MAN IN HANBOK

SYNOPSIS Jin-seok, a television producer working on a documentary about Peter Paul Rubens’ painting "A Man in Korean Costume", comes across an old journal while conducting research. It is handed to him by Elena, an Italian student studying in Korea. To his astonishment, the journal contains traces of a design for "Bicha", a flying machine from the Joseon Dynasty, resembling Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine sketches, as well as a drawing almost identical to Rubens’ "A Man in Korean Costume". Jin-seok asks his friend Kang-bae, a scholar of Old Korean and classical texts, to translate the journal. Kang-bae soon discovers that its owner was none other than Jang Yeong-sil, the greatest scientist of the Joseon Dynasty. Together, the two set out to uncover the hidden connections between Rubens’ painting, Jang Yeong-sil, Bicha, and Leonardo da Vinci’s flying machine designs. As they draw closer to the truth, the story of Yeong-sil’s life gradually comes into sharper focus. Yet the closer they get to the answers, the more their own lives begin to tremble under the weight of a profound and unsettling truth. What was Jang Yeong-sil’s dream, preserved in the pages of his journal? And what secrets were hidden within his life?