What happened because of his disability 

Kim Jongmin was born as the youngest of three brothers in an ordinary family. When he was walking down the stairs of church all by himself at the age of three, he tumbled down the stairs. Due to the paralysis on his left side, his left arm, leg, eye, and even teeth are not normal, so he feels uncomfortable to move his left side. Even though he has no particular pains at ordinary times, the left side gets stiff whenever feeling nervous or cold. The greatest difficulty is his bent left hand. People rarely notice his disability.

Film that has come to him just like destiny 

Kim Jongmin was born in 1979. In 1986 when Seoul held the Asian Games, his father bought a video player. From a video rental shop in the village, he paid 1,000 won for renting a new video for three days for the first time. It was so much fun that he probably watched it no less than five times. He watched more than 800 films in a year. And naturally, he started feeling a desire to create films. 
After studying in a film academy, he entered the film industry for the first time at the age of 24. At that time, he was the first person who worked in the film industry as a disabled person. 
In the process of starting from the lowest position of production staffs and reaching the position of assistant director, he participated in the production of various works such as ‘Lovely Rivals’, ‘Finding Mr. Destiny’, and ‘Black Stone’. Since directing his first film ‘Bridging’ in ten years after starting his career in the film industry in 2012, he has continuously delivered stories he likes to talk about to the world as a disabled person through his films. 

Making disability films  

His directorial debut film ‘Bridging’ begins with a scene in which a hearing-impaired woman is bumped into a blind man in a subway station. This work includes Director Kim’s message of hoping to connect isolated disabled people. 
The work that made Kim Jongmin as a star director in the disability film industry, is a short film ‘What I Want to Say’ released in 2018. In 2019, this film was invited as the opening film of the Toronto Smartphone Film Festival. 

To shoot this film, he visited Yongin around 20 times by spending six hours on transfering public transportation five times both ways. Severely disabled people participated in this film as an actor and staff, and the outcome was also great. In the opportunity of submitting and screening it in the ‘Toronto Smartphone Film Festival’, there was a place for talking with the audiences. On the day when leaving for Toronto, the MBC News Desk Team directly came to the airport to have an interview with him, and his film was introduced in the broadcasting. 

I want to keep making films

Just as ‘Squid Game’ was prepared for ten years, he is also preparing feature films for ten years. They are still in his desk as he could not meet production companies yet.

Those two full-length scenarios sleeping in the drawer are ‘With Me’ describing the despair, love, and growth of a young man who unexpectedly became a disabled person one day, and ‘Perfect Gold’ in which a Lai Daihan woman and a Korean disabled man meet and love each other with the mediation of archery. With those scenarios, he is continuously knocking on the doors of many film companies 
He believes that the production of those films could be achieved one day if he does not give them up.

He thinks that this can come true if he diligently works every day. Even if it may take 10 years, 20 years, or 30 years from now on, he just wants to dream of what he wants to do without giving it up.

If the film-directing work can earn enough for a living, he wants to make films without a doubt.
 

Kim Jongmin
Male, brain lesion, film director, writer 
Dept. of Integrated Arts Healing(double major in Psychological Counseling) in Open Cyber University of Korea

2021 Won a prize with , , and in the Yongin Disability & Human Rights Film Festival 
2019 Invited to(selected as) the opening film in the Toronto International Smartphone Film Festival 
2018 Won the bronze prize with in the Korean Parallel Smartphone Film Festival 
2017 Won the Prime Minister Award in the Korea Lifelong Learning Awards  

2021  
2020  
2020 Christian web drama  
2020 Short film  

Essay (2022), Noble (2021)