On October 8, the 14th Pusan International Film Festival, or PIFF, opened in Busan. (Yes, the city takes a different official spelling than the film festival. Blame inconsistent Romanization.)

As the largest film festival in Korea, it drew a large list of attendees, as you can see from the long list of red-carpet walkers. It was definitely a star-studded opening night, and even included one familiar Hollywood face (Josh Hartnett).

This year’s PIFF features its largest lineup to date, screening 355 films from 70 countries, and closes on the 16th.

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Sunwoo Sun (”Queen of Housewives”), Lee Shi-young (”Boys Before Flowers”)

For anyone who reads a famous star’s profile online and then feels bad about yourself — psst! They’re usually fake. Or, let’s say, “altered” from strict reality.

For instance, not every Korean actress weighs less than 50kg. (Gasp, I know!) I’m sure a large majority of them do, but it is not a universal truth that all actresses stop gaining weight (or eating) when they hit 50kg. Hyori may be the only one who admits to weighing more than 50kg, but she’s not the only one who actually does.

Oh yeah, and as we know from looking at profiles of ladies who are famously petite (Song Hye-gyo, Kim Tae-hee), those heights are often exaggerated as well. Think of it like a driver’s license. Or penis size. Everyone (or most people) takes a little off the number here, and adds a little there.

So it’s no surprise that a little fudging goes on about age, as the following article points out. The trend has been highlighted by the public admissions of a couple new actresses that their initial ages were shaved to make them more marketable, like Queen of Housewives’s Sunwoo Sun and We Got Married’s Lee Shi-young.

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In stark contrast with its star-studded opening night, the 13th Pusan International Film Awards closed after nine days with a night much lacking in glitz or stars.

Maybe it was just a lackluster year, or maybe Choi Jin-shil’s untimely death cast a pall over opening night, or maybe celebrities went up to Seoul to pay their respects and didn’t return to Busan. In any case, stars were few and far between at the closing ceremony on the 10th.

In fact, Yeh Ji-won (Old Miss Diaries, looking gorgeous all festival long) and Jo Jae-hyun (New Heart), above, were two of only a very few famous faces to walk the red carpet. (The only other top names present were Hyun Bin and Lee Bo-young, and even then I’m not sure I’d call them A-list. Maybe B+.)

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On October 5, the short film Boy Meets Boy held an open discussion at the Pusan International Film Festival with its stars Kim Hye-sung (Jenny, Juno) and Yeh Ji-won (Mixed-up Investigative Agency) and director Kim Jo Kwang Su.

I remember being intrigued when I first heard about Boy Meets Boy [소년, 소년을 만나다], which marks Kim Hye-sung’s departure from his family-friendly image in Unstoppable High Kick. His early career had been marked by an emphasis on his pretty face more than anything (he rose to fame as an internet uljjang with thousands of fans, got a couple movies, and then the hit sitcom High Kick), but he seems to have a grounded perspective of his fame (as he explained in the interview linked above).

Not only is he portraying half of a gay romance in the short film, the narrative is expressed without dialogue — the director opted instead to tell the story mostly in the characters’ gazes.

More photos and discussion points from the event >>

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I foresee this may start getting repetitive, but here’s another red carpet from the Pusan International Film Festival (we saw opening night’s red carpet yesterday).

This time, the event was the Asian Pacific Actors Network (APAN) Star Road. It seemed some of the stars who were at opening night were noticeably absent at this event, most likely because they traveled back to Seoul to pay their respects to Choi Jin-shil.

Pics beyond the jump.

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