America is a country that, even with all its flaws, has been able to flourish because there is a certain ideology about fighting for what you believe in. What you choose to believe in - no matter how small or big it is - is what you believe in, and that ideology has made America.

Kim Jee-woon

I want to work with a wide range of genres because it gives each film a different cinematic energy.

Kim Jee-woon

I'm not an outgoing person. Compared to an average person, I am quite skeptical and pessimistic. This is different from being nervous.

Kim Jee-woon

I'm someone who has a singular goal in making films: I want to tell a story. There are certain stories that I want to tell. Hollywood's never really been the ultimate goal for me.

Kim Jee-woon

Whatever it is that I thirst for in my current project tends to turn up in my following project.

Kim Jee-woon

One quality that a director needs to acquire in Hollywood is to understand the system and figure out how to work within the system to express one's own ideas.

Kim Jee-woon

In Korea, the director is on top, and the power flows down vertically. On the set, I love to come up with ideas on the spot. But in Hollywood, if I were to come up with a certain idea on set, the idea had to be taken to all these different people who had to agree.

Kim Jee-woon

'The Good, the Bad, the Weird' is about individuals fulfilling their desires and just going the distance to fulfill that desire.

Kim Jee-woon

What can possibly be the common factor in a Kim Jee-woon film? I think what really ties a lot of my projects together is that there is always a character that believes his life is not exactly the way he wishes it to be. My regard for that character turns out to be a very sympathetic one.

Kim Jee-woon

The Western is as American as a film can get - there's the discovery of a frontier, the element of a showdown, revenge, and determining the best gunman. There's a certain masculinity to the Western that really appealed to me, and I've always wanted to do a Western in Hollywood.

Kim Jee-woon

In Korea, the director has the final word. If the director makes a decision, that decision is final. In Hollywood, every decision needs to go through the producer, the studio, and sometimes even the main actor. There is a certain procedure that needs to be followed.

Kim Jee-woon

I work from opposites to opposites, in a way. It's finding one thing and then doing the other from film to film. So maybe after 'I Saw the Devil,' I might do something like 'I Saw the Angel' or perhaps something warm and happy.

Kim Jee-woon

My background is in acting, so I enjoy being able to show what I'm looking for. With acting, it's very immediate when you show someone what you're looking for, and the feedback is instantaneous as well.

Kim Jee-woon

I'm someone who has a singular goal in making films: I want to tell a story. There are certain stories that I want to tell.

Kim Jee-woon

I think my tendency when working is to try and find what's lacking in my current project and then tackle that in whatever I do next.

Kim Jee-woon

Actors are the flowers of the film, of the set, and of the director. The term 'Flowers of the Screen' holds a deep meaning.

Kim Jee-woon

After my film 'The Tale of Two Sisters,' I received a lot of offers from Hollywood to direct, but because 'A Tale of Two Sisters' was a horror film, I received a lot of horror films. But I wasn't interested in working in the same genre, and the scripts I received for films in different genres were for projects that were near completion.

Kim Jee-woon

Obviously, I've made several films in Korea, so I'm very well accustomed and acclimated to Korean filmmaking.

Kim Jee-woon

Hollywood's never really been the ultimate goal for me.

Kim Jee-woon

Korean films have always been distributed to international audiences as arthouse films.

Kim Jee-woon

A lot of people are very interested that a Korean director has made a western. But when I look at the reactions of the audience, I realise the points at which people laugh are the same for a Korean audience and an international audience.

Kim Jee-woon