General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Childe (귀공자)

The Childe (귀공자) is a 2023 South Korean action thriller written and directed by Park Hoon-jung, starring Kim Seon-ho, Kang Tae-ju, Kim Kang-woo, and Go Ara. It follows Marco, a boxer born to a Korean father and a Filipino mother who travels from the Philippines to South Korea to find the father he has never met and raise money for his mother's surgery, only to be pursued by a mysterious, well-groomed man known as the Childe.¹ The film was released in South Korea on June 21, 2023, and in the United States on June 30, 2023.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Director and writer	Park Hoon-jung, who also served as executive producer²
Korean release	June 21, 2023; rated 19 (restricted to adults) in South Korea²
Running time	117 minutes per the Korean Film Council database; 118 minutes per Well Go USA and Box Office Mojo²^•¹
Cast	Kim Seon-ho (the Childe), Kang Tae-ju (Marco), Kim Kang-woo (Director Han), Go Ara (Yoon-ju)¹^•⁴
Korean box office	682,856 admissions and $4,857,068 gross on 966 screens²
US release	June 30, 2023 (limited), Well Go USA; $102,021 domestic gross³
Awards	Kim Seon-ho won Best New Actor at the 2023 Grand Bell Awards and Buil Film Awards and the Blue Dragon Popular Star Award⁵^•⁶
Critical reception	94% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 16 reviews; 93% audience score⁷

Spoilers

Plot

Marco (Kang Tae-ju) is a boxer born to a Korean father and a Filipino mother who fights in illegal rings in the Philippines while caring for his ailing mother. To raise money for her surgery, he travels to South Korea to seek help from the father he has never met.¹ Soon after he arrives, an unidentified man known as the Childe (Kim Seon-ho) appears and begins pursuing him relentlessly.⁴

Other parties converge on Marco, each with a different motive: Director Han (Kim Kang-woo), a conglomerate heir who chases Marco to claim his father's vast inheritance, and Yoon-ju (Go Ara), a mysterious woman who unexpectedly reunites with Marco in Korea after meeting him in the Philippines.⁴^•⁸ Amid the chaos, Marco confronts a shocking truth.¹

Production and casting

Park Hoon-jung, the writer-director of New World (2013) and The Witch series, wrote the screenplay and served as executive producer; Yeon Young-sik produced, and the film was made by Goldmoon Film with Studio & New and distributed by Next Entertainment World.²^•⁹ The film continued Park's practice of casting a newcomer in a leading role: Kang Tae-ju, playing Marco, needed near-native English for a character raised in the Philippines, and his fluency was noted as an asset to the story.¹⁰

Title and comeback. The film's early working title was Sad Tropics (슬픈 열대); Park changed it late in production after concluding the story was not a sad one.¹⁰ For Kim Seon-ho, the role marked his feature film debut and his return to work after a 2021 private-life scandal had led South Korean producers and brands to stop working with him.¹¹^•¹² His character, a sunnily outward assassin with an extremely dark interior, was one he described as a performance of great tension; director Park said he had no regrets about the casting.¹⁰

The production was a large-scale commercial film, with a net production cost of 9.15 billion won and a total budget of roughly 10 billion won.¹³

Release and box office

The film opened in South Korea on June 21, 2023, debuting at No. 3 on the daily box office with 64,918 tickets sold and $483,183 earned from 966 screens, behind The Roundup: No Way Out and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.¹¹ It went on to record 682,856 admissions and a gross of $4,857,068 in South Korea.² Well Go USA released it in limited US theaters on June 30, 2023, where it earned $102,021; worldwide gross totaled $5,988,692, with South Korea accounting for the large majority.³ It later reached streaming services, including Netflix in South Korea.¹⁴

Reception

Critics responded to the film's style and to Kim Seon-ho's performance more than to its plot. The Yonhap News Agency review called it a stylish, blood-soaked crime thriller with chilling chase scenes, while faulting a plot less plausible than Park's New World and a lack of narrative around the Childe despite the character's large share of screen time.¹⁵ The Houston Chronicle's Cary Darling compared the film to "Quentin Tarantino, with a bit of an assist from John Woo, Park Chan-wook's Old Boy and the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock" directing an episode of Succession, rating it four of five.¹² On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 94% Tomatometer from 16 reviews and a 93% audience score.⁷

Awards and festivals

Kim Seon-ho won Best New Actor at the 2023 Grand Bell Awards and the Buil Film Awards, and received the Blue Dragon Film Awards' Popular Star Award; Kang Tae-ju was nominated for Blue Dragon Best New Actor.⁵^•⁶^•⁹ The film was nominated for Best Film in the Òrbita section at the 2023 Sitges Film Festival's affiliated Catalan competition¹⁶^•¹⁷, screened at the Asian Film Festival of Dallas in 2023, and appeared in the Orizzonti Coreani section of the Florence Korea Film Fest in 2024.²

References

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) › Action thrillers, 2020s › Crime, assassin, and vigilante thrillers › Titles symbols to L

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

Notice something wrong?