10 years later, the director of Korea's first great zombie movie reveals why it became a global sensation

(and why the sequel failed to repeat that success) Yeon Sang-ho still remembers what was going through his head as he prepared to make Korea's first commercial zombie movie. "I remember when we were first planning in pre-production, I was like, 'I want you to be able to cry when you watch this film,'" Yeon tells Polygon. The result was Train to Busan, a breakout hit for South Korean cinema that became a global sensation and probably made a lot of people cry with its grounded, gritty portrayal of a zombie outbreak onboard a train headed south from Seoul to Busan. A decade after its 2016 premiere, Train to Busan is pulling back into theaters on Aug. 14, and to mark the occasion, Polygon hopped on a zoom with Yeon to discuss how he made a zombie movie for audiences who weren't familiar with the genre, why the sequel didn't achieve the same success, and whether he ever plans to complete the trilogy. The biggest challenge facing Train to Busan early on was that there was no built-in audience for zombie horror in Korea. Yeon knew the genre had potential, but he wasn't taking any chances. After directing a pair of animated features earlier in the 2010s, this was his chance for a live-acti