astoundingbeyondbelief:

Yesterday I received Kino Lorber’s Yongary, Monster from the Deep Blu-Ray in the mail, and wasted little time in putting on the audio commentary. (Yes, I’m aware yesterday was a Sunday. I was confused too.) Here’s a few of the interesting facts Steve Ryfle and Kim Song-ho had to share:

• Yongary’s name is a combination of “yong” (dragon) and “Pulgasari” (who’s a real Korean legend).
• The budget was 3 to 4 times that of the average South Korean film - ₩
  30 million ($170,000).
• Yongary was one of the few South Korean movies of its time to sell over 100,000 tickets (reports vary on if the number was 110,000 or 150,000).
• The South Korean version of Yongary survives only in the form of a partial, heavily damaged 35mm print. (Watch it here.) As a result, it has never been released on home video in its native country, and didn’t air on TV until 2011 (and even that was the English dub with Korean subtitles). Korean film studios at the time had no experience with international distribution; director Ki-duk Kim speculates that the original negative wound up in Japan.
  
• Yongary emerges at Panmunjom, the village where the armistice which ended the Korean War was signed.
• Masao Yagi, who made many a monster suit for Daiei, supervised the construction of Yongary. The suit cost the equivalent of $5,000.
  
• Yongary is 35 meters tall.
• According to screenwriter Yun-sung Seo, Yongary was a single-cell organism from outer space mutated by radiation.
• Perhaps the most significant landmark Yongary destroys is the Japanese Government-General Building, which was the seat of the Governor-General of Korea from 1926 until 1945. The scene also echoes Godzilla walking through the Diet Building in his original movie.
• The song Yongary dances to is a surf rock version of “Arirang.”
• Unsurprisingly, Song-ho mentions that the dancing scene always brings the house down at screenings.
  
• Principal photography began on April 3rd, 1967, with special effects photography beginning on April 6th.
• The movie features 12 miniature sets and 280 special effects shots.
• The producers of Yongary tried to sue to the producers of Space Monster Wangmagwi (which was released the same year).
• Incredibly, in the Korean version of the movie, Icho tells the reporters that he wishes that the world’s scientists would build a rocket that could send Yongary into space where he could live peacefully - meaning that Yongary wasn’t supposed to die at all! (And was also even more of a Gamera rip-off!)