Yeon Sang-ho: South Korea’s zombie king tells us the secret to K-horror’s success

Z ombie movies aren’t supposed to make you cry.

And yet in Yeon Sang-ho’s breakout live-action debut Train To Busan , about a young workaholic father (played by Gong Yoo) protecting his young daughter (Kim Su-an) from a national outbreak on a packed train, tears flowed as much as blood.

It was undeniably Train To Busan ’s moving emotional content that helped it stand out from the flesh-eating crowd.

Read more: The best films of 2026… so far! Acclaimed South Korean auteur Yeon Sang-ho has made all sorts of films to date, from grim animated features to superhero flicks, but it was Train To Busan – which premiered to raves at Cannes Film Festival 2016 – that put him on a pedestal with countrymen Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho and Na Hong-jin.

With new K-horror Colony , he’s returning for his fourth rodeo among the living dead.

Importantly, Colony isn’t tied to the Train To Busan universe, as were the animated prequel Seoul Station (2016) and stand-alone sequel Peninsula (2020).

Nevertheless, it is another expertly made mix of bodily carnage, muscular action and unexpected sentimentality.

Yeon Sang-ho at Cannes Film Festival 2026 in France.

CREDIT: Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images Talking to NME via Zoom from his home country, the director thinks he knows why zombies have ruled horror for well over two decades now as the mainstream monster of choice: “Even as time changes, [zombie movies] always represent the fear we experience at that specific moment.

That is why they always feel very fresh.” In our post-pandemic world, it’s hard not to agree.

Yeon’s films are almost eerily prescient in their depictions of society riven by paranoia and life-threatening disease.

During politically fraught times, survival horror taps into something both primal and contemporary that sparkly vampires and ghosts simply cannot.

Colony – about a biotech terrorist unleashing a pathogen at a science conference in order to improve humanity – is, like The Towering Inferno meets Die Hard (with zombies).

The vast majority of the action – and this film is action-packed to the rafters – takes place in a commercial tower block, with survivors banding together to outwit not just the hordes of drooling ghouls but also Koo Kyo-hwan’s maniacal yet perversely utopian baddie.