I am drawn to a movie that contains both joy and sadness, and at the same time remains simple and light. My answer to comedy is to include both 'a teardrop and a smile.'"  2009 sports film "Take Off" (titled "National Athlete" or "National Team" in Korean) became Kim's third consecutive box office hit. Starring Ha Jung-woo, Kim Dong-wook, Kim Ji-seok, Choi Jae-hwan, Lee Jae-eung and Sung Dong-il as a rag-tag group of athletes formed to support Muju City's 1996 Olympics bid but whose passion and competitive spirit won them a berth at the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, it was based on the true story of the oft-overlooked Korean national ski jumping team, which faced poor domestic support and unfavorable conditions but went on to win successive medals in the Winter Universiade. According to Kim, the protagonist played by Ha Jung-woo, an ex-U.S. junior alpine skier and adoptee who returns to Korea in search of his birth mother, was inspired by real-life athlete Toby Dawson. "Take Off" became the second highest-grossing Korean film of the year, with 8.8 million tickets sold. Kim won Best Director at the 29th Korean Association of Film Critics Awards, the 46th Grand Bell Awards, and the 30th Blue Dragon Film Awards, while "Take Off" won Best Film at the 17th Chunsa Film Art Awards and the 46th Baeksang Arts Awards. Kim next took on his most ambitious project to date with "Mr. Go", which had a () budget (one of the largest budgets in Korean cinema history), with funded by China-based Huayi Brothers. Based on Huh Young-man's 1984 manhwa "The 7th Team", the film centers on a 15-year-old girl (played by Xu Jiao) who tries to save her grandfather's circus after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake by becoming the sports agent of a baseball-playing gorilla named Ling Ling (inspired by Christian the lion). Go" was filmed in stereoscopic 3D, and Kim founded a new visual effects company Dexter Studios to develop and innovate motion capture and facial motion capture techniques, and a digital fur production program to make the gorilla as realistic as possible; a team of more than 500 animators and CG professionals spent four years on the production and over a year editing. Go" was released in South Korea and China simultaneously in 2013; it was not a commercial success in South Korea, ending Kim's winning streak at the domestic box office.