General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Jung_E (정이)

Jung_E (정이) is a 2023 South Korean science fiction film written and directed by Yeon Sang-ho, released on Netflix on January 20, 2023, with most territories following on January 21, 2023. Set in a 22nd century in which climate change has made Earth uninhabitable, it follows an effort to end a civil war among space shelters by cloning the brain of a legendary mercenary into an AI combat robot.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	Netflix, January 20, 2023 (South Korea); most territories January 21, 2023¹^•³
Director and writer	Yeon Sang-ho, known for Train to Busan, Peninsula, and the Netflix series Hellbound²
Main cast	Kang Soo-youn as Seo-hyun, Kim Hyun-joo as Jung-yi, Ryu Kyung-soo as Sang-hun²
Production	Climax Studio; distributed by Netflix²
Runtime and ratings	98 minutes; IMDb 5.5/10, Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 52%⁴^•⁵
Performance	Reached number one among Netflix non-English films after its January 2023 release⁶
Significance for its star	The final film appearance of Kang Soo-youn, who died before release; a dedication to her appears at the end of the film⁷

Spoilers

Premise and story

In the film's setting, drastic climate change has devastated Earth and humankind has migrated to new shelters in outer space, where a civil war continues for decades. Yun Jung-yi (Kim Hyun-joo) becomes a legendary mercenary and military strategist with countless victories, but one failed mission leaves her in a vegetative state. Kronoid, a military A.I. development company, attempts to create the ultimate combat warrior by cloning her brain.¹

Thirty-five years later, Jung-yi's daughter Yun Seo-hyun (Kang Soo-youn) works as head researcher of the JUNG_E project, testing the cloned brain's combat capabilities in repeated simulations. As repeated cloning and simulation efforts fail to yield meaningful advances, Kronoid gives up on the study in order to start a different project; upon discovering their intentions, Seo-hyun determines to rescue JUNG_E, and the AI combat warrior breaks out of the research facility.¹ Ryu Kyung-soo plays Sang-hun, the research center director determined to succeed in cloning Jung-yi's brain to bring the allied forces victory.²

Production and casting

Netflix confirmed production in July 2021, with Yeon Sang-ho writing and directing and Climax Studio producing. The director described brain cloning and human-like mercenary robots as the story's central themes. Kim Hyun-joo and Ryu Kyung-soo had both worked with him on the Netflix series Hellbound before this film.²

The casting of Kang Soo-youn marked her return after an eight-year hiatus. She was the first Korean actor to receive the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival, for the 1986 film The Surrogate Womb, and her career is credited with helping pave the way for a renaissance in the Korean film industry.² She died before the film's release, and Jung_E stands as her final film appearance, with a dedication at the end.⁷

Visual effects

The visual effects were produced by Dexter Studios. VFX supervisor Jung Hwang-su said that overseas audiences judged the Korean VFX comparable to Hollywood blockbusters budgeted at 100 to 200 billion won, and the studio's work on the film drew attention as a step forward for Korean visual effects.⁶

Reception and critical context

Audience and critical scores were mixed. The film holds a 52% Tomatometer and about 51% on the Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes, with an IMDb rating of 5.5.⁵^•⁴ Critics praised the action sequences and visual design while finding the narrative uneven; reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes describe it as visually striking but narratively muddled, and as strong on propulsive action and emotive drama.⁵

The film sits within a recent wave of Korean science fiction that includes Space Sweepers, The Alien Part 1 (Alien + Human Part 1), Jang-rang (The Wolf Brigade-era In-rang), and Seobok. Korean commentary noted that these films show advancing CG technology but have been judged uneven in storytelling; The Alien Part 1, once tipped for ten million admissions, drew about 1,538,504 viewers before leaving theaters.⁸

Scholarly readings

Academic work has treated Jung_E as a text where Korean melodrama and science fiction intersect. A 2025 study by Kim Gong-sook of Andong National University analyzes the film through the concept of sinpa, the Korean melodramatic mode of self-sacrifice and tearful emotion: the mother and daughter are sinpa figures whose family order is broken by economic and class forces, and Seo-hyun's final act of deleting her mother's maternal domain is read as overturning traditional maternal sinpa into active resistance.⁹

Another 2025 study, by Kim Young-yi of Sogang University's Department of Communication, examines the JUNG_E robot through cybernetics and media archaeology. Although the robot is built from the brain data of the human warrior Yun Jung-yi, the film depicts it as more than a tool for repetitive combat simulation: it comes to express a sense of human motherhood, an emergent meaning that challenges the boundary between affect and algorithm.¹⁰ Other scholarship has been more critical, arguing that the film's AI and robotics remain largely decorative and that its portrayal of memory and intelligence misrepresents the science.¹¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Science fiction and fantasy films (individual works) › Science fiction and fantasy films of the 2020s › Science fiction films of the 2020s › Titles symbols to L

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

Notice something wrong?