Jang Joon-hwan was born in 1970. He attended Sungkyunkwan University, graduating in English literature. In 2001 he made his mark with his first short film Imagine (1995), winning numerous awards and arousing the interest of specialized critics. Save the Green Planet is his first feature film.
Critique
In the fight for human rights and democracy, a single spark can start a fire. This could be the simple description of "1987: When the Day Comes", the political thriller that reconstructs real events that happened in 1987. The death of a university student at the hands of the police is reminiscent of the massacre that took place in 1980 in Gwangju and shows the discontent of the younger generation towards the dictatorial and tyrannical system of that period in Korean history. The narrative moves on several fronts without ever being disconnected or detached from the main story, the protagonists meet and cross their lives even though they never see each other and this is how a prosecutor, a journalist, a jailer, and university students fight for the truth and to do justice to Park Jong-chul and his family and with it to the entire Korean people subjugated by the dictatorial regime of Chun Doo-hwan. A phenomenal and extremely choral cast, despite the fact that the individual stories never intersect, is the icing on the cake of an already excellent film.
