / screenwriters | Yoon Je-kyoon; screenplay by Yoon Je-kyoon and Kim Hwi[1](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20090074) |
| Release | July 22, 2009 (South Korea); August 28, 2009 (US), as *Tidal Wave*[1](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20090074) • [3](https://www.scifijapan.com/multimedia/haeundae-strikes) |
| Running time | 120 minutes (KOFIC lists 129 minutes)[4](https://www.cjenm.com/ko/featured-contents/%ED%95%B4%EC%9A%B4%EB%8C%80/) • [1](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20090074) |
| Admissions | 11,325,099 per KOFIC; 11,453,338 per Cine21[1](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20090074) • [5](https://cine21.com/movie/info/?movie_id=24396) |
| Budget | About 12.8 billion won net production cost, with 5 billion won allocated to visual effects[6](https://www.kobiz.or.kr/new/kor/02_overseas/production/productionCaseView.jsp?pageIndex=1&seq=77&yearType=ALL) |
| Principal cast | Sul Kyung-gu, Ha Ji-won, Park Joong-hoon, Uhm Jeong-hwa[1](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20090074) |
| Major awards | 46th Baeksang Arts Awards Grand Prize (film); 30th Blue Dragon Awards technical award and most popular film; 46th Daejong Awards planning award[4](https://www.cjenm.com/ko/featured-contents/%ED%95%B4%EC%9A%B4%EB%8C%80/) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
The story is set on Haeundae beach in Busan, on the southeast tip of the Korean peninsula, a vacation spot that draws one million visitors to its beaches every year. Choi Man-sik (Sul Kyung-gu), a Haeundae native, lost a co-worker to a tsunami on a deep-sea fishing trip during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and has not returned to sea since; he runs a small seafood restaurant and is preparing to propose to his longtime girlfriend Yeon-hee ([Ha Ji-won](https://www.edgepedia.org/ha-ji-won)). Man-sik's younger brother Hyoung-sik ([Lee Min-ki](https://www.edgepedia.org/lee-min-ki)) works as a coast guard lifeguard and rescues a college student from Seoul, Heui-mi (Kang Ye-won), who pursues him.[1](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20090074) • [3](https://www.scifijapan.com/multimedia/haeundae-strikes)
Meanwhile the geologist Kim Hwi (Park Joong-hoon), an expert on tsunami research, observes signs of activity in the East Sea similar to those before the 2004 tsunami. The Disaster Prevention Agency dismisses his repeated warnings and affirms that Korea is in no danger. When a mega-tsunami, generated as the Tsushima island shelf collapses, heads for the Korean peninsula at 500 miles per hour (800 km/h in the Korean-language synopsis), Kim heads to Haeundae, where he confronts his ex-wife Yu-jin (Uhm Jeong-hwa) and their young daughter, who does not know he is her father. The wave reaches the crowded beach with only ten minutes of warning.[1](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20090074) • [4](https://www.cjenm.com/ko/featured-contents/%ED%95%B4%EC%9A%B4%EB%8C%80/)
The Busan International Film Festival's program note describes the plot structure as a Koreanized transformation of Hollywood couple narratives, comparing the linking of disaster and romance to *Titanic*: the tsunami acts as the axis that provokes the characters' conflicts and then dissolves them.[7](https://www.biff.kr/ENG/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=history&m_idx=14078&pyear=2009)
## Production
**Origin.** Yoon Je-kyoon conceived the film on December 26, 2004. His previous film *Romantic Warriors* had failed, and he was staying with his mother in Haeundae when television reports showed the Indian Ocean tsunami; he imagined what would happen if such a disaster struck a beach that gathers a million holidaymakers, and that image became the starting point of the film.[8](https://www.yna.co.kr/amp/view/AKR20090818201800005) Development began in earnest after *Miracle on 1st Street* opened in February 2007, when Yoon and the writer Kim Hwi exchanged ideas; a basic synopsis emerged by that summer, and the two, together with production head Kil Young-min, boarded in a Haeundae hotel in September 2007. They charted hundreds of imagined characters and cut them down one by one in round-table discussion until the survivors became the film's protagonists. After Kim's first draft in October, roughly ten rounds of revision followed, and the final scenario was completed in June 2008.[8](https://www.yna.co.kr/amp/view/AKR20090818201800005)
**Financing and effects.** Yoon pitched the project to CJ Entertainment himself in July 2008, using a demo tape assembled from some twenty disaster films and 110 water-related computer-graphic storyboard frames rendered as 3D video; in early August 2008 CJ decided to fund the entire 13 billion won production budget.[8](https://www.yna.co.kr/amp/view/AKR20090818201800005) Korean Film Council records put the net production cost at about 12.8 billion won, with currency losses adding 600 to 700 million won, and a ceiling of 5 billion won set for visual effects.[6](https://www.kobiz.or.kr/new/kor/02_overseas/production/productionCaseView.jsp?pageIndex=1&seq=77&yearType=ALL) After talks with Korean and New Zealand firms failed to reach technical and financial agreement, Yoon contracted Hans Uhlig, formerly of [Industrial Light & Magic](https://www.edgepedia.org/industrial-light-and-magic) and then running Polygon Entertainment, whose credits include *The Day After Tomorrow* and *The Perfect Storm*; the deal required Uhlig to transfer core water-CG technology to Korea. Kerner Optical of the United States handled underwater filming.[8](https://www.yna.co.kr/amp/view/AKR20090818201800005) • [6](https://www.kobiz.or.kr/new/kor/02_overseas/production/productionCaseView.jsp?pageIndex=1&seq=77&yearType=ALL) • [9](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/news/features.jsp?blbdComCd=601018&mode=FEATURES_VIEW&seq=182)
**Shoot.** [Principal photography](https://www.edgepedia.org/principal-photography) ran from August 18 to November 7, 2008, closing on the 57th day of shooting with scenes of the tsunami-damaged Haeundae recovery and a memorial altar; location filming in San Francisco followed in late November. The film was shot entirely on location in the Busan area over March-to-November 2008 production, and the Busan-born director filled it with local characters and the city's dialect.[8](https://www.yna.co.kr/amp/view/AKR20090818201800005) • [10](https://cyland.accessict.co.kr/artyboard/pds/board/TP1F_VJNA/313931343138373434.pdf) • [9](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/news/features.jsp?blbdComCd=601018&mode=FEATURES_VIEW&seq=182)
## Box office and reception
Released on July 22, 2009 on 764 screens, the film passed 5 million admissions in less than two weeks, the second film of 2009 after *Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen* to do so, and passed 10 million admissions by late August, becoming the fifth South Korean film to reach that milestone and the first in three years, after Bong Joon-ho's *The Host* (2006).[1](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20090074) • [11](https://www.screendaily.com/haeundae-takes-south-korean-box-office-by-storm/5004262.article) • [2](https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/entertainment/films/20090824/haeundae-attracts-10-mil-audience) It finished with 11,325,099 admissions and a total gross of $59,209,782 in KOFIC's tally, and CJ Entertainment called it the biggest hit in the company's history.[1](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20090074) • [12](https://korea.koreanfilm.org/feff.html) [Distributor](https://www.edgepedia.org/distributor) exit polls showed families, teenagers, and seniors making up 40 percent of the audience, broader than the usual summer blockbuster demographic, and the film was presold to the UK, Germany, Hong Kong, and 19 other countries before its domestic release.[11](https://www.screendaily.com/haeundae-takes-south-korean-box-office-by-storm/5004262.article) • [9](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/news/features.jsp?blbdComCd=601018&mode=FEATURES_VIEW&seq=182)
Critics were divided. The Korea Times noted that the film departs from the Hollywood template in which the scientist-hero saves the planet: Kim is one of a group of main characters caught in the melodrama, and the director described the film as "not about a tsunami but ... a human story that includes a tsunami," while faulting the computer graphics and the sentimental score.[13](https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/entertainment/20090719/haeundae-manages-to-be-entertaining) A Korea Film Council feature records that critics were generally not amused by the slapstick humor and family melodrama mixed into the disaster picture, but that mainstream audiences responded.[12](https://korea.koreanfilm.org/feff.html) At the awards circuit the film took the Grand Prize in film at the 46th Baeksang Arts Awards, the technical award and the most popular film award at the 30th Blue Dragon Awards, and the planning award at the 46th Daejong Awards, and was invited to the Korean Cinema Today panorama section of the 14th Busan International Film Festival.[4](https://www.cjenm.com/ko/featured-contents/%ED%95%B4%EC%9A%B4%EB%8C%80/)
## Legacy
**Birth of a genre.** Korean film histories credit *Haeundae* with opening the horizon of the Korean-style disaster movie and with announcing the birth of Korean disaster cinema.[14](https://www.koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/peopleView.jsp?peopleCd=10054492) • [15](https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART002409827) Its success emboldened the industry: by 2012 Korean studios were releasing several disaster titles a year, beginning with Park Jung-woo's *Deranged* in the summer of 2012.[16](https://m.koreanfilm.or.kr/mobile4/jsp/News/FeaturesView.jsp?blbdComCd=601013&seq=328) The film's emotional approach, foregrounding characters' relationships and conflicts rather than destruction, became a distinctive feature of subsequent Korean disaster blockbusters, and Yoon himself carried the formula into *Ashfall* (2019).[17](https://www.kf.or.kr/kfEng/na/ntt/selectDgtldetailView.do?dgtlSn=6309&dgtlType=A&langTy=KOR&mi=2114)
**Interpretation.** A 2018 study in the journal *Society and Theory* reads the film as a crisis film comparable to the 1970s Hollywood disaster cycle: inspired by the 2004 Indonesian tsunami and released just after the 2008 global financial crisis, it can be read as a fantasy working through the pains and anxieties Koreans associated with the 1997 financial crisis and the neoliberalization that followed.[15](https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART002409827) A Korea Journal article treats it as the Korean natural-disaster blockbuster that integrated disaster narratives into wider political discourses of communal and national identity.[18](https://kiss.kstudy.com/DetailOa/Ar?key=51627428)
The film has also had a long commercial tail. The Numbers records a production budget of $16 million and a worldwide theatrical gross of $64,733,391, and the film was released on home video in the United States as *Tidal Wave* by Magnolia Home Entertainment on May 11, 2010.[19](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Haeundae-%282009-South-Korea%29) In the streaming era it drew renewed interest through iTunes, ranking among the most-watched Korean films on FlixPatrol's tracking with 800 points.[20](https://www.archivecenter.net/kaitArchive/attach/120000/126777/20250312102047487.pdf)
## References
1. [Haeundae (2009), Korean Film Council (KOFIC) film database](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20090074)
2. [Haeundae Attracts 10 Mil. Audience, The Korea Times (August 24, 2009)](https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/entertainment/films/20090824/haeundae-attracts-10-mil-audience)
3. [HAEUNDAE Strikes!, SciFi Japan](https://www.scifijapan.com/multimedia/haeundae-strikes)
4. [해운대 (Haeundae), CJ ENM film page](https://www.cjenm.com/ko/featured-contents/%ED%95%B4%EC%9A%B4%EB%8C%80/)
5. [해운대 (Haeundae) 상세정보, Cine21](https://cine21.com/movie/info/?movie_id=24396)
6. [공동제작 제작사례: 해운대 (2009), Korean Film Biz Zone (KOFIC)](https://www.kobiz.or.kr/new/kor/02_overseas/production/productionCaseView.jsp?pageIndex=1&seq=77&yearType=ALL)
7. [Haeundae program note, 14th Busan International Film Festival (2009)](https://www.biff.kr/ENG/html/archive/arc_history_view.asp?kind=history&m_idx=14078&pyear=2009)
8. [<1천만영화 해운대> ②감독이 전하는 제작일지, 연합뉴스 (August 19, 2009)](https://www.yna.co.kr/amp/view/AKR20090818201800005)
9. [HOT MOVIE/Haeundae, Korean Film Council feature (July 1, 2009)](https://koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/news/features.jsp?blbdComCd=601018&mode=FEATURES_VIEW&seq=182)
10. [부산 소셜시네마 백서 (Busan film industry report)](https://cyland.accessict.co.kr/artyboard/pds/board/TP1F_VJNA/313931343138373434.pdf)
11. [Haeundae takes South Korean box office by storm, Screen Daily (August 4, 2009)](https://www.screendaily.com/haeundae-takes-south-korean-box-office-by-storm/5004262.article)
12. [Far East Film Festival essays, Korean Film Council](https://korea.koreanfilm.org/feff.html)
13. [Haeundae Manages to Be Entertaining, The Korea Times (July 19, 2009)](https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/entertainment/20090719/haeundae-manages-to-be-entertaining)
14. [JK YOUN, Korean Film Council people database](https://www.koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/peopleView.jsp?peopleCd=10054492)
15. [Joo, Eunwoo (2018). The Birth of Korean Disaster Movies and the Repetition of a National Trauma: An Analysis of the Fantasy of Haeundae as a Crisis Film. Society and Theory 33: 45–106. KCI](https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART002409827)
16. [The Rise of the Korean Disaster Drama, Korean Film Council feature](https://m.koreanfilm.or.kr/mobile4/jsp/News/FeaturesView.jsp?blbdComCd=601013&seq=328)
17. [Korea Foundation, Arts & Media: Korean disaster films](https://www.kf.or.kr/kfEng/na/ntt/selectDgtldetailView.do?dgtlSn=6309&dgtlType=A&langTy=KOR&mi=2114)
18. [Disaster Narratives in the South Korean Cultural Imaginary, Korea Journal](https://kiss.kstudy.com/DetailOa/Ar?key=51627428)
19. [Haeundae (2009) box office and financial information, The Numbers](https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Haeundae-%282009-South-Korea%29)
20. [K-content OTT distribution report (FlixPatrol data)](https://www.archivecenter.net/kaitArchive/attach/120000/126777/20250312102047487.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Disaster films*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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