The Drug King
2018 South Korean film

The Drug King (Korean: 마약왕; RR: Mayagwang) is a 2018 South Korean crime drama film written and directed by Woo Min-ho. It stars Song Kang-ho as Lee Doo-sam, an ordinary small-time narcotics dealer who becomes an infamous drug lord in Korea during the 1970s. The film also features Jo Jung-suk as a prosecutor from Seoul who is intent on taking Lee down and Bae Doona as a lobbyist who guides Lee into the upper levels of drug dealing. Other cast members include Kim Dae-myung, Kim So-jin, Lee Hee-joon, and Jo Woo-jin. The film was released on December 19, 2018.
Plot
True life story of Lee Doo-sam (Lee Hwang-soon), a drug smuggler building his empire in Busan's crime underworld in the 1970s. Lee was originally a member of the Chilsung faction in Busan from Hwanghae Province. In the early 1970s, he smuggled diamonds and other products, and eventually expanded it to drugs for domestic distribution, and exported it to Japan as well, thus accumulating huge amounts of wealth in the process.
Cast
Production
Principal photography began on May 5, 2017. Filming was completed on October 10, 2017.
“The Drug King” enters the record as 2018 South Korean film. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Drug, King and South can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“The Drug King” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Drug, King and South provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q30115167. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2018 and 2017.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Drug King”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Drug King primary sources, The Drug King archive and Drug research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Drug King”?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “The Drug King” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.