General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Way Home (집으로...)

The Way Home (집으로..., Jibeuro, literally "To the house...") is a 2002 South Korean family drama written and directed by Lee Jeong-hyang, her second feature after Art Museum by the Zoo (1998). It tells of Sang-woo, a seven-year-old boy from Seoul left for the summer with his mute, elderly maternal grandmother in a remote mountain village, and of the bond that forms between them.¹ Made on a $2 million budget with no stars, it became one of 2002's biggest hits in Korea, drawing about 4.09 million admissions, and was acquired by Paramount Pictures for English-language territories.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Korean title / meaning	집으로... (Jibeuro), literally "To the house..."¹
Director / writer	Lee Jeong-hyang, her second feature¹
Korean release	April 5, 2002; 87 minutes; rated ALL⁴
Budget	$2 million²
Korean admissions	About 4,091,000, the second-highest-grossing Korean film of 2002³
Lead cast	Yoo Seung-ho (Sang-woo), Kim Eul-boon (Grandmother), Dong Hyo-hee (Mother)⁴
International release	Paramount Pictures took rights for all English-language territories²
Major awards	Grand Bell Awards: 3 wins, 9 nominations; Paeksang Arts Awards 2003 Grand Prize⁵^•⁴

Spoilers

Story

Sang-woo (Yoo Seung-ho) is a seven-year-old boy of divorced parents whose mother (Dong Hyo-hee) needs to look for work and leaves him in the countryside with his grandmother (Kim Eul-boon), who is very old, in poor health, hunched, toothless, and unable to speak.⁶^•⁴ The boy, a child of handheld video games and Rollerblades, finds the village store without batteries, the stone-filled yard, and the dark outhouse his first trials, and he ignores and taunts his grandmother, even stealing from her when she will not buy batteries for his game.⁷^•⁸ When the batteries die he walks to town to replace them, gets lost, and is helped home by two local children, Cheol-e (Min Kyung-hun) and Hae Yeon (Yim Eun-kyung).⁶ Over the summer, in the face of her unquestioning care, the wall between the two collapses, and he comes to understand what his grandmother means to him.⁶^•⁸

Production

Casting non-actors. Lee Jeong-hyang wanted to film a love story between a seven-year-old boy and his 77-year-old grandmother, and she insisted on original locations and local villagers as performers.⁹ The crew traveled all over Korea searching for a country cottage in a village in the middle of nowhere before finding their village in Yeongdong, North Chungcheong Province, a location with no road, so that camera equipment had to be carried up and down a winding trail daily.⁹ Lee spotted Kim Eul-boon, a local woman, walking toward her in the street and cast her on the spot; Kim had never acted and had never seen a motion picture, and had to be persuaded to take the role.⁹ The child lead, Yoo Seung-ho, had only slightly more experience, a television mini-series credit, and Lee described the pairing as "the youngest and the oldest stars in the history of Korean film."⁹

Method. Lee expected two months of shooting; it took six, because she shot scenes consecutively, in story order, to capture the gradual change in the characters' emotions. She also promised the villagers not to change their lives or offend their feelings.⁹^•¹⁰ The film was made conventionally for a 2002 Korean feature, shot on 35mm with available or minimally augmented light and no digital effects or spectacle apparatus.¹

Release and box office

The film opened in Korea on April 5, 2002.⁴ After five weeks in the number one and two slots it had been seen by 3.5 million spectators, and it finished the year with about 4,091,000 admissions, second only to Marrying the Mafia among the year's Korean hits.²^•³ Paramount reports that during its initial Korean release it out-grossed The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on its home turf, and the film grossed over 20 million dollars worldwide in its first year.⁶^•¹¹

In May 2002 Paramount Pictures acquired the rights for all English-language territories from CJ Entertainment, releasing through UIP in the UK, Australia, and South Africa; CJ had acquired the film when it took over producer Tube Entertainment earlier that year. According to CJ's vice president of international sales Mark Yoon, it was the first Korean film to get a wide theatrical release through a Hollywood major.²^•¹² In the United States it earned $444.9 thousand.⁸

Reception and awards

The film premiered internationally at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival and screened at San Sebastián, where it won two awards, and at festivals including Fukuoka, Hamburg, and Mannheim-Heidelberg.⁴^•⁵ At home it won the Paeksang Arts Awards Grand Prize for film in 2003 and took 3 wins and 9 nominations at the Grand Bell Awards.⁴^•⁵ The Women in Film Korea Festival named Lee Woman in Film of the Year for 2002.⁴

Critics responded to its near-wordless storytelling. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 75% Tomatometer and a 92% audience score, with the critics consensus calling it "a simple story told with much warmth and compassion"; Metacritic records a Metascore of 63 from 19 reviews against a user score of 8.6.⁸^•⁵ The Los Angeles Times reported that the film was acclaimed in Korea as a landmark, and noted Lee's account that after the unexpected success of her first film, "some people were very surprised when they heard the story of 'The Way Home.'"¹⁰

Context and afterlife

The film arrived at the height of the Korean cinema renaissance of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when domestic films, aided by the screen-quota system, new financing, and cultural liberalization, were reclaiming the home market from Hollywood; a tiny, quiet film with no stars became one of 2002's biggest sleeper hits there on word of mouth.¹ Its near-wordless story translated readily on the international arthouse circuit, and it continued to appear at festivals for years afterward, including a London Korean Film Festival special focus on women directors in 2016 and a homage at the Vienna International Children's Film Festival in 2011.¹^•⁴ Kim Eul-boon's performance, by a 78-year-old who had never before seen a film, drew particular notice from critics, with the Dallas Morning News praising her portrayal of the illiterate, deaf-mute grandmother.⁸

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 2000s › Biographical and historical drama films 2000s › Released 2000 to 2005

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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