Pandora (2016 film)

Jae-hyeok is a middle aged man who works at the local power plant, which is the only thing providing the town with energy, and the provider of most of the jobs. Jae-hyeok lives with his mother, sister in law, and nephew Min-jae. Jae-hyeok wishes to leave the town and the plant behind him and work on a fishing vessel to make money for his family, but is discouraged by everyone he knows.

Pyeong-seok is a member of the plant, who tries to get the president to shut down the plant, but he dismisses the claims, saying nothing will happen. One night, the animals of the town mysteriously run into the water.

Then, the next day, while Jae-hyeok is working, an earthquake suddenly strikes the town, causing one of the nuclear reactors to overheat. Attempts to cool it down are botched, as water does nothing to stop it, and that due to the reactor's age, coolant valves were too severely damaged to be fixed in time. During an attempt to get out, the whole basement caves in, killing most of the crew. Jae-hyeok is one of the few to get out, and continues to get people to safety, until he collapses from nuclear radiation. Meanwhile, the president and his government debate allowing the reactor to vent radioactive particles into the air to relieve pressure from the core. The President insists on evacuating at least those closest to the reactor first. This backfires when the reactor stack explodes from the pressure as the workers were too late to try and vent steam into the air, leading to a full nuclear meltdown.

Meanwhile, the KCDC quarantines the town's residents not far from the reactor. After Jae-hyeok's girlfriend, Yeon-joo, gets proof that the reactor exploded and delivers the news, the KCDC locks the town's residents in the evacuation center and put up an internet jammer. Rendering their phones useless. Yeon-joo spreads the word and later the residents manage to break out and get back in the buses to continue evacuating. Back at a local hospital, situations grow tense as Jae-hyeok's health continues deteriorating, the medical team runs out of medical supplies and almost all nurses abandoned the sick and injured as public authorities also abandon the town, but he and several others were saved as one nurse decides to stay and treat the injured. Despite the firefighters' efforts, the reactor is not cooling down and some firefighters started to suffer from radiation poisoning. Upon discovering that a spent fuel rods is losing coolant due to the damage it sustained by a large earthquake, the only option is to send a team in to blow the bottom of the coolant tank under the spent fuel rods, and create a new container in the tank below, thus preventing another meltdown.

Jae-hyeok, though initially distasteful with the government because of their negligence, agrees to a rescue mission, calling a distraught Yeon-joo before getting on a bus back to the town. Jae-hyeok remembers his childhood times before the nuclear disaster, before coming to the plant. With the crack underneath the coolant tank growing bigger during the mission, and no time left, Jae-hyeok; the only person who knows how to detonate bombs out of all others, willingly goes in. Having been exposed to too much radiation, and that he lost both his father and brother to radiation poisoning long before, he knows there is no hope going out alive and he chooses to sacrifice himself to save his other workers and his family and stop the disaster. He allows the workers to seal himself into the waste room and flee the area. In his final moments, Jae-hyeok uses his helmet-mounted camera to broadcast a farewell message to his family and Yeon-joo before blowing up the tank, killing himself in the process.

• Kim Nam-gil as Kang Jae-hyeok, the childish protagonist, who works at the nuclear power plant
• Kim Young-ae as Mrs. Seok- the mother of Jae-Hyeok, who owns a restaurant and lost her husband and other son to a similar accident
• Kim Ju-hyeon as Yeon-joo, Jae-hyeok's fiance, who works as a tour guide at the power plant. She is also Jae-hyeok's childhood friend
• Jung Jin-young as Pyeong-seok, one of the heads of the plant, who grows more concerned about safety of the plant
• Moon Jeong-hee as Jung-hye, Jae hyeok's sister in law and a widow who lost her husband (Jae hyeok's brother)
• Kim Dae-myung as Gil-seop, one of Jae Hyeok's friends, who aids Jae Hyeok in the nuclear mission
• Lee Geung-young as Prime Minister
• Kang Shin-il as Mr. Kong, a grumpy old nuclear power plant worker and father of Gil-seop
• Yoo Seung-mok as Mr. Kam- the other power plant head, who suspects something is off about the plant
• Joo Jin-mo as Minister
• Song Yeong-chang as New Director
• Kim Young-woong as Mr. Hwang
• Kim Myung-min as South Korean President
• Kim Hye-eun as First Lady
• Oh Ye-sul as New Nurse

Pandora is the first Korean film that has been pre-sold to Netflix. In November 2016, three weeks before the theatrical release, the company acquired exclusive international rights for streaming Pandora in 190 countries.[4][5]

• Fukushima 50

• Pandora at HanCinema
• Pandora at IMDb
• Pandora at Rotten Tomatoes
• Pandora at the Korean Movie Database
• Pandora at Naver Movies (in Korean)