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A total of 125,300 drawings, with a total length of 3,759,000 meters, equivalent to 150 times the height of Namsan, and a production cost of 54 million won, which could have funded the production of ten live-action films, marking the highest budget in South Korean film history.
This is the promotional slogan for A Story of Hong Gil-dong (Shin Dong-hun), the first Korean feature-length animated film released in 1967. While there may be some exaggeration, considering the very small scale of the Korean film industry at the time, it is indeed true that a significant amount of manpower and capital was invested. As a result, A Story of Hong Gil-dong attracted 45,982 audiences in just two days and 120,000 viewers in six days, ranking second at the box office that year.
The success of Hong Gil-dong brought about qualitative changes that cannot be expressed in numbers alone. At a time when commercial animation was virtually nonexistent in South Korea, this film introduced animation that told our stories, set the standards for animation style, and ultimately gave birth to the animation industry.
In 1976, Robot Taekwon V was a huge box office hit, attracting 130,000 audiences in Seoul alone, and the animation industry entered its golden age. From 1967 to 1999, over 100 Korean feature-length animated films were released. For those who were children during that era, Korean animation films became an integral part of their memories, deeply rooted in their hearts.



“Run on the Cels, Gil-dong!” introduces South Korean feature-length animated films that we have loved over the past 30 years, from 1967’s The Story of Hong Gil-dong to 1996’s Dooly the Little Dinosaur: The Adventure of Ice Planet (Kim Soo-Jung, Im Gyeongwon). It also introduces the production techniques and principles of cel animation used at the time.
Compared to 3D animation, cel animation may appear crude due to its relatively flat appearance and limited movement. However, cel animation is the result of a meticulous process that requires the skilled hands of an animator. This process begins with keyframes, which serve as the starting point for each scene, followed by the inbetweening stage, where intermediate frames are created to smooth out the movement. These drawings are then transferred to transparent cels, where the outlines of o​bjects are drawn, and finally, color is applied to each cel to complete the process. To complete a feature-length animated film, dozens of animators spend months or even years drawing hundreds of thousands of cels. Throughout this process, scenes and characters are imbued with the unique texture and sentiment of each animator's touch.



Hong Gil-dong, Chadol Bawi, Sun Wukong, Golden Iron Man, Robot Taekwon V, Maruchi Arachi, Princess Wonder, General Ttoli, Dokgo Tak, and Dooly. For some, these names evoke memories of childhood, while for others, they are completely new. We hope you enjoy meeting the beloved protagonists of animated films through “Run on the Cels, Gil-dong!”