Do you want to see Space Monster Wangmagwi?

The elusive Space Monster Wangmagwi (우주괴인 왕마귀 ) is a 1967 South Korean giant monster movie made in the style of Japan’s kaiju films. The film utilised Japanese-influenced tokusatsu effects, and was released in the same year as the much more well-known South Korean monster film,Yongary, Monster from the Deep. However, unlike Yongary, Wangmagwi has never resurfaced in any significant capacity since its original theatrical release, and has only been granted a few select festival screenings in its home country in the years since. Fans outside of Korea have long been crying out for any information about the film, and for an accessible way to watch it to appear.

Enter the Korean Film Archive, a non-profit foundation which collects and preserves Korean films. The archive has an official YouTube channel which regularly uploads classic Korean films, free to stream and complete with English subtitles to boot. Now here’s where it gets interesting: the Korean Film Archive is in possession of the original negatives of Wangmagwi. But this is where it also gets a bit complicated too:

It appears the Korean Film Archive are very much aware of a desire for Wangmagwi to be uploaded to their YouTube channel, but are held back by copyright issues. However, if you want to see Wangmagwi, don’t let this put you off - I would strongly encourage everyone who is even just slightly interested in this seeing this film to directly message the Korean Film Archive’s YouTube page and politely (I cannot stress that enough) request the film be uploaded, quating the title “Big Monster Wangmagwi“ (or ”우주괴인 왕마귀”).

Maybe if enough people show voice their interest it’ll encourage the Archive to work at resolving the copyright issues. Maybe not, but we’ll never know until we’ve tried. This could very well be the only way fans in the English-speaking world will ever see this film.