Ki-duk is a Korean self-taught screenwriter, director, producer and editor. As a teenager he quit school and after working in different factories he spent five years as a marine in the military. From 1990 to 1993, he studied painting in France and after returning to Korea he started writing screenplays. He made his directing debut with the film Crocodile (Ag-o, 1996), and attracted attention of international film critics with his fourth film The Isle (Seom, 2000). Afterwards je made Address Unknown (Suchwiin bulmyeong, 2001), Bad Guy (Nabbeun namja, 2001) and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom, 2003). His film Samaritan (Samaria, 2004) won the Silver Bear for the Best Director in Berlin and for 3-Iron (Bin-jip, 2004) the FIPRESCI award and the small Golden Lion in Venice. He also directed The Bow (Hwal, 2005), Time (Shi gan, 2006) and Arirang (2011), and the self-referential documentary in which he deals with creative blockage and traumatic experiences from the set of his previous film, Dream, (2008) when an actress almost got killed while filming a scene of hanging. In 2011, he made the feature film Amen.