Oh Jiin
Known For
Directing
Biography
Born in Yeosu, South Korea, Jiin writes and directs in the darkly comic vein. She spent years at Samsung Electronics in UX/UI and product strategy, a loyal micro-shareholder still, though every device she owns is Apple. After quitting, she received a Fulbright grant—just as the pandemic hit. With her funding at risk if she delayed departure, she left for the U.S., only to realize even $40K from Fulbright didn’t cover art-school tuition. Probably by pandemic luck, Columbia University added $20K, and she enrolled. At the time, Spielberg was the full extent of her film literacy. She thought film school meant California, not New York, and arrived in the city barely knowing Jarmusch, Allen, or Scorsese. NYC was locked down: no casting, no rentals, only hostility and a surge of Asian hate crimes. Determined not to waste her scholarship, she grabbed a digital camera, cast herself, and made ULIM (2021), a scrappy autobiographical short about pandemic student life. When the world reopened, s...
