Song Kang-ho to star in ‘Taxi Driver’

Korean actor Song Kang-ho will play the lead role in an upcoming film about the Gwangju Uprising, tentatively titled “Taxi Driver,” production company The Lamp announced Tuesday.

The film is based on a real story by Jurgen Hinzpeter, a German journalist who filmed and reported the May 18 Democratic Uprising in Gwangju in 1980. It will depict the story of Hinzpeter and a taxi driver who helped him take the video recording of the massacre in Gwangju out of the city, evading the government troops.

Hinzpeter received the Song Kun-ho Journalism Prize in 2003 for his efforts and he mentioned the courageous taxi driver Kim Sa-bok then. 

Song Kang-ho (Yonhap)

Hinzpeter, who died on Jan. 25 at the age of 79, had left his nail clippings and hair when he visited Gwangju in 2005. The remains will be buried in a grave at Mangwol-dong, Gwangju, where victims of the brutal crackdown of the uprising are laid to rest, according to his wishes.

Song will play the main character taxi driver Kim, and actors Yu Hae-jin and Ryu Jun-yeol will also star in the film.

The movie will begin filming in May, and is scheduled for release next year.

By Jung Eun-jin (jej2403@heraldcorp.com)