Hur Bum-Wook, Director Of ‘Pig That Survived Foot-And-Mouth Disease,’ Dies At 43

South Korean independent animation filmmaker Hur Bum-wook, director of the acclaimed features On the White Planet and Pig That Survived Foot-And-Mouth Disease, died on July 28. He was 43.

According to local reports, Hur died while receiving medical treatment after an accidental fire on July 23. A local press screening of his latest film, scheduled for the following day, was canceled after the accident.

Born in Seoul in 1983, Hur initially dreamed of becoming a poet or novelist. He became interested in animation as a teenager after attending a special program of National Film Board of Canada shorts at the Seoul Animation Center and later studied animation at the Korean Academy of Film Arts.

Hur began his filmmaking career with the shorts Ordinary Meals (2009) and City of Good People (2011). His first feature, On the White Planet (2014), brought him international attention when it won the Grand Prix for Best Feature at the Holland Animation Film Festival. Set in a world where everyone is born with white skin, the stark black-and-white film follows a boy whose blue skin makes him a target of fear and discrimination.

Hur followed the feature with the 2019 short Galapagos, continuing to develop a body of work distinguished by bleak imagery, social allegory, and an unflinching inclusion of violence and alienation.

He spent a decade making his second feature, Pig That Survived Foot-And-Mouth Disease. Set against South Korea’s devastating 2010 foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, the film begins with a pig escaping from a mass burial pit. Dreaming of becoming human, the animal crosses paths with a young man fleeing military violence who wants to abandon his humanity and become a beast.

The film examines the brutality humans inflict on animals and one another, using the two characters’ opposing transformations to question what being human actually means. Hur wrote, directed, edited, and produced the film.

Pig That Survived Foot-And-Mouth Disease was selected for 35 international festivals and was nominated at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. It won best feature at the Seoul Independent Film Festival, the first animated feature to receive that honor, and earned a special mention at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival. The film opened in 11 Japanese theaters back in May.

“I wanted to ask audiences a fundamental question about what it truly means to be human,” the director said after the Asia Pacific Screen Awards nomination.

Its South Korean theatrical release had been scheduled for August 5 but has been postponed. Distributor Indiestory said that a new release date will be announced after Hur’s family and the film’s production team have had time to grieve.

In a memorial statement, the Seoul Independent Film Festival remembered Hur as a filmmaker who demonstrated “the unyielding spirit and adventurous drive of Korean animation through every work he made.”