Ten years ago, Train to Busan pitted passengers against zombies on high-speed rails. Driven by a canny script and propulsive editing, Yeon Sang-ho’s film became a worldwide hit. In Yeon’s latest, Colony, an experimental serum unleashes hordes of zombies into a downtown Seoul office complex. The difference this time is that they can communicate instantaneously, evolving in a sort of hive mentality.
Helped by Jun Ji-hyun in her first screen role in over a decade, Colony was a box-office hit when it opened this May in South Korea. Along with The King’s Warden, Yeon’s movie helped resurrect Korean moviegoing after a long, fallow stretch. I spoke with Yeon and Jun at the New York Asian Film Festival for the North American premiere of Colony, which opens in theaters this Friday from Well Go USA Entertainment.
The Film Stage: How did you and Gianna Jun develop Kwon Se-jeong, a professor who fights the zombies?
Yeon Sang-ho: I wanted Kwon Se-jeong to be in the complete opposite spectrum of the zombies who represent this kind of collective intelligence. You can say she’s a lone wolf, but I think she’s a confident lone wolf who chooses to be in that position. Ji-hyun’s played such iconic and memorable female characters in the past, and I felt that that would really gel well with the character of Kwon Se-jeong. As you can see, she’s such a confident person.
Ji-hyun, why did you choose this project to return to the screen after an eleven-year absence?
Jun Ji-hyun: The first reason was director Yeon. For probably any actors working in Korea right now, it’s their dream to work with director Yeon. And I was thinking the same thing. Another reason is that, after the COVID-19 pandemic, the Korean movie industry went through a rough patch. Not many great scripts were available. When I read the Colony script, I immediately thought this is the kind of movie that I want to see in the theater. That’s why I agreed to the role.
What did you bring to the role?
Jun Ji-hyun: People really reveal their true natures when faced with chaos. Kwon Se-jeong is a person who does not waver, even within chaos. She is a very centered person and a leader who hopefully will bring the survivors to safety. I wanted the audience to follow Se-jeong’s journey of decision-making within the chaos that she is facing. So my focus was making her into someone who is centered, but also trying to portray the ordinary person in her. I think finding that balance was a bit of a challenge. As for what I brought to the role: personally, I have a very strong sense of justice. I think Se-jeong is similar to me in that way.
Why don’t the other characters in Colony believe Se-Jeong?
Yeon Sang-ho: I think because Se-jeong has very strict principles, and she’s hardheaded in defending those principles. Sometimes that can be perceived as being inflexible. I think people express or feel discomfort when someone acts that way.
Does Se-jeong parallel your career?
Jun Ji-hyun: I guess you could say yes. In my career there’s been so much chatter around what I should do—what people think I should be doing. But what it really comes down to is what I think about a character and what I think about a project. Whether I think I can do something to the best of my ability. So yeah: I guess you could say that’s true.
Yeon Sang-ho: Personally, what I remember about Ji-hyun’s career is that from the very beginning, for example My Sassy Girl, her character was different from other Korean female characters. I believe her role led to a paradigm shift in how women were portrayed in Korean film. She’s maintained that status of originating very strong and paradigm-shifting roles. She’s kept going at that ever since.
Yeon Sang-ho and Jun Ji-hyun at the 2026 New York Asian Film Festival. Photo courtesy of Arin Sang-urai / Film at Lincoln Center.
Have you seen My Sassy Girl recently?
Jun Ji-hyun: No, I have not. It’s been so long since it came out. Like maybe 20 years now?
23 years.
Jun Ji-hyun: Let’s say one year ago.
Did you expect your stunts to be this physical?
Jun Ji-hyun: The stunts weren’t too difficult. For the super-dangerous scenes, the stunt people took care of that. The stunts I did myself I applied myself to the best of my ability. We also talked on the set while we were filming about how Se-jeong comes from academia, so it’s a bit of a stretch to think that she would suddenly be able to jump up and be this action hero. We wanted to balance the level of action that she took part in.
You’re in a spectacular scene shot in a plaza at night, your character surrounded by zombies and wrecked, burning vehicles.
Jun Ji-hyun: Getting to that point required pretending to drive a car through the mob. I was actually matching the movements of the stunt driver, who was operating from the passenger side. On my side of the car, there were no brakes. But because I was so terrified, I just kept pushing brakes that were not there.
Yuen, can you talk about developing your concept of zombies in Colony?
Yeon Sang-ho: Colony came about after [screenwriter] Choi Gyu-seok and I worked on the series Hellbound. We thought that there was still more to be told about collectivism or herd mentality. Collective intelligence. Particularly in this high-speed-technology era, we naturally thought of AI. I went online and typed “AI” into a bot. What came up was that the first person to use collective intelligence was an academic, a scientist by the name of William Martin Wheeler. He used it to describe ants. The ecology of ants is super fascinating. They communicate through pheromones. Different kinds of bacteria and viruses also can communicate with each other. I learned about an organoid brain created from artificial brain cells, organic cells designed to replace computer chips because they are apparently faster and generate less heat. I think the traits we developed for this species of zombie in Colony really came during this biological research period.
What do zombies want?
Yeon Sang-ho: This popped up in my research as well. I think the basic zombie desire is species expansion. To procreate and to populate the world as much as possible through infecting other humans one by one. The more they expand, the more their capacity grows for this collective intelligence that they’re working with. That is their fundamental desire. This connects with the villain Suh Young-chul (Koo Kyo-hwan), and his vision of making a “one” of these individuals.
What makes us human are our appetites and desires. If zombies form a collective intelligence, it doesn’t really get them anywhere.
Yeon Sang-ho: I think that’s very much up to interpretation. Like in this version of this film, the villain Suh Young-chul is controlling and monopolizing the desire of the whole. They’re pretty much doing his bidding. But even without Suh, there could be different possibilities for the zombies to figure out what is the best mode for expansion or survival of their species.
One thing I came upon in my research is that species that exist and work in colonies—like zombies—if there is one weakness in their genes, they are susceptible to being wiped out. That’s why every generation introduces outliers—not necessarily genetic defects, but mutations. Each mutated gene is actually what is preventing a species from completely wiping itself out.
I could say that, in their quest for a species expansion, a genetic mutation could allow one particular zombie to have a different sort of desire, an individual desire that actually furthers the lifespan of the species. So at the end of the movie, we could say that a zombie has altered, and maybe that zombie is a mutant that will help the entire species.
We could go on about the zombies, how you used stunt actors and dancers to choreograph their movements, but ultimately, they are plot devices. What’s more interesting about this movie and Train to Busan is the human responses to them.
Yeon Sang-ho: Let’s go back to a film like George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. The genius of that film is that Romero’s able to show, through the zombies, the fear that people in that era faced. The zombies themselves are not just entertainment, something you could experience somewhere like Six Flags.
I think it’s similar with Colony, too. I’ve tried to encapsulate the fears of the modern era, right? In that process, I put more emphasis on the importance of honoring and listening to minority thoughts or minority opinions. The protagonist is a person fighting a lonely fight, having a minority opinion, and sticking to her guns.
Both the humans and zombies are altruistic, but in different ways. At one point a character asks how much a zombie’s life is worth, and it’s clear the zombies are willing to die for the hive. So technically zombies don’t value their lives. The humans are willing to sacrifice themselves to save someone who, in realistic terms, is not going to be much help.
Yeon Sang-ho: Think about the villain. He wants to eradicate individual desire and individual experience because they are what makes life so complicated. People have their own individual experiences. That’s where the idea of sacrifice comes down to the feelings and experiences of one person. But Suh Young-chul comes from the stance that it’s just so hard to calibrate every single individual experience and thought process that individuals have. He’s saying that it’s impossible for us to come together as individuals. Therefore we need to make everyone “one.”
Because the zombies share everything simultaneously, there is no chance for miscommunication. Suh feels that avoiding miscommunication is a building block for a potential utopia. I do strongly feel that the individuality that we each have is what makes us human and makes us stronger as a species. That’s also kind of what I wanted to touch upon in Colony.
One more question about your imagery. You have a shot that’s a solid wall of zombies almost melded together. Did you have that image in mind before you shot? Or do you come upon it while shooting?
Yeon Sang-ho: It was in my mind before we shot. It was in the script. I was thinking: how do I express the herd, or a collective? I imagined a wall of zombies slowly encroaching upon human beings. Then it was a process of working with choreographers.
Colony opens in theaters on Friday, August 28.
The post Yeon Sang-ho and Jun Ji-hyun on Colony, George A. Romero, and How Zombies Reflect Our Modern Era first appeared on The Film Stage.
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