Oldboy director Park Chan-wook has started work on his adaptation of Sarah Waters’ lesbian romance thriller Fingersmith, according to Variety.

Waters’ book, which is set in Victorian England, tells the story of Sue, an orphaned girl schooled to be a con artist, who falls in love with Maud, the woman she is supposed to be scamming. Park has moved the action to his native South Korea, where the story will play out during the Japanese occupation of the country in the 1930s.

Fingersmith, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, was previously adapted into a BBC series starring Sally Hawkins and Elaine Cassidy. Park’s version will feature South Korean stars Kim Min-hee and Kim Tae-ri.

The movie will be Park’s first Korean-language venture since his 2009 vampire film Thirst. Stoker, released in 2013 and starring Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska and Matthew Goode, was his first film in English and received mixed reviews, with critics, including the Guardian’s Xan Brooks, wondering if the language barrier had proved too high a hurdle.

Park’s Oldboy was remade by Spike Lee in the same year. Starring Josh Brolin as a man who seeks revenge after being abducted by a mysterious assailant, it was described as a “pointless remake” by Peter Bradshaw.