Kim Ki-duk denied China visa to shoot

Renowned South Korean director Kim Ki-duk has been denied a visa to shoot his magnum opus movie “Who Is God” in China. Kim and the film look to be high profile victims of the ongoing geopolitical dispute between South Korea and China over missiles.

“Kim Ki-duk has been only granted a tourist visa for one month, while we applied for a work visa for three months,” producer Julia Zhang told Variety by email.

The project is a large canvas treatise on war and peace and the Buddhist religion that the South Korean maverick has been trying to mount for most of the past decade. It would have been by far Kim's biggest budget movie to date, with a production cost three times greater than the combined budget of all his films to date.

Kim, who is currently at the Venice Film Festival, is now openly discussing radical contingency plans.

The South Korean and Chinese governments have been embroiled in a war of words for the past month since South Korea said that it would install THAAD, a US-made missile system.

Kim's latest film “The Net” had its first press and industry screening in Venice in Wednesday.