The late actor Ahn Sung-ki.

As the funeral for the late actor Ahn Sung-ki is held on the 9th, the Korean Film Archive (Director Kim Hong-jun, hereinafter ‘the Archive’) is organizing an online memorial retrospective in his honor.

An online memorial retrospective gathering the late Ahn Sung-ki’s representative works will be held via the YouTube ‘Korean Classic Film’ channel. Planned to look back on the cinematic trajectory of Ahn Sung-ki, who left a deep imprint on the history of Korean cinema, the program seeks to remember his screen image together with audiences.

Operated by the Korean Film Archive, the ‘Korean Classic Film’ channel is an official YouTube channel that continuously releases Korean films following film digitization and restoration. About 230 titles are currently available, and it has roughly 1 million subscribers. Through this channel, the Archive has enhanced access to classic films and shared the value of its holdings with the public. For this online memorial, 10 major works starring Ahn Sung-ki have been selected for release. The lineup includes ‘Mandala’ (1981), ‘A Small Ball Shot by a Dwarf’ (1981), ‘People of Kkobang Neighborhood’ (1982), ‘Whale Hunting’ (1984), ‘Our Joyful Young Days’ (1987), ‘Gagman’ (1988), ‘The Age of Success’ (1988), ‘Nambugun’ (1990), ‘The Taebaek Mountains’ (1994), and ‘Festival’ (1996), allowing viewers to revisit his roles in Korean cinema, especially from the 1980s. The online memorial can be viewed via a playlist within the YouTube ‘Korean Classic Film’ channel.

Alongside the online memorial, the Archive has released on its institutional YouTube channel a Korean Classic Film video essay titled ‘Our Joyful Young Days and Ahn Sung-ki’ that looks back on the actor’s cinematic life. Based on its holdings, the Archive has produced a series of video essays that newly spotlight Korean classic films, having presented works in 2022 on actor Kim Seung-ho and in 2023 on actor Eom Aeng-ran and voice actor Ko Eun-jeong. A video essay is a format that reconstructs a film’s images and sounds to create a new audiovisual narrative, offering another way to utilize archival materials.

Released as the third installment in 2026, this video essay is structured around Ahn Sung-ki, who has long stood as the face of Korean film history. Rather than arranging his filmography chronologically, the piece loosely connects images within the films through objects and places to retrace the actor’s varied moments. In doing so, audiences quietly follow his screen images as a romantic figure, a diligent young man, and a devoted father, among others. The video essay can be found on the official YouTube channel of the Korean Film Archive.

Through this online memorial and video essay, the Archive aims once more to reflect on the figure of actor Ahn Sung-ki, who for many years met audiences through the screen. Going forward, the Archive will continue to document and share the people and works of Korean cinema based on its collections.

Meanwhile, the late Ahn Sung-ki, who debuted as a child actor in 1957 and worked for decades at the center of Korean cinema, passed away on the 5th.