Sunny (2008 film)

Sunny (lit. "My Dear is Far Away") is a 2008 South Korean film directed by Lee Joon-ik. Soo Ae plays the titular Soon-yi, whose husband enlists to fight in the Vietnam War, and she decides to join a singing group that will travel to Vietnam to perform for the soldiers there.

Plot
Soon-yi is a young woman stuck in an arranged marriage to a man who still loves his college girlfriend. Her husband, Sang-gil, is a soldier in the South Korean army, and though she visits him regularly, he does not return her affections. After Sang-gil is sent to fight in the Vietnam War, Soon-yi resolves to follow him. She joins a band which is heading there, where she sings for the soldiers as "Sunny", with the hope of being reunited with her husband.

Cast

 * Soo Ae ... Soon-yi/Sunny
 * Jung Jin-young ... Kim Jeong-man, band leader
 * Jung Kyung-ho ... Yong-deuk, bassist
 * Joo Jin-mo ... Seong-chan, guitarist
 * Shin Hyeon-tak ... Cheol-sik, drummer
 * Uhm Tae-woong ... Sang-gil, Sunny's husband
 * Park Yoon-ho ... Private Kim
 * Lee Joo-sil ... Mother-in-law
 * Jo Mi-ryung ... Jeni
 * Shin Jung-geun ... Battalion commander
 * Fredrik Skalin ... Soldier

Production
Sunny was produced on a budget of (US$7 million). Director Lee Joon-ik made the protagonist female in response to criticism that his films were largely male-oriented. Lee cast Soo Ae in the lead role, saying, "No other actress in [South] Korea has the distinctively pure image that [she] has". Soo Ae did two months of training to refine her singing and dancing skills, and admitted to being concerned over whether or not she could pull off the character.

Release
Sunny was released in South Korea on July 23, 2008. On its opening weekend it was ranked second at the box office with 480,144 admissions, and exceeded the one million mark on July 19. As of August 31, Sunny had received a total of 1,804,223 admissions nationwide, and as of September 14 had grossed a total of US$11,093,277.