The Attorney | |
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Theatrical poster
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Hangul | |
Hanja | |
Revised Romanization | Byeonhoin |
McCune–Reischauer | Pyŏnhoin |
Directed by | Yang Woo-suk |
Produced by | Choi Jeong-ho Choi Jae-won |
Written by | Yang Woo-suk Yoon Hyeon-ho |
Starring |
Song Kang-ho Kim Young-ae Oh Dal-su Yim Si-wan Kwak Do-won |
Music by | Jo Yeong-wook |
Cinematography | Lee Tae-yoon |
Edited by |
Kim Sang-bum Kim Jae-bum |
Production
company |
withUs Film
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Distributed by | Next Entertainment World |
Release date
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Running time
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127 minutes |
Country | South Korea |
Language | Korean |
Box office | ₩82,880,761,300 |
The Attorney (Hangul: 변호인; RR: Byeonhoin) is a 2013 South Korean courtroom drama film directed and co-written by Yang Woo-suk, in his directorial debut (Yang was previously a film producer and webtoon author). With 11,375,954 tickets sold and a revenue of ₩82.9 billion, The Attorney became the 8th best-selling Korean film of all time, and the second highest-grossing Korean film of 2013.
It was inspired by the real-life "Burim case" of 1981, when during the authoritarian Chun Doo-hwan regime, 22 students, teachers and office workers who belonged to a book club were arrested without warrants on fabricated charges that they were North Korea sympathizers. Roh Moo-hyun, then a tax lawyer from Busan, formed a legal team with his allies (including Moon Jae-in and Kim Kwang-il) to defend the arrested individuals against the government. After the case, Roh became an influential human rights lawyer throughout the 1980s; he later entered politics and became the ninth president of South Korea.
In 1978, a former judge named Song moves to Busan to start his own law firm. The other lawyers look down on him because he had passed the bar-examination without ever going to university. Soon, however, he becomes rich from accepting the cases which his colleagues shun, even though they are the most profitable, such as real-estate and taxation. Meanwhile, a detective named Cha is given orders from the highest levels of leadership to purge Busan of commun-ists, even if it means resorting to fabrication. A medical officer from a nearby military base, Lt Yoon, is sent to oversee the health of the victims which Cha's agents will torture.