2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
The nihilist gets his treasure hunt
How webtoon artist Yoon Tae-ho's tale of scrappy 1970s grifters became Disney+'s latest bet on Korean content
Fidgeting with his hands at a Samcheong-dong cafe on Monday afternoon, Yoon Tae-ho says, "I'm basically a nihilist."
"My original ending for 'Low Life' was about shutting everything down -- I felt these people deserved nothing.
"But watching the Disney+ adaptation, I realized their ending was actually better than mine," he continues.
This admission comes from the artist behind some of Korea's most successful webtoon-to-screen adaptations. "Inside Men" exposed the obscene corruption of Korea's elite through a gangster's bloody revenge tale -- its 2015 film adaptation drew over nine million viewers. "Misaeng: Incomplete Life" turned the politics and daily grind of a corporate job into appointment television, with salarymen and women across the country seeing their lives reflected in protagonist Jang Geu-rae's struggles.
Each adaptation has found its audience; no failures yet. "My work doesn't have many fantasy elements, so I guess the bar's pretty low when it comes to adaptation," Yoon says.
His latest, "Low Life," follows small-time hustlers in 1977 chasing rumors of sunken treasure off Sinan, at the southwestern tip of Korea. The 11-episode series premiered last month with a sprawling cast including Ryu Seung-ryong, Lim Soo-jung and TVXQ's Jung Yunho.
The project began, as many of Yoon's do, with late-night internet searches during a creative slump. He'd heard stories about a 14th-century treasure ship discovered off Sinan since childhood. "Word traveled slowly back then. You'd hear rumors and either jump in your truck or assume you were too late. My characters were definitely the 'let's go' types."
Research took him first to a maritime museum in Mokpo, South Jeolla Province, where he examined recovered artifacts and the reconstructed vessel. He interviewed locals whose relatives had worked on the original underwater excavation project. He hired a drone company to photograph 11 locations around Sinan from every angle.
Then a radio producer in Busan introduced him to an antiques dealer whose rapid-fire dialect captivated him. "That's when I knew this couldn't be some local story," he says. "It had to pull people from all over the country."
Yoon's hunger for facts and context shows in his creative process, which starts with chronology. "I build a timeline for every major character from birth to the present," he explains. "Then I map historical events alongside them.
"Take the midnight curfew. One character lived through it, another heard about it as a student, another only knows it from their father's stories. That completely changes how they see the world."
At a time when every other release seems based on existing IP, tensions between original creators and those adapting their work can run high. Social media lights up with fans dissecting every change, ready to pounce on perceived deviations.
Yoon couldn't care less.
"Once I sell the rights, that's it," he says. "My work should already contain everything I wanted to express. Why expect the adaptation to fix what I couldn't?"
Director Kang Yoon-sung would call him occasionally about changes: Could they switch the order of certain scenes? How bald should this character be? "The director was incredibly considerate," Yoon laughs. "Always checking if he's overstepping."
But bigger projects come with bigger stakes. Watching his work become a major production, Yoon finds it hard to shake off the pressure. "What I loved about webtoons is their privacy," he says. "If I fail, it's not like the entire world collapses. But visiting TV production sets with 100-person crews -- these people have families to feed. If this fails, it's not just me who takes the hit."
So he consciously avoids thinking about the outcomes for now, trying to maintain the freewheeling spirit of his earlier days. "The more responsibility you shoulder, the easier it is to lose that lightness. I work hard to hang onto it."
Currently, Yoon is working on the third season of "Misaeng" and writing his first screenplay for another TV drama -- a 100-page treatment that reads like a novel. He's been living in a hanok in Boseong, South Jeolla Province, since last November, when the city offered him space to work. What started as a monthlong residency has now stretched to eight months.
The nihilist seems to have found his balance.
