Updates on the lost Korean animation Empress Chung(2005).
May 3, 2021 23:39:00 GMT
platypus, alexmajora, and 3 more like this
Post by trican on May 3, 2021 23:39:00 GMT
As a person who only recently found out about this community, I was surprised to learn about Empress Chung mentioned in blameitonjorge's video. The film came out around the time I moved to the US from S. Korea so I don't have any clear memory about it but I'm close to 100% sure I watched some of the trailers back then and I was surprised to hear that the media is currently lost. I did some bit more digging and these are my discoveries:
So right off the bat, this is what I found,
In this blog ran by the Korean Ministry of Unification, they have a post from 2017 detailing the significance of Empress Chung.
![]()
A comment from the blog post asks "Where can I see this movie??" and the Korea Creative Content Agency(KCCA) replies "You can view it in our animation screening page of our website" (bit condensed but basically what was being said). This is from 7/19/2017. However, comments below complain that the video doesn't work anymore and that they should fix it. This is from 6/1/2019. From this we can infer that the video became unavailable between the two dates.
So you can technically still enter the page that the KCCA comment mentions. It looks like this.
Looks pretty normal but once you press 동영상바로보기(Watch video) button,
So what the new pop up says is that you need to download Windows Media Player or need a Windows Media Player plugin to watch the video. The problem is, I already have WMP on my computer and trying to download the plug in results in....
Yep, doesn't open.
port25.technet.com/videos/downloads/wmpfirefoxplugin.exe
This is the link so I tried downloading windows media player plugin for Firefox and yeah that didn't yield much so one dead end.
So the only people who can have some definite answers to why the page is malfunctioning is the KCCA and thankfully they have a 1:1 discussion page that does not require you to identify yourself meaning you need a Korean phone number which I don't have. I asked basically if they can fix the site because lots of people are interested in this lost media and there's no where else to watch it currently.
KCCA kindly replied almost immediately. Basically the reply reads, 'we don't have any rights to the film so we cannot do much else. sorry.' Pretty much a definite dead end on the KCCA front.
It's likely the current Empress Chung page on the KCCA is something you aren't supposed to access in normal circumstances due to all the normal links being destroyed but somehow still remains on their server when you google hard enough with the right keywords. This happened between 2017.7.19~2019.6.1 probably due to KCCA no longer having any rights to these animations though these are all pretty much guesses without any real documentary evidence.
Before doing the aforementioned digging with the KCCA's website, I found an article that mentions the film did screen during April 16-20, 2019 at Pyongchang International Peace Film Festival(PIPFF).
Going on their webpage for the 2019 screening also confirms that Empress Chung has been screened that year.
The Lost Media Wiki mentions this children's book and the above link shows some pages from the book, the table of contents and some other details.
The book is still available for purchase and it's likely we can infer decently detailed plot of the film and access a lot of screenshots from this book through the very end of the story judging by the table of contents where the last one states that "Chung becomes an Empress" likely how the film ends as well. If the film never turns up we can at least acquire this as reference of sorts.
www.kmdb.or.kr/db/kor/detail/movie/K/06627/own/videoData#
If you enter the link you can see that there are 6 types of video data of Empress Chung held by the Korean Film Archive 4 of which is film reel and 2 of which is "tape".
Apparently they are NTSC tapes and PAL tapes but both of them are held by Video Preservation Room and (unfortunately) not accessible by the public.
Building off of OCG's post from 2019, OCG also mentions some of what I already mentioned (I found out the post after I wrote the entire piece so redundancy is kinda expected...) such as it being aired on international film festivals or that the Korean Film Archive current does own various film reels of the animation and therefore is not technically "lost."
However, the new discovery regarding the KCCA's website suggests that it didn't vanish technically until some point between 2017-2019 where the KCCA lost the rights regarding the film and made the website, the only public access to the film after 2005, defunct and thereby making the film inaccessible and "lost." This differs heavily from the Lost Media Wiki's article on the subject that suggests that the film became inaccessible except for some screenshots, trailer and picture books right after the 2005 release of the film.
The Korean Film Archive also states that the stored NTSC tapes and PAL tapes are not for public viewing either so, unless the film has some kind of a public release whether it's a DVD or being uploaded to YouTube by official means, there's no real ways of watching it currently. Only other way I can think of is someone taping the film during the original 2005 release or the 2019 screening and uploading it somewhere? The film is regarded pretty significantly by the S. Korea government (as you can see from the blog post from 2017) due to it's nature of being a united Korean production so I imagine an official government release of the film in one of it's anniversary as a symbol of renewed peace in the peninsula or something doesn't seem too outlandish but yeah we are currently locked out of watching this.
So that concludes my updates on Empress Chung(2005). More than you would ever like to know about the current state of the film.
P.S. Also, I made a reddit post that didn't get much notice yesterday that kind of serves as a rough draft of the current version if you want to take a look too. They don't differ much substance-wise but I wrote it before I found out about OCG's post so the 'So.....what?' part differs heavily.
- The film was available to watch publicly until 2017.7.19~2019.6.1
So right off the bat, this is what I found,
In this blog ran by the Korean Ministry of Unification, they have a post from 2017 detailing the significance of Empress Chung.
A comment from the blog post asks "Where can I see this movie??" and the Korea Creative Content Agency(KCCA) replies "You can view it in our animation screening page of our website" (bit condensed but basically what was being said). This is from 7/19/2017. However, comments below complain that the video doesn't work anymore and that they should fix it. This is from 6/1/2019. From this we can infer that the video became unavailable between the two dates.
- The website is still accessible, but the video is not.
So you can technically still enter the page that the KCCA comment mentions. It looks like this.
Looks pretty normal but once you press 동영상바로보기(Watch video) button,
So what the new pop up says is that you need to download Windows Media Player or need a Windows Media Player plugin to watch the video. The problem is, I already have WMP on my computer and trying to download the plug in results in....
Yep, doesn't open.
port25.technet.com/videos/downloads/wmpfirefoxplugin.exe
This is the link so I tried downloading windows media player plugin for Firefox and yeah that didn't yield much so one dead end.
- I tried contacting KCCA but....
So the only people who can have some definite answers to why the page is malfunctioning is the KCCA and thankfully they have a 1:1 discussion page that does not require you to identify yourself meaning you need a Korean phone number which I don't have. I asked basically if they can fix the site because lots of people are interested in this lost media and there's no where else to watch it currently.
KCCA kindly replied almost immediately. Basically the reply reads, 'we don't have any rights to the film so we cannot do much else. sorry.' Pretty much a definite dead end on the KCCA front.
It's likely the current Empress Chung page on the KCCA is something you aren't supposed to access in normal circumstances due to all the normal links being destroyed but somehow still remains on their server when you google hard enough with the right keywords. This happened between 2017.7.19~2019.6.1 probably due to KCCA no longer having any rights to these animations though these are all pretty much guesses without any real documentary evidence.
- The film did screen between April 16-20, 2019 at a Korean film festival.
Before doing the aforementioned digging with the KCCA's website, I found an article that mentions the film did screen during April 16-20, 2019 at Pyongchang International Peace Film Festival(PIPFF).
Going on their webpage for the 2019 screening also confirms that Empress Chung has been screened that year.
- Some more details regarding the children's book based on Empress Chung
The Lost Media Wiki mentions this children's book and the above link shows some pages from the book, the table of contents and some other details.
The book is still available for purchase and it's likely we can infer decently detailed plot of the film and access a lot of screenshots from this book through the very end of the story judging by the table of contents where the last one states that "Chung becomes an Empress" likely how the film ends as well. If the film never turns up we can at least acquire this as reference of sorts.
- The film is almost definitely preserved by the Korean Film Archive.
www.kmdb.or.kr/db/kor/detail/movie/K/06627/own/videoData#
If you enter the link you can see that there are 6 types of video data of Empress Chung held by the Korean Film Archive 4 of which is film reel and 2 of which is "tape".
Apparently they are NTSC tapes and PAL tapes but both of them are held by Video Preservation Room and (unfortunately) not accessible by the public.
- An excerpt of an article kept by the KCCA?
- So....what?
Building off of OCG's post from 2019, OCG also mentions some of what I already mentioned (I found out the post after I wrote the entire piece so redundancy is kinda expected...) such as it being aired on international film festivals or that the Korean Film Archive current does own various film reels of the animation and therefore is not technically "lost."
However, the new discovery regarding the KCCA's website suggests that it didn't vanish technically until some point between 2017-2019 where the KCCA lost the rights regarding the film and made the website, the only public access to the film after 2005, defunct and thereby making the film inaccessible and "lost." This differs heavily from the Lost Media Wiki's article on the subject that suggests that the film became inaccessible except for some screenshots, trailer and picture books right after the 2005 release of the film.
The Korean Film Archive also states that the stored NTSC tapes and PAL tapes are not for public viewing either so, unless the film has some kind of a public release whether it's a DVD or being uploaded to YouTube by official means, there's no real ways of watching it currently. Only other way I can think of is someone taping the film during the original 2005 release or the 2019 screening and uploading it somewhere? The film is regarded pretty significantly by the S. Korea government (as you can see from the blog post from 2017) due to it's nature of being a united Korean production so I imagine an official government release of the film in one of it's anniversary as a symbol of renewed peace in the peninsula or something doesn't seem too outlandish but yeah we are currently locked out of watching this.
So that concludes my updates on Empress Chung(2005). More than you would ever like to know about the current state of the film.
P.S. Also, I made a reddit post that didn't get much notice yesterday that kind of serves as a rough draft of the current version if you want to take a look too. They don't differ much substance-wise but I wrote it before I found out about OCG's post so the 'So.....what?' part differs heavily.
