Lee Sang-hoon

Lee Sang-hoon is a Korean author and the writer of the bestselling historical novel Man in Hanbok (Hanbok ipeun namja), published in 2014. A 2022 Kyunghyang report describes him as a former television producer who began at KBS, took part in the launch of SBS and later headed the production division at Channel A before moving into academia. His first essay collection is reported to have sold over 200,000 copies.

The novel imagines what became of Jang Yeong-sil, the Joseon scientist who rose from slave status to a senior post and then vanished from the record after a royal palanquin he designed failed in 1442. It links his inventions to Leonardo da Vinci's sketches and to the East Asian figure in a Rubens drawing, and it has since been developed as a stage musical that opened in December 2025.

Lee adapted the book into the 67-minute film Man in Hanbok, released in Korean theatres in May 2026. Cineplay writes that, as the original author, he personally directed it to keep the work's identity, and Korean press reports that he completed it in collaboration with AI technicians. Generative AI was used from screenplay development through the visuals, which rebuild the Joseon court and Renaissance Florence.

The film won the grand prize at the second Korea Artificial Intelligence Cinema Festival and was invited to the Busan International AI Film Festival and the World AI Film Festival. It also found a distribution deal at Hong Kong FilMart. Korea Herald coverage of its release was critical of the results.