Boy, oh boy

The King and the Clown may lack the usual ingredients of South Korean blockbusters - no North Korean secret agents, gunfights or gangsters - but that hasn't stopped the period drama from luring a staggering quarter of the country's 48 million people to the cinema, making it the most popular domestic movie ever.

The film, about minstrels at the 16th-century court of a tyrant king, features a homosexual subplot, and has fuelled what has been dubbed a nationwide 'pretty boy syndrome'. However, quite how it's managed to sell 12.2 million tickets is a mystery, even to its director. 'Let's say I'm a midfield soccer player, who just kicks a ball, and it bounces around and then goes into the goal,' muses Lee Jun-ik.

In the film, Kam Woo-sung and Lee Joon-gi (below) play two wandering minstrels. They perform a bawdy play, which mocks royalty and the aristocracy, for an unstable and violent king, played by Jung Jin-young.

The king falls in love with Lee's character, Gong-gil, who plays feminine roles, provoking tension with Kam's character, who is Gong-gil's protector and possibly his lover - their relationship is ambiguous. The affair also stirs the jealousy of the king's consort, played by Kang Sung-yeon.

As his lust for the boy increases, so do his clashes with his ministers, who are appalled that the king has embraced the raucous theatre of the peasantry. Meanwhile, his consort plots against Gong-gil and the troupe.

The film has created an unlikely idol in Lee, a virtual unknown before the film, and fuelled a trend in macho South Korea: the pretty boy syndrome.