Bong avoided rehearsals to preserve the awkwardness between some characters, and that initial encounter, a fight, was the very first time the performers worked together. Verisimilitude extended to some performance details, such as the first meeting between Inspector Park Doo-man (Song Kang Ho) and Inspector Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang Kyung). Because the fonts and paper employed in 1986 were no longer in use by the time the movie was filmed in 20, the art department had to source the correct paper stock and design each font by hand, character by character.
His art department, led by production designer Ryu Sung Hee, was particularly challenged by his request for newspapers, which are occasionally used in the film to convey information to the viewer.
Bong, who has been nicknamed Bongtail by his crew because of his microscopic attention to detail, wanted Memories of Murder to be filled with period-accurate props, costumes, and set dressing.
