Adapted from Hong Gildong Jeon, a classic Korean novel written during the Joseon Dynasty, A Story of Hong Gil-dong follows the illegitimate son of a nobleman, Hong Gil-dong, as he steals from corrupted aristocrats and the rich to return to the poor. Once kicked out of his family, he then embarks on a journey to help villagers fight against the magistrate.

Comprising 125,300 pictures drawn in one year by 400 people, the 1967 tale of justice and bravery became South Korea’s first-ever feature-length animation. Behind it all was director Shin, whose hand-made equipment and self-taught skills provided the landmark film its distinct aesthetic. Much like its literature counterpart, which was banned shortly after its 17th century publication and restored in 1905, the animated version was once lost, and eventually found in 2008, receiving a 4K digital restoration by the Korean Film Archive and the Image Power Station in 2021.

Shin Dong-hun (1927–2017) is a pioneer of Korean feature length animations. Starting his career in 1947 as a cartoonist for Steve’s Adventure, a comic book for kids, Shin moved on to produce numerous cartoons in daily newspapers and magazines. He is known for directing Hopi and Chadol Bawi (1966) and A Story of Hong Gil-dong (1967), for which he received the Best Culture Film Award at Dae Jong Film Awards in 1967, and later received the Achievement Award at the Seoul International Cartoon Animation Festival in 2001.