The death of Kim Ki Duk is getting surrounded with mysterious details

Angelica Dean

Most likely, we are talking about the thriller "Man, place, time and man again". In his native South Korea, Kim Ki Duk became an outcast after several girls accused him of harassment and sentenced him to a heavy fine. In 2019, Kim Ki-Duk headed the jury of the Moscow Film Festival and in the same year made in Kazakhstan his last film about the youth, named "Dissolve". Journalist, teacher Faina Zimenkova on a social network revealed the reasons why the famous director stayed in Russia and in the vastness of the former republics of the USSR:

"I caught him in a happy period of his life. He said that he has a beloved girl with whom he recently got acquainted and that in the present time he is highly happy, and this fills him with a life special meaning and joy existence. And he also told me that he feels in himself such huge strength and a wish to create, and that he is sure that he is going to implement so many ideas in cinema and will surprise and please his spectators. He was going to make a film about Russia and with Russian actors. And how warmly he spoke about Russia, as about great country with the richest culture, art, literature! He also spoke with a huge warmth about Russian people and said that they are very close to his view of life, he told that Europeans perceive his films with the head, but Russian spectators with the heart, and that this brings him and Russian people together. And how strongly he wanted to get Russian citizenship! If only someone would help me to get it, - he told me during our meeting. Was I able to think that I see him for the last time? How painful it is to speak now about him in the past time!", - Faina Zimenkova shared her thoughts with her subscribers in fb.

Film critics Olga Galitskaya and Vyacheslav Shmyrov write that “Kim Ki Duk came to Latvia for Latvian citizenship and for a house in Jurmala”:

"The fact of Kim Ki Duk's death can't come out of the head. Mysterious, and even at strange circumstances. To go to Latvia to solve some kind of complexities connected with acquisition of property in Yurmala, a day or two before covid closing of Latvian borders. To go without an accompanying person and without the knowledge of foreign languages (English as well). The interview in police (and this is the reason for the travel) did not happen, because the local translator did not come. A strange real estate agent, who dealt with things in Yurmala, who then refused to cooperate or just disappeared, and now even the rumor that Kim Ki Duk's money for the property in Latvia were received not in the full amount and that authorities did not want to provide him residence permit... And again it's not a fact that the producer was taken to hospital because of covid. Before his departure from Tallinn he complained on problems with kidneys... Kim Ki Duk's family tracked him remotely from Seoul with the assistance of the translator from Moscow and did not want the publicity of the whole story on the stage of search", - said Vyacheslav Shmyrov, a film expert, president of the Moscow Premiere festival.

The artistic director of the Russian programs at the Moscow International Film Festival, Irina Pavlova, openly wrote to the FB that “she doubts the death of Kim Ki-Duk”:

"Everything is so mysterious that the thought inevitably creeps in: but has he died? Or not: was it him? Who identified him? And if, nevertheless, it is really him - what is the reason of the death? Who made the prosection?", - the respected film critic, film critic, screenwriter Irina Pavlova asks questions.

Russian broadcasting LTV7 reported the death of a South Korean filmmaker due to covid complications, citing documentary filmmaker Vitaly Mansky. Vitaly Mansky allegedly joined the search for the disappeared Kim Ki Duk, having connections in Riga.

Latvian actor Andris Lielais, in the spirit of Riga, announced the death of the creator of the film "Empty House":

- Kim Ki Duk died... You wanted to get lost, you succeeded.

Kim Ki Duk will be cremated in Riga, and the urn will be send to his homeland, South Korea.