Pop Culture & Entertainment

Korean Directors With the Most Top International Prizes

South Korean directors ranked by their wins at Cannes, Venice, Berlin, the Oscars and the Primetime Emmys. Bong Joon Ho leads with five prizes, all for Parasite, and Hong Sang-soo and Park Chan-wook have four each.

Official US trailer for Parasite (2019), directed by Bong Joon Ho

Pictured: the official US trailer for Parasite (2019), the film that won all five of Bong Joon Ho’s prizes, #1 with 5.

Rank Director Prizes Won at Films honored (prize) First win Latest win
1Bong Joon Ho 봉준호5Cannes, OscarsParasite (Palme d’Or; Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film)20192020
2Hong Sang-soo 홍상수4BerlinThe Woman Who Ran (Best Director), Introduction (Best Screenplay), The Novelist’s Film (Grand Jury Prize), A Traveler’s Needs (Grand Jury Prize)20202024
2Park Chan-wook 박찬욱4Berlin, CannesOldboy (Grand Prix), I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK (Alfred Bauer Prize), Thirst (Jury Prize, shared), Decision to Leave (Best Director)20042022
4Lee Chang-dong 이창동3Cannes, VeniceOasis (Silver Lion for Best Director), Poetry (Best Screenplay), Possible Love (Grand Jury Prize)20022026
4Kim Ki-duk 김기덕3Berlin, VeniceSamaritan Girl (Silver Bear for Best Director), 3-Iron (Silver Lion for Best Director), Pièta (Golden Lion)20042012
6Hwang Dong-hyuk 황동혁1EmmysSquid Game, “Red Light, Green Light” (Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series)20222022
6Im Kwon-taek 임권택1CannesChihwaseon (Best Director, shared)20022002
6Jang Sun-woo 장선우1BerlinHwa-Om-Kyung (Alfred Bauer Prize)19941994
6Shin Sang-ok 신상옥1BerlinTo the Last Day (Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Prize)19621962
6Kang Dae-jin 강대진1BerlinThe Coachman (Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Prize)19611961

How this list works. Directors are ranked by how many top prizes they have won at five events: the main competitions of the Cannes, Venice and Berlin film festivals (prizes from each festival’s main jury), the Academy Awards and the Primetime Emmy Awards. Only wins count, not nominations. A prize counts when it went to a Korean film or series, or to its Korean director, writer or producer. Acting awards, honorary awards, short-film prizes and side sections such as Cannes’ Un Certain Regard are left out. Together the ten directors here hold 24 prizes, from 1961 to 2026.[1] Each prize is credited to the director or creator of the work it honored. That matters for Parasite: its Best Picture Oscar went to its producers, Kwak Sin-ae and Bong Joon Ho, Best Original Screenplay went to Bong and his co-writer Han Jin-won, and Best International Feature Film is listed under South Korea, the country that submitted it, with Bong named as director.[19] All four count for Bong. Kwak and Han did not direct the film, so they are not ranked separately. In the same way, only Squid Game’s directing Emmy counts, not the awards to its cast and crew.[24] Tied directors share a rank, and within a tie the director with the most recent win comes first. American productions with Korean or Korean-American creators are outside the rule, among them Beef, which won Lee Sung Jin two Emmys in 2024, and KPop Demon Hunters, which won two Oscars in 2026.[38][39] Where the data comes from: the 24 prizes and the rule for which ones count are from DabPop’s feature on how Korean directors won over Cannes, the Oscars and the Emmys (data as of October 11, 2026, through the 83rd Venice Film Festival and the 78th Primetime Emmys), which lists them prize by prize.[1] RList turned that list into a ranking by director and checked every prize against each festival’s, the Academy’s and the Television Academy’s winner lists on October 12, 2026. All 24 matched.[2][4][6][8][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] RList also checked the 2025 and 2026 editions of Cannes and Berlin and the 2025 Venice festival, and found no Korean main-competition win missing from the list.[40][41][42][43][44]

The Top 10

#1

Bong Joon Ho — 5 prizes

All five of Bong’s prizes are for one film. Parasite, about a poor family that works its way into a rich family’s house, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May 2019. It was the first South Korean film to win it, and the first film to win by a unanimous jury vote since 2013.[18][28] At the 92nd Academy Awards on February 9, 2020, it won four Oscars, including Best Picture, the first ever for a film not in English.[19] At home it sold 10.3 million cinema tickets, which puts it at #25 among the most-watched Korean films.

#2

Hong Sang-soo — 4 prizes

Hong won all four of his prizes at Berlin, in a run of five festivals: Best Director for The Woman Who Ran in 2020, Best Screenplay for Introduction in 2021, and the Grand Jury Prize for The Novelist’s Film in 2022 and A Traveler’s Needs in 2024.[20][21][22][25] He works without a finished script: he starts writing the day’s dialogue at about 4 a.m. on the morning of the shoot.[30] In 2025 he sat on the main jury at Cannes.[40]

#2

Park Chan-wook — 4 prizes

Park’s first prize was the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004 for Oldboy, the revenge thriller, from a jury led by Quentin Tarantino.[12] He added Berlin’s Alfred Bauer Prize for I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK in 2007, and in 2009 the vampire film Thirst shared the Cannes Jury Prize with Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank.[14][15][29] His fourth was Best Director at Cannes in 2022 for the detective story Decision to Leave.[23] Four years later he was back at Cannes as president of the main jury.[41]

#4

Lee Chang-dong — 3 prizes

Lee was a novelist and a teacher before he made films, and from 2003 to 2004 he was South Korea’s minister of culture and tourism.[31] He won the Silver Lion for Best Director at Venice in 2002 for Oasis, and Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2010 for Poetry.[10][16] His newest film, Possible Love, about two married couples, won the Grand Jury Prize at Venice in September 2026, the most recent prize in this table.[26] It is a South Korea–US co-production, and Netflix releases it worldwide on November 6, 2026.[27]

#4

Kim Ki-duk — 3 prizes

In 2004 Kim was named Best Director at two festivals for two different films: at Berlin for Samaritan Girl and at Venice for 3-Iron.[11][13][32] In 2012 his film Pièta won the Golden Lion, Venice’s top prize. It was the first time a Korean film had won the top prize at Cannes, Venice or Berlin.[17][1] Kim died in Riga, Latvia, on December 11, 2020, of complications from COVID-19, at 59.[32]

#6

Hwang Dong-hyuk — 1 prize

Hwang is the only director here honored for television. On September 12, 2022, he won the Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for the first episode of Squid Game, “Red Light, Green Light”. He and the show’s lead, Lee Jung-jae, were the first Asians to win their categories.[24] Hwang first wrote the story as a film. Netflix turned it into a nine-episode series, and at first wanted to call it Round Six, until Hwang persuaded it to use his title, Squid Game.[33]

#6

Im Kwon-taek — 1 prize

Im shared Best Director at Cannes in 2002 with Paul Thomas Anderson, who won for Punch-Drunk Love.[8] His film, Chihwaseon, stars Choi Min-sik as the 19th-century painter Jang Seung-eop, known as Owon.[9] Im has been unusually prolific: his 100th film, Beyond the Years, came out in 2007. Berlin gave him an Honorary Golden Bear in 2005, which is not counted here.[34]

#6

Jang Sun-woo — 1 prize

Jang wrote film criticism and scripts before he directed his first film, Seoul Jesus, in 1986.[36] His Hwa-Om-Kyung, based on a Buddhist scripture, the Avatamsaka Sutra, follows a boy looking for the mother who left him as a baby. It won Berlin’s Alfred Bauer Prize in 1994.[35][6] The prize, a Silver Bear for films that open new paths in cinema, was suspended in 2020 after it emerged that Alfred Bauer, the festival’s founding director, had been a high-ranking Nazi official.[7]

#6

Shin Sang-ok — 1 prize

Shin’s drama To the Last Day (1960), starring Choi Eun-hee, won a Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Prize at Berlin in 1962, a year after The Coachman won the same award.[4][5] Shin and Choi later lived through one of cinema’s strangest stories. In 1978 both were kidnapped and taken to North Korea on the orders of Kim Jong Il, who wanted them to improve its film industry. Shin made seven films there, including the monster film Pulgasari, before the couple escaped during a trip to Vienna in 1986.[37]

#6

Kang Dae-jin — 1 prize

Kang has the oldest prize in the table. His film The Coachman follows a single father who earns a living with a horse-drawn cart while trying to hold his grown-up children together.[3] At Berlin in 1961 it won one of two Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Prizes; the other went to Jean-Luc Godard’s A Woman Is a Woman.[2] It is described as the first Korean film to win a major international award.[3] The Korean Film Archive now shows the whole film free on YouTube, which is the video here.

Pop Culture & Entertainment Movies Awards Film Festivals South Korea Asia Records

Sources

  1. DabPop, “How Korean Directors Won Over Cannes, the Oscars and the Emmys” (data as of October 11, 2026) — https://dabpop.co/posts/korean-directors-international-awards. Source of all 24 prizes and of the rule for which prizes count.
  2. Wikipedia, “11th Berlin International Film Festival” (1961 awards) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_Berlin_International_Film_Festival
  3. Wikipedia, “The Coachman (film)” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coachman_(film)
  4. Wikipedia, “12th Berlin International Film Festival” (1962 awards) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12th_Berlin_International_Film_Festival
  5. Wikipedia, “To the Last Day” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Last_Day
  6. Wikipedia, “44th Berlin International Film Festival” (1994 awards) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/44th_Berlin_International_Film_Festival
  7. Wikipedia, “Alfred Bauer Prize” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Bauer_Prize
  8. Wikipedia, “2002 Cannes Film Festival” (awards) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Cannes_Film_Festival
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  14. Wikipedia, “57th Berlin International Film Festival” (2007 awards) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57th_Berlin_International_Film_Festival
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  16. Wikipedia, “2010 Cannes Film Festival” (awards) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Cannes_Film_Festival
  17. Wikipedia, “69th Venice International Film Festival” (2012 awards, crediting La Biennale’s official awards list) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/69th_Venice_International_Film_Festival
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  23. Wikipedia, “2022 Cannes Film Festival” (awards) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Cannes_Film_Festival
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  28. Wikipedia, “Parasite (2019 film)” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasite_(2019_film)
  29. Wikipedia, “Park Chan-wook” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Chan-wook
  30. Wikipedia, “Hong Sang-soo” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Sang-soo
  31. Wikipedia, “Lee Chang-dong” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Chang-dong
  32. Wikipedia, “Kim Ki-duk” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ki-duk
  33. Wikipedia, “Hwang Dong-hyuk” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Dong-hyuk
  34. Wikipedia, “Im Kwon-taek” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Im_Kwon-taek
  35. Wikipedia, “Hwa-Om-Kyung” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwa-Om-Kyung
  36. Wikipedia, “Jang Sun-woo” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jang_Sun-woo
  37. Wikipedia, “Shin Sang-ok” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Sang-ok
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  39. Wikipedia, “98th Academy Awards” (KPop Demon Hunters’ Animated Feature and Original Song wins) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/98th_Academy_Awards
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  43. Wikipedia, “76th Berlin International Film Festival” (2026 awards) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/76th_Berlin_International_Film_Festival
  44. Wikipedia, “82nd Venice International Film Festival” (2025 awards) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/82nd_Venice_International_Film_Festival