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Korean Die Another Day Screening Report
22nd January 2003
Fox Korea held an unprecedented free screening of 'Die Another Day' in the South Korean capital at the weekend to give people the chance to make up their own minds about the film that has sparked huge protests...
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On Friday 17th January 2003, Fox Korea organised a free screening
of "Die Another Day" in the Cine City Theatre in the
South Korea's capitol Seoul. The extraordinary free event was
dreamt up for Fox International in an attempt to stem the misunderstanding
and rumours that have caused a multitude of protests
against the film on both sides of the Korean border.
The "first come first served" event was fully
booked within hours on the day as curious South Koreans
flooded in for (as For Korea said) "a chance to watch
Die Another Day themselves first and judge whether the film
is a bad controversial movie or not".
Right: South Korean activists
have rallied at scores of theatres to block "Die Another
Day" in a protest that has prompted 10 out of 50 cinemas
in Seoul to pull the film early (click
here for protest coverage).
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Thanks to our sources, MI6 has secured a video report made
by South Korean newspaper Dong A Ilbo inside the
theatre.
After the free tickets were all snapped up, the reporter
first asked a young couple whether they would buy tickets
or not. The girl said she won't pay for a Die Another Day
ticket and the guy said they would rather watch another
movie instead of DAD if they needed to pay for tickets.
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The reporter then asked an older cinema go-er what he thinks
about the younger generation who are protesting against
the film.
He said he doesn't mind too much about young generation's
anti-DAD protest and he will watch the film no matter what.
He said he has loved the Bond series since Dr. No forty
years ago.
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Another man (pictured in the box-out on the video)) said he wanted
to watch DAD because
the media has been talking about the film so much. He learned
about free event from a local newspaper and his wife reserved
2 free tickets in afternoon. His wife said "the movie is
nothing but a movie" and production teams have freedom with
how they make movies. She added that DAD is
fictional story, so she wasn't uncomfortable about her country
was portrayed.
The final interviewee said he thoroughly enjoyed Die Another
Day. He thought that DAD is one of the must-see blockbusters and
commented on the amount of money which the production team had
spent.
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He said DAD has good action scenes and was a good entertaining
movie, but he regretted that it looked like production team
lacked quality information about Korea. "The production
should have studied more about both North and South Korea
before shooting the film, and that would have helped to
avoid obvious mistakes (click
here for the Korean blooper list).
"It looks like production team guessed about the Korea
situation. It's just like common Hollywood style. Korea
has been wrongfully portrayed in most foreign movies and
this is the area we should fix"
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"There are two opinions. Some people are saying it's
just a movie. Some are saying even though it is a movie,
it is not acceptable to let movie makers portray a country
however they like", the reporter added.
"Let's hope we won't see any more controversial movies
in 2003".
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As of January 17th, only 7 theatres are showing DAD in Seoul.
Only 190,000 people watched the film in the South Korean capital,
with another 590,000 nationally. Fox Korea said they are satisfied
with the result, and the film did well in the country even though
there were strong anti-DAD protests. They concluded by saying
that the protests failed to significantly damage the Korean box-office
for Die Another Day.
Download the video
report from the Cine City Theatre in Seoul
Thanks to Young for his invaluable help in compiling this
article.