Park Ji-hoon Makes History With Dual Nominations at the 24th Directors’ Choice Awards

The 24th Directors’ Choice Awards (Directorscutt Awards) is set to take place on May 19, 2026, with nominees now officially announced across 13 categories covering both film and series. The ceremony, hosted by the Directors Guild of Korea (DGK), is one of the most distinctive awards shows in South Korean entertainment — because every nominee and winner is selected entirely by working film directors, with no input from corporate sponsors, critics, or public voting.

This year’s nominations cover productions released between April 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026, and the list reveals several notable names and a few surprises, including actor Park Ji-hoon earning the rare distinction of being nominated in both the film and series categories in the same year.

How the Directors’ Choice Awards Works

For those unfamiliar with the Directorscutt Awards, the ceremony stands apart from the major Korean entertainment awards season for one key reason: it is voted on entirely by directors. Members of the DGK — which represents professional film directors working in South Korea — cast ballots to determine both who gets nominated and who ultimately wins. There is no audience vote, no streaming data, no box office threshold. Just directors, deciding which of their peers and which of their collaborators made the most significant work in a given year.

That structure gives the awards a particular credibility within the film industry. A nomination here carries the weight of a genuine professional endorsement. Winning one means your fellow directors watched your film and judged it the most deserving in its category.

Film Section Nominees

The Best Director category in the film section features five of the year’s most prominent Korean filmmakers. Park Chan-wook (There’s Nothing We Can Do) leads a list that also includes Yeon Sang-ho (Face), Yoon Ga-eun (Rulers of the World), Lee Ran-hee (Third Grade Second Semester), and Jang Hang-jun (The Man Who Lives with the King). The range of styles represented — from Park Chan-wook’s formal precision to Yeon Sang-ho’s genre intensity to Yoon Ga-eun’s humanist sensibility — reflects a strong year for Korean cinema across multiple registers.

The Best New Director category includes Kim Bo-seul (Square), Kim Soo-jin (Noise), Park Jun-ho (3670), Jang Seong-ho (King of Kings), and Hwang Seul-gi (Hong-i) — five first-time or early-career filmmakers whose work clearly resonated with their more established colleagues. Nomination in this category, decided by veteran directors, carries genuine professional validation.

The Best Screenplay category features a striking collaborative credit: the script for There’s Nothing We Can Do is attributed to Park Chan-wook, Lee Gyeong-mi, Don McKellar, and Lee Ja-hye — a cross-cultural writing team that reflects the film’s international production background. They compete against Yeon Sang-ho for Face, Yoon Ga-eun for Rulers of the World, Lee Ran-hee for Third Grade Second Semester, and the team of Jang Hang-jun and Hwang Seong-gu for The Man Who Lives with the King.

Park Ji-hoon’s Historic Double Nomination

Among the individual performer nominations, the most discussed is Park Ji-hoon, the actor and former Wanna One member who has been quietly building one of the most interesting post-idol careers in South Korean entertainment. This year, Park Ji-hoon earned nominations in both the film section and the series section — a double recognition that signals how consistently impressive his recent output has been across different formats and genres.

Park Ji-hoon made his acting debut following Wanna One’s disbandment in 2019 and has since worked steadily across both streaming and theatrical releases. Receiving recognition from directors — arguably the most demanding and knowledgeable evaluators an actor can face — in both categories simultaneously is a significant professional milestone.

The Vision Award and Independent Film Recognition

One of the most meaningful categories at the Directorscutt Awards is the Vision Award, which functions as the ceremony’s designation for independent film. Winning the Vision Award doesn’t just recognize quality — it signals that the Korean film director community is actively watching and valuing work made outside the mainstream studio pipeline. For independent filmmakers in South Korea, a nomination here can meaningfully shift their access to future funding and distribution.

What This Year’s Nominees Say About Korean Cinema

Looking across the full nominee list, a few things stand out. Park Chan-wook’s presence in multiple categories confirms that There’s Nothing We Can Do is having a strong awards season — the film, his first since Decision to Leave, has been one of the most discussed Korean productions of the past year and a half. Yeon Sang-ho’s continued recognition from his director colleagues is also notable; despite often working in genre territory that doesn’t always earn critical prestige, his peers clearly respect his craft.

The strong showing in the new director category is perhaps the most encouraging sign overall. That five first-time or early-career directors made enough of an impression to earn recognition from the DGK membership suggests the pipeline of Korean filmmaking talent is genuinely healthy going into the second half of the decade.

The Ceremony on May 19

The 24th Directors’ Choice Awards ceremony takes place on May 19, 2026. Winners will be announced across all 13 categories, and given the breadth and quality of this year’s nominees, there are genuine questions about nearly every category. Park Chan-wook is likely the frontrunner in several film categories, but the DGK’s history of surprising consensus picks means nothing is certain. For fans of Korean film and series, the ceremony is worth watching closely — the directors have made clear that 2025–2026 was a strong creative year, and the winners will help define how that period is remembered.