General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Take Off (국가대표) (2009 film)

Take Off (국가대표, Gukgadaepyo, literally "National Representatives") is a 2009 South Korean sports drama film directed by Kim Yong-hwa about the hastily assembled first national ski jumping team. It stars Ha Jung-woo, Sung Dong-il, and Kim Ji-suk, and was released in South Korea on July 29, 2009, with a running time of 137 minutes.¹

Key fact	Detail
Korean title	국가대표 (Gukgadaepyo), meaning "National Representatives"¹
Release	July 29, 2009, South Korea; 137 minutes; rated 12+¹
Director and writers	Kim Yong-hwa, with screenplay adaptation by Kim Hyun-chul, Kim Sun-jung, and Hwang Seung-jae¹
Cast	Ha Jung-woo (Bob), Sung Dong-il (Coach Bang), Kim Ji-suk, Kim Dong-wook, Choi Jae-hwan, Lee Jae-eung¹
Box office	8,035,110 admissions on 569 screens, grossing $42,384,099; second-highest grossing Korean film of 2009 after Haeundae²^•³
Production	KM Culture Co., Ltd.; distributed by Showbox¹
Major awards	Daejong Film Awards Best Director (2009); Blue Dragon Awards Best Director (2009); Paeksang Arts Awards nominations for Best Film and Best Actor (2010)²

Spoilers

Plot

The story is set in 1996 in the town of Muju, North Jeolla Province, where large-scale construction is underway for Korea's bid to host the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. The local bidding committee receives a report that it lacks sufficient athletes to compete, and concludes that it must form a ski jump team to represent the event.¹ The International Olympic Committee, in the film's telling, questioned how Korea could host the Winter Olympics without even having a ski jumping team.⁴

Coach Bang (Sung Dong-il), a former children's ski instructor who knows little about the sport, assembles five inexperienced athletes. The lead is Bob (Ha Jung-woo), a Korean-American adoptee and former U.S. junior alpine skier who came to Korea in search of his biological mother; he initially refuses to represent the country he feels abandoned him, but joins because media exposure as a national athlete might help him find her.⁴^•⁵ The other members include a nightclub host (Kim Dong-wook) who joins because of a crush on the coach's daughter, and a young orphan (Kim Ji-suk) who supports his grandmother and younger brother and needs the national-team exemption from military service.⁴^•⁵ Lacking a proper facility, the team trains with improvised equipment, and the film's final 30 minutes depict the team competing at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics.⁵^•⁴

Basis in real events

The film is loosely based on the true story of the Korean national ski jumping team, a country once considered a barren land for the winter sport.⁶^•⁷ A national ski jump team was quickly formed in Muju County in 1996 as Korea pursued a Winter Olympics bid.⁶ A scholarly source notes that the film is supposedly inspired by the real-life story of Toby Dawson (alias Kim Soo-cheol, born 1978), a Korean-American adoptee and professional freestyle skier who won a bronze medal for the United States in moguls at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino.⁸

The film alters history for dramatic effect. According to the Dong-A Ilbo, the Muju Resort ski jump where the real team trained was built for the 1997 Winter Universiade held in Muju and had no connection to an Olympic bid; in reality Muju was eliminated in the domestic selection process and never became an Olympic candidate city, unlike the film's depiction.⁹ Real national team athletes who watched the film said many parts resembled their experience but that some details differed from reality.⁹

Production and reception

Kim Yong-hwa, born in 1971, had earlier directed Oh! Brothers (2003) and the hit 200 Pounds Beauty (2006), which drew more than six million viewers in Korea.³ He shot Take Off over seven months on a mountain, hanging actors on wires to capture the jump sequences.⁴ The music is by Lee Jae-hak and the cinematography by Park Hyun-chul.¹⁰

Box office. Take Off opened against the blockbuster Haeundae (2009) and still sold eight million tickets, becoming the second-highest grossing film of the year in Korea and one of the most viewed Korean films ever at that point.³^•¹⁰ KOFIC records total admissions of 8,035,110 and a gross of $42,384,099.² An extended director's cut was released in South Korea on September 10, 2009, and during the September 11-13 weekend the film moved past May 18 to become the tenth most watched film ever in South Korea, with a cumulative total of 7,371,459 viewers at that time.¹¹ Reviewer Kevin Ma reported that the film achieved some of the highest audience satisfaction scores ever recorded in Korea.¹²

Critical response. Reviewers compared the film to Cool Runnings (1993), the Disney film about the first Jamaican bobsled team, since both draw on true stories of inexperienced athletes in an unfamiliar Winter Olympic sport.⁴^•⁷ The Korea Times praised the ski jumping sequences and called the film's appeal the "magic of flying," while Yonhap's review found that the many melodramatic episodes, from ethnicity and family to romance and poverty, strained the film's sports-film label, though the final 30 minutes of Olympic competition were gripping.⁵^•⁴ Modern Korean Cinema called it the most successful Korean sports film to date while criticizing its long, melodramatic setup.¹³

Awards

The film received the Daejong Film Awards for Best Director and the Blue Dragon Awards for Best Director in 2009, and at the 2010 Paeksang Arts Awards it was nominated in the film categories for Best Film and Best Actor. The Korean Association of Film Critics Awards gave it Best Music in 2009, and the Maxmovie Best Film Awards in 2010 recognized Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best New Actor. It was also shown at the Korean Film Festival in Hungary in 2010 and the University Film Festival of Korea in 2009.² Ha Jung-woo won Best Actor at the University Film Festival of Korea.¹ In 2010, Korea Post included Take Off in the fourth series of Korean film stamps, alongside Seopyeonje, Swiri, and Tae Guk Gi: Brotherhood of War.⁶

References

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