In the history of North Korean cinema, there is one film whose effect on the audience far surpassed the expectations of its creators. This is Hong Gil-dong (1986), a cinematic version of the legendary folklore story about adventures of the Korean Robin Hood. The authorship of Tale of Hong Gil-dong is ascribed to Hô Gyun, a prominent Korean intellectual (1569-1618). Hong Gil-dong, the film based on this tale, can be called a debut for the distinguished North Korean scenario writer Kim Se Ryun. In previous North Korean cinematography, Kim had acquired popularity as a scenarist of light didactic comedies about the minor shortcomings of socialist Korea, such as Hello (Annyeong Haseo, 1979). Hong Gil-dong was the first movie of Kim Se Ryun’s, and was based on historical and folkloristic motifs, and the debut was a definite success. The film is dynamic, entertaining and contained minimal of propaganda messages, and all this has turned Hong Gil-dong into a symbol of the changes North Korean mass culture experienced in the 1980s.

Hong Gil-dong was among the North Korean works of cinematography which – after many long years of abandoning Korean traditional themes and focusing exclusively on the promotion of Kim Il Sung – resorted again to Korean folklore. Yet there was a significant difference in their approach to the classics, which North Korean intellectuals demonstrated in the 1980s and in the earlier period of North Korean culture.