Director Park Chan-wook's new film "No Other Choice," which opened on Sept. 24, has drawn 2.69 million cumulative moviegoers, and paper companies that served as filming locations are drawing attention.
In particular, Kukil Paper, identified as one of the filming sites, is drawing interest over how it was chosen because the second-generation owner was accused of using nonpublic information to avoid losses and had stock transactions halted for two years.
According to the paper industry and film industry on the 21st, the paper company selected as a filming location for the movie "No Other Choice," along with Hankuk Paper, was Kukil Paper. "No Other Choice" tells the story of Man-su (Lee Byung-hun), a paper expert with 25 years of experience, who suddenly receives a layoff notice amid workforce cuts in the paper industry and seeks reemployment.
Kukil Paper makes industrial paper and specialty paper such as thin paper and cigarette packaging stock. As part of business diversification in 2018, it moved into graphene development and mass production and established "Kukil Graphene," and news of a collaboration with Google sent its share price up eightfold.
However, in March 2023, due to poor results, Kukil Paper failed to repay 23 billion won in principal and interest on private bonds and filed for rehabilitation proceedings. In the process, former Kukil Paper CEO Choi Woo-sik was indicted and detained by prosecutors on charges of using nonpublic information to sell a large volume of shares just before the corporate rehabilitation filing, avoiding losses of 7.4 billion won.
Afterward, it received a "going concern uncertainty" opinion from an external auditor, and as allegations of breach of trust by management surfaced, it became subject to a substantive review for delisting and its transactions were suspended for about two years.
Even so, the reason Kukil Paper was chosen as a filming site was other paper companies' "refusals." A source in the paper industry said, "Since the film deals with the paper industry, filming proposals went to various paper corporations, but most refused due to the burden of it being handled in a negative context such as industrial decline and job cuts," adding, "In the end, I understand that Kukil Paper was chosen as the filming site."
The need to disclose the inside of the plant to outsiders and to suspend plant operations during the filming period also weighed on companies. Another paper industry official explained, "If filming were to proceed, in addition to revealing the inside of the plant, there is the aspect of having to stop plant operations, so we declined the filming proposal."
Meanwhile, some scenes were also filmed at Hankuk Paper's Onsan plant, an affiliate of Haesung Group. Founded in 1984, Hankuk Paper is a paper corporation that produces printing paper, thermal paper, and industrial specialty paper. Hankuk Paper CEO An Jae-ho said, "With this film sponsorship, we wanted to convey the message that 'the paper industry is not in decline but on a path of evolution.'"