South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho revisits AI themes in latest thriller 'Paradise Lost'

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho has built his films around artificial intelligence. His latest, “Paradise Lost,” revisits the theme in a psychological thriller about a mother who spends nine years with an AI version of her missing son — until the real one comes home.

Kim Hyun-joo plays Ryu So-young, whose son, Sun-woo, was abducted on a school camping trip. In her grief, she relies on an AI recreation of the boy, forever 10 years old, seen through augmented reality glasses. When the real Sun-woo, played by Bae Hyeon-seong, returns as a grown stranger, she finds herself torn between the two.

The “Train to Busan” director’s earlier AI-themed films include the 2023 Netflix film “JUNG_E” and this year’s zombie thriller “Colony," which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

“Paradise Lost” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and opens in North American theaters Friday.

The film came from an unexpected source: Yeon’s mother, a homemaker who worked as a cleaner. When she worried how hard writing stories was on her son, Yeon, who never formally studied screenwriting, told her anyone could do it.

She wrote a roughly three-page tale about a mother and son in a village, which eventually became “Paradise Lost,” titled after John Milton’s epic poem about humanity’s expulsion from paradise.

Yeon spoke with The Associated Press about the film, AI’s limits and why Asian filmmakers may be more receptive to it than Hollywood.

This interview has been translated and edited for clarity and brevity.

YEON: Relationships, mostly. Continuity in a relationship is key to seeing someone as the same person. AI Sun-woo had filled that role for nine years. But it doesn’t truly contemplate. It gives So-young suitable reactions. Can you call that a relationship? Isn’t real human identity found in relationships with people, even if it's more tragic?

YEON: I see AI as a very sophisticated manifestation of what users want. So when AI Sun-woo cries, I think it’s less his own judgment than something deep inside So-young surfacing.

AI is a manifestation of collective intelligence, so it’s hard to say it’s capable of contemplation. How that might emerge in the distant future, I don’t know. But the way to find out is very simple: If you tell AI to do something and it says, “I don’t want to,” it has started to contemplate. AI doesn’t refuse. My kids flat-out refuse.

As long as contemplation exists, can there be a paradise without pain? If only good things happened, after a week they wouldn’t be good anymore. So I never really understood paradise in Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” I felt something similar looking at AI.

YEON: I feel that way. But “AI” is such a broad term. To avoid AI, you’d have to stop searching; even search engines use it. Some cite data centers’ environmental toll, but how much of that comes from film?

English-language films had a much bigger market and far bigger budgets. Expensive films more or less had to be made for the English-speaking market. That’s crumbling as AI and many other technologies develop, and AI is accelerating it. Asia’s small market kept it from even thinking about making sci-fi. Now Asian film can take on more subjects, so I think it’s more accepting of AI.

YEON: Filmmaking sometimes needs collective intelligence. Before release, we survey 100 people at blind previews. In a way, that’s a collective intelligence test — it works on the same principle as AI.

We’ve turned “AI” into a kind of icon, but look beneath it and the question is how much collective intelligence popular filmmaking needs. I find debates that lump everything under “AI” unproductive. When the question is wrong, there can’t be an answer.

FILE - Director Yeon Sang-ho poses for photographers at the photo call for the film "Colony" during the 79th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, on May 15, 2026. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

In this framegrab taken from video, Director Yeon Sang-ho speaks during an interview about his 2026 film "Paradise Lost" in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Nov. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Juwon Park)

FILE - Director Yeon Sang-ho poses for photographers at the photo call for the film "Colony" during the 79th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, on May 15, 2026. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP, File)

MILAN (AP) — Flights from across Europe were diverted or forced to make emergency landings on Thursday because of bomb threats, authorities said. So far, inspections have not turned up hazardous or suspicious materials.

The incidents followed hoax bomb threats earlier this week that prompted searches, diversions and, in one case, a military escort.

More than a dozen flights were targeted, including those from Copenhagen, Dublin, Helsinki, Madrid, Milan and Warsaw.

Such threats aren’t a new phenomenon but come at a time of increased geopolitical tensions and signs of “disruption,” like attacks on supermarket refrigeration systems, drone incursions in Europe and mysterious triggers to alert apps.

The latest on Thursday's developments:

Greece’s Aegean Airlines confirmed Thursday that two of its flights received bomb threats that proved to be hoaxes.

It said in a statement that Flight A3552 from Thessaloniki to Milan and Flight A3860 from Athens to Vienna were bomb threat targets.

The airline said all security protocols were implemented and that the flights departed from both Milan and Vienna after it was confirmed that the threats were “baseless.”

“The security of our passengers and crew is and will continue to be our highest priority,” the statement said.

Britain’s transport secretary says flights across Europe have been hit by “malicious hoax threats.”

Heidi Alexander told broadcasters that “a small number of flights across Europe have been disrupted.” She said there are “established processes for dealing with hoax and malicious threats, and that’s what these threats have been.”

She did not provide information on what the established processes are.

An Aer Lingus plane rerouted to western France while en route from Dublin to Rome is standing on the tarmac at a military air base in Evreux, under an overcast sky.

A Red Cross vehicle is nearby, but no activity is visible at the base of the plane. Metal gates ring the base and outsiders are not allowed in.

It is unclear where the passengers and crew are being held while explosives experts examine the plane.

Finnair said that two of its flights, AY1761 from Helsinki to Rome and AY1471 from Helsinki to Vienna, faced unfounded or hoax bomb threats Thursday.

“Both flights landed safely at their destinations, and customers have disembarked the aircraft,” it said.

Nothing suspicious were found on the planes, it added. The plane to Rome was inspected and will depart back to Helsinki, while the flight to Vienna will “return to traffic normally after inspection.”

In the Czech Republic, police were sent to Prague’s Vaclav Havel Airport to prepare for the landing of four planes after receiving threats of explosive devices on board. Police said that “all necessary security measures have been activated.”

Police later said searches of the planes that landed in Prague found nothing suspicious. They did not give details on where the flights originated from.

An Aer Lingus Airbus A320 aircraft is seen at Evreux military air base after a flight from Dublin to Rome was diverted to France amid reports of bomb threats targeting multiple flights across Europe, in Evreux, France, Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)