'The President's Last Bang' had its screen go black — now 'The Assassin' faces protests outside an actor's home

Lead actor Yoo Hae-jin's ad comments blocked

Busan film festival events canceled in succession

2005: 'The President's Last Bang' forced into black-screen release

2026: protests now reach an actor's private residence

A promotional image for the film "The Assassin" [Provided by HIVE MEDIAcorp]

The backlash surrounding "The Assassin" has spilled far beyond a debate about the film itself. Criticism of the work has escalated into personal attacks on cast members and crew, the exposure of private information, and organized pressure on their livelihoods — developments that have drawn deep concern from the film industry.

This is not the first time a dramatization of historical events has triggered fierce social fallout. What sets the controversy over "The Assassin" in 2026 apart, however, is how broadly the battleground has expanded — from SNS and online content to advertisers, film festivals, and now the private home of a lead actor.

From courtrooms to protests outside an actor's home: the faction-film controversy of 2026

What makes the controversy over "The Assassin" particularly alarming is that the actors themselves have become the primary targets.

Burger King and Kiwoom Securities, both brands that actor Yoo Hae-jin — who plays the lead role of Cheolgu — has endorsed, have faced a wave of complaints tied to the film's controversy. Burger King disabled comments on some of its advertising posts featuring Yoo, while Kiwoom Securities ended its advertising campaign with him. Kiwoom Securities said the campaign concluded because the contract had run its course, making it difficult to draw a direct causal link between the online pressure and the decision.

The controversy reached the actor's own home. The conservative civic group Shin Jayunyeondae had announced plans to hold a rally outside Yoo's residence, and on Sunday protesters gathered on the sidewalk in front of his home in Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, to denounce the film. Police deployed riot units to the scene to prevent clashes. Demonstrators called for the film to be pulled from theaters and demanded apologies from the cast and crew. That a protest has now encroached on an actor's private living space illustrates how a dispute over a creative work has migrated into the daily lives of those who made it — and how precarious the situation has become.

A promotional poster for "The Assassin" displayed at a movie theater in Seoul [Yonhap]

The campaign against individual cast members has also disrupted film industry events. At the production company's request, the cast's appearance at the opening ceremony of the 31st Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) was canceled, as was an outdoor stage greeting scheduled for Wednesday. Lee Min-ho's talk program "Actors House" had earlier been called off as well. The production company said the decisions were made in light of the situation surrounding the film and out of concern for the safety of audiences and attendees. Forty-nine scheduled stage greetings at theaters in Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Busan from Saturday through Monday were also canceled entirely.

Film critics have not been spared either. A review of "The Assassin" on the program "B tv Lee Dong-jin's Paiakia," featuring critic Lee Dong-jin, was made private on Tuesday. Lee said he was subsequently notified by the production team that the video was being taken down because the controversy surrounding the film was ongoing. He drew a line, saying he had no intention of retracting his critical assessment or issuing an apology.

Faction films dealing with modern and contemporary history have repeatedly generated conflict — a reflection of the unresolved nature of that history and the living weight of collective memory.

Within the film industry, the prevailing view is that Korean modern history remains an arena where surviving bereaved families, eyewitnesses of the era, and competing political and social positions on historical interpretation are still sharply at odds. When mass media dramatically reconstructs events around which no social consensus has formed, assessments of the work tend to devolve into ideological battles over historical perspective and identity.

The Korean Film Producers Guild said in a statement that while criticism of a film must be respected as an exercise of free expression, "distributing personal information about participants and their families, or threatening their livelihoods, clearly exceeds the bounds of legitimate criticism." The Korean Society of Cinematographers also warned that threats directed at creators "will ultimately lead to self-censorship across the cultural sector."

A still from the film "The President's Last Bang" [Provided by MKB and MK Pictures]

A history of screen controversies: from 'Silmido' to 'The President's Last Bang'

Attempts to fill the gaps of unrecorded history with imagination have long moved between courtrooms and public squares.

The most emblematic precedent is director Im Sang-soo's "The President's Last Bang" (2005), a black comedy reconstructing the Oct. 26, 1979 assassination of President Park Chung-hee.

Park Ji-man, the son of the late president, filed for an injunction to block the film's release. The court declined to ban the film outright but ordered the removal of three segments of actual documentary footage — totaling about three minutes and 50 seconds — depicting the Busan-Masan protests, Park's state funeral, and a memorial scene involving Cardinal Kim Su-hwan. The court found that the documentary footage lent an air of authenticity to the film's fictional framing, risking confusion among viewers about what was real history. The production company responded by replacing the excised segments with silent black screens — an unprecedented step at the time. A first-instance ruling in 2006 ordered 100 million won ($73,600) in damages; the case was settled at Seoul High Court in 2008 on the condition that a disclaimer identifying the work as fiction be added and that an uncut version be screened.

Judicial standards for freedom of expression were further refined through the KBS drama series "Seoul 1945" and the film "Silmido" (2003). "Silmido" was sued for depicting Unit 684 members as death-row convicts, but the Supreme Court dismissed the case, acknowledging that the facts were difficult to ascertain at the time of production. "Seoul 1945" was also acquitted by the Supreme Court in 2010, which ruled that the work's predominantly fictional nature, driven by imaginary characters, made it difficult to regard as a statement of false fact. By contrast, "Father's War" (2017), which dealt with the disputed 1998 death of Lt. Kim Hun at the Joint Security Area in Panmunjeom, had its injunction application dismissed by the Supreme Court on the grounds that adaptation is permissible as long as it does not constitute malicious expression — yet the film never reached screens after production was halted in the face of fierce opposition from the bereaved family.

"In the case of 'The President's Last Bang' in 2005, there was fierce legal argument and eventual compromise in court over whether the documentary footage could mislead viewers," one industry insider said. "With 'The Assassin' in 2026, private sanctions — protests outside an actor's home and the cancellation of events — are running ahead of any legal judgment. I worry that public discourse has less patience and tolerance now than it did 21 years ago."

shee@heraldcorp.com