Bong Joon-ho makes TIME's list of 100 most influential people

Director Bong Joon-ho has been included on the TIME 100 list of the world's most influential people of 2020. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

The influential magazine TIME included star Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho on its 2020 list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

The magazine announced the list on Wednesday with the director of the Oscar-winning film “Parasite” (2019) chosen in the artists section.

“This is the filmmaker who, this year, has risen into the 2020 vision of the entire cine-passionate planet like a new sun,” wrote Tilda Swinton on Bong for TIME.

“Whip-smart, highly skilled, supremely cine-literate, exuberant, irreverent, self-determining, deeply romantic, with a voracious delight in the absurd, highly principled, precision-tuned, compassionate to the last: His films have always been all this. It just seems to be time for the world to catch up.”

With his genre-bending film “Parasite,” director Bong has achieved countless history-making feats, bringing home prestigious awards including Oscars, the Palme d’Or and the Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

Along with Bong, Jeong Eun-kyeong, commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), also made the list in the leaders category.

President Moon Jae-in contributed to TIME on Jeong’s work and said that she “has led the nation’s antivirus efforts to success by candidly interacting with the public, based on the principles of openness, transparency and democracy.”

BY YIM SEUNG-HYE [sharon@joongang.co.kr]