I have covered the idea of the division culture in Korean film in this very column (and probably will cover again given the prevalence of it in the culture) before focusing on the economic, technological, and social divide in both Shiri and Repatriation. I’ve also explored it within the family. However, these definitions of historical and cultural division do not singularly define the idea of Korean national division. In this article I will explore the division of mind and body in Choi In-hoon’s The Square and Kim Ki-duk’s Bad Guy (Nappeun Namja, 2002) and how they relate to the historical division and economic division respectively. Choi In-hoon’s protagonist, Lee Myong-jun, is the intellect divided from the body. He attempts to fix this trauma, and cure his loneliness through doomed relationships with two women and two nations. Kim Ki-duk’s protagonist, Han-gi (Cho Jae-hyeon), is the physical divided from the intellect. He attempts to overcome this trauma through the misogynistic male fantasy of turning a woman into a prostitute. I will attempt to illuminate these sexual divisions, and how they illustrate the re-imagining of division in Korea as an exclusively masculine enterprise. I will also show how the protagonists of both The Square and Bad Guy are drawn inevitably towards death because their lack (be it corporeal or psychic) does not allow them to function in a divided society.

The Intellectual

Lee Kang-hun's (aka kokoon) wonderful cover/illustration. http://kokoon.egloos.com/5106504

Choi In-hoon’s novel The Square was first published in 1960, just months after the April 19^th Student Revolution that overthrew Rhee Syngman’s authoritarian government. What followed was a brief experiment of democracy during which Choi could finally publish his novel, which harshly criticizes both North and South Korea. This brief period of freedom (only to be followed by another 27 years of military dictatorship) allowed Choi to question Korea’s identity after years under Japanese colonial rule followed by occupation by the United States, a United States sponsored military regime, and a national war. Choi imagines Korea’s division through the protagonist Lee Myong-jun. His division is the traditional historical/ideological division between North and South, and the trauma of this division is imagined as an intellectual crisis. As an existential character, Myong-jun is a product of his experiences in both the South and the North and the choices that he made while living in both Koreas. He is a literal embodiment of division. His interactions with both the North and the South leave him disillusioned and alone, and thus unable to function in either society he is led inevitably to suicide. Through him Choi can criticize both political states, and the impact that the division has had on Korea.

Myong-jun’s intellectualism, supported by his education in philosophy, separates him from the rest of society. He endlessly questions his actions and the actions of those around him, yet he cannot fully communicate with anyone around him. He believes with his education he should be able to “come to some sort of acceptable conclusions about the world and life…He had to find out why people lived, and how they lived meaningfully. Within the limits of daily life, of what he saw with his eyes and felt in all the variety of everyday things, he could find absolutely no meaning” (Choi, 13). He is on an impossible quest to define the human existence, and he is alone in his journey. He is alone within himself, trapped by his own intellect. He cannot physically install himself within the world around him; instead he is relegated to the role of the commentator where he does not act on society, but rather society acts on him. The scene where the police interrogate him when he is in the South is a good example of this inability to communicate with the society around him, as later in the novel the scene is mirrored as he attempts to overcome his intellectual prison by switching roles with these police officers.

Myong-jun is brought into S Police Station because his father had gone to the North, and was a prominent figure in their propaganda radio programs. He is faced with being pre-labeled as a Communist, just because his father is one. It is here that Choi’s political critique collides with Myong-jun’s intellectual prison. Myong-jun is unable to argue against the political suppression of South Korea under Rhee’s regime. He is questioned about his education, and when he replies that he studies philosophy he is met with a sneer. “So, if you’re in philosophy, you’ll know all about Marxism” (Choi, 41). The detective equates intellectualism with a left-leaning ideology, and therefore undesirable to the United States (and Rhee’s puppet government) who were attempting to set up South Korea as a bastion of democracy to suppress the spread of Communism. Myong-jun cannot argue against their indoctrinated hatred of intellectualism, his argument is only met by physical violence. This is the moment of his final separation from the South. He cannot live in a society so driven by uninformed, violent suppression. “ ‘I could kill a Red bastard like you and not even a ghost would know you’ ” (Choi, 43), says the police detective. And he could, when he releases the bloodied Myong-jun out into the streets no one reacts. Indeed there is no difference between this police force, and the Japanese force that oppressed Korea during the colonial period. “It was perfectly clear as far as catching Reds was concerned there was no difference between the present and Japanese times” (Choi, 47). Freedom from Japan did nothing for Korea as the United States merely used the same tools of state suppression that it was supposedly freeing Korea from. This ideological division is impossible for Myong-jun to overcome, although he attempts to do so through his love for Yun-ae. However this love is doomed to failure, as he cannot overcome his introverted intellectualism to convey his feelings to her.

Myong-jun attempts overcome this lack of physical prowess through relationships with two women, one in the North and one in the South, but neither can fully satisfy him leaving his quest for physical mastery unfulfilled. How can he overcome loneliness if “There was no way that Eve, formed from Adam’s rib, would have the power to dispel his loneliness. Eve never had her own independent existence; she was just the shadow of Adam” (Choi, 77)? In this view women are objects that must be subjugated to man in order for man to regain his humanity. The women cannot enter into the discourse of division in this point of view, because they are merely shadows of men. It is here that we see division defined as purely a masculine endeavor. In The Square love is seen as the only bridge back to humanity, and the only way to master the alienation that the individual faces within modern society. “The only time Myong-jun was sure of his own humanity was when he held her in his arms” (Choi, 97). However, he cannot truly love these women because they do not conform to his own male fantasies. He does not understand women and sees them as animals, as objects. He constantly describes both Yun-ae and Un-hye in sections, slicing them up into parts and ignoring the whole. Yun-ae in the South resists his advances, while Un-hye will not give up her belief in the communist ideology for him. The very thing he has mastery over keeps him from communicating with them. He has no hope to regain his humanity and he cannot physically act out his aggressions, and is in this way physically impotent.

We see this impotence when Myong-jun returns to the S Police Station, this time as the interrogator. He is disillusioned with the North, finding not the culture of revolution and equality he hoped for but a nation of hand-me-downs. He had hoped for a society where he could live his life with a sense of things achieved that were based off of intellectual reasons. But the revolution was not actually enacted, merely handed down from the Soviet invaders. The soldiers even have recycled Japanese uniforms. He attempts to sublimate this disillusionment with a torridly sexual affair with Un-hye, but she is both adverse to intellectual discussion and leaving her ideological affiliation for him. So we find Myong-jun on the other side of the interrogation table facing Tae-sik. He beats Tae-sik in an attempt to cultivate a feeling of purpose, and out of jealousy that Tae-sik was able to consummate his relation with Yun-ae through marriage. “Lee Myong-jun swung his leather belt so that he might cultivate the feeling of enemies of the people inside himself, whereby he could hate the people captured and brought in” (Choi, 123). He even attempts to rape Yun-ae, but is unable to fulfill this desire. He cannot bring himself to the logical culminations of these violent acts: murder. Instead he helps Tae-sik and Yun-ae escape, left only with his relationship with Un-hye as a tie to the North, but this ends when she is killed in action.

So Myong-jun is left homeless, and womanless. “In his store of emotions in South Korea he had never discovered anything except disdain. In North Korea all he got was disillusion; there was no source for acquiring the feeling of hate” (Choi, 122). He is caught with no place to go, so he chooses a neutral country. Where he hopes he can life a life of anonymity.

A neutral country. A land where no one knows me. A city where even if I roamed the streets all day long not a single person would strike me on the shoulder. Not only would there be no one who knew what kind of man I was, but there wouldn’t even be anyone trying to find out. A hospital porter, or a fire-station guard, or a theatre ticket seller, the sort of job where insofar as possible the level of mental strain was low, and all one had to do was repeat the same act all day long, that’s the kind of job he would take up. (Choi, 139)

Yet this would be impossible, it would be denying all of his experience up to that point, something an existentialist would not do, as this experience is what defines him as himself. Myong-jun is too intellectually aware, and too physically impotent, to join the working class. He has nowhere to call home, and his search was futile. He had trapped himself within himself, and he has no choice at the end but suicide. He cannot function in the divided Korea, or any other society. The psychic mastery he claims is his biggest fault, and death is the only way out. “He relaxed now for the first time” (Choi, 152).

The Corporeal

Purely Physical

Kim Ki-duk’s Bad Guy was released in Korea in 2002 during a time far removed from that of 1960s Korea. Korea has gone through rapid industrialization, urban development, brutal and violent repression of activist movements, democratization, and a financial crisis that increased unemployment and the division between the classes. The division that Kim Ki-duk is interested in is not one of the nation and ideology, but rather this economic inequality that divides South Korea. His films concern the lowest classes in Korean society: thieves, pimps, prostitutes, beggars, and gangsters. These characters do not suffer the same physical lack that an intellectual like Myong-jun suffers, rather their lack is largely both economic and familial. Han-gi, like many of Kim’s protagonists, has physical mastery but suffers from an intellectual inability. His quest to turn Sunhwa (Won Seo) into a prostitute is an attempt to forcibly remove this class and intellectual barrier. His struggle to achieve this psychic mastery comes through the misogynistic subjugation of women, as if through them he can enter normal society.

Visually seperated from society.

We open the film as Han-gi is wandering through crowds of college students. He is immediately marked as out of place with his black clothes (most of the students around him have light color shirts), short-cropped hair, and most importantly the scar across his neck. He looks threatening and he exudes physical mastery through the way he walks and moves. Our first view of Sunhwa is a classic example of cinema’s male gaze. We slowly track down her body, taking her in as sexualized parts rather than a whole woman. This is similar to how Myong-jun describes both Un-hye and Yun-ae. When Han-gi sits next to Sunhwa she is visibly uncomfortable and ignores his presence, sneering in disgust at his appearance when she gets up. This rejection is strongly classed within the film; she (an educated middle class woman) is disgusted that such a vulgar and horrible man would be interested in her. What follows is both Han-gi’s final show of physical mastery over her, and his emasculation and humiliation at the hands of Sunhwa. After this rejection, Han-gi sits silent (for he cannot talk) as Sunhwa talks to her boyfriend and gives sideways glances at him. So he violates her in an attempt to bring her down to his level. He grabs her head and forcibly kisses her in front while the boyfriend tries vainly to pull him off. A kiss is an intimate thing, and to be forcibly kissed by a stranger in public must be terrible. This is the films first (but not last) rape scene in which the male fantasy is played out through Sunhwa’s violation.

The first of the many rapes.

This is also the only time in which Han-gi will get to have Sunhwa in any sort of sexual way. It takes three military men, and a crowd of onlookers, to beat Han-gi into submission where they hold him, bloodied, waiting for him to apologize to Sunhwa. Of course this apology never comes because Han-gi is both silent, and unwilling. However, Sunhwa at this moment emasculates him in front of this crowd by both slapping and then spitting on his face. This is the movies first exchange of bodily fluids between Sunhwa and Han-gi. With this exchange, Sunhwa in essence steals Han-gi’s phallic power and the rest of the film is Han-gi’s quest to get it back. She takes the sexually dominant role here, with her spit substituting for semen. This exchange also gives Han-gi the reason he needs to subjugate her to the level of prostitution. In order for him to regain his mastery over her, he needs to bring her down to his social level where he can be the one in power as her pimp. The movie in a sense is the literal display of the horrid male fantasy that all women are prostitutes within.

There is always a distance, a seperation between the two.

However he never fully regains this phallic lack, in my interpretation of the film it is only found through a final, dying fantasy. He cannot perform sexually around Sunhwa, instead he must act out voyeuristic fantasies from behind the specially fitted mirror. It is here where he can watch other men violate her, and it is also here that he becomes infatuated and captivated by her. From behind the safety of the glass he can fetishize her, turning her body into a Lacanian phallic symbol. On the other side of the glass, when he occupies the same physical space as her, he cannot communicate. His phallic lack at that point does not allow for a sexual relationship past the purely voyeuristic. He tries when Sunhwa is passed out from drinking after she discovers that he was responsible for her new situation, but it merely leads to another one sided exchange of bodily fluids: she vomits on his shirt. Sufficiently put in his place, he takes his sexual frustration out on another prostitute, but cannot fully perform.

Playing mine is bigger than yours is dangerous.

Love here, like in Choi In-hoon’s novel, is seen as the last bridge for the masculine to rejoin humanity. Here the love is horrible and violent. While Sunhwa does have control over Han-gi through this emasculation, we must remember that she is still not fully in control. She is merely an actor through which the male fantasy can be fulfilled, and Han-gi still has control over her situation. She is slowly broken down to his level, a violent destruction of her class and educational background. This is the only way through which Han-gi can express his twisted love. Every customer violates her, and this constant rape destroys her identity. This is an abhorrent tale, but it is so visually beautiful it is hard not to enjoy it on some levels. Sunhwa is a constant reminder to Han-gi of his sexual, economic, and intellectual lack. He must look elsewhere to try to reassert himself, even within his own world of gangsters and pimps. He does this through violence, although his phallic lack begins to translate into an inability to enact violence, as sex and violence to him become melded into one thing. At first he can still assert himself, he beats Sunhwa’s first customer (and the taker of her virginity) with a phallic baseball bat. He may not be able to be with Sunhwa but he can dominate over her customers. Later in the film however there is a interplay of violence between his small gang (who he controls not through speech but violence) and another. Another pimp attempts to use Sunhwa right after he is released from prison and Han-gi, feeling threatened that another man from his level is competing for her, removes him from the room. In the street Han-gi is hit over the head with a brick, after which he fold up a poster and stabs one of the pimp’s men with it. Not to be outdone, the same man returns later and stabs Han-gi with a ridiculously large (it must be at least four feet long) shard of glass in a moment of male phallic competition. As he is struggling and bleeding in the streets, Sunhwa looks at him with pity and horror. It is her presence here that creates this physical lack in Han-gi. She does not belong to his world, and only by completely destroying her identity can she exist in the same class as him. This violation of class barriers is what eventually kills both Sunhwa and Han-gi.

Bad Guy has several codas, and these create varying interpretations of the film. The whole film could be read as purely a fantasy of Han-gi, with none of the events after that first kiss and emasculation actually taking place. The logic defying inclusion of a beach scene (the very same beach as Kim’s The Birdcage Inn which is also about prostitution and has many similarities to this film) in which Han-gi and Sunhwa watch a woman in a red dress drown herself and Sunhwa discovers two impossible photographs is reflected in the final scene. These photographs could not possibly exist as they are of her and Han-gi before any events in the film take place. The picture is out of a false past, where they are together without the class difference, and Han-gi is not a product of violence and class inequality (he has no neck scar in the photo). It is their love without the sexual subjugation, the violence, and the economic and phallic lacks that drive their real relationship to tragedy. Later after Han-gi’s underling stabs him (both for violating Sunhwa by bringing her into prostitution and for causing the other underling to go to jail by killing the rival pimp) both Han-gi and Sunwha return to the beach wearing the same clothes as they are in the picture. However, I argue that this is really the only fantasy in the film. I view the ending as Han-gi’s dying fantasy, and the woman who drowned herself in the earlier beach scene was Sunhwa led to the only conclusion that is available to her character. I do not believe he survived the stabbing, and the rest of the film is the conclusion of his impossible quest to fulfill his masculinity through Sunhwa. This is certainly a logical interpretation, as when Han-gi changes shirts (because the other one is soaked in his blood) he is miraculously cured, and Sunhwa is happy living as a prostitute in a traveling brothel in the back of a truck. In reality, Han-gi never survived the last stabbing. He couldn’t, the quest he is on cannot be obtained in reality because he could never transcend modern society’s class divisions and the phallus he seeks is merely imaginary, an impossible object of power. Sunhwa on the other hand cannot return to her previous class existence, as her connections to the middle class intellectual have been severed. Yet she cannot return to prostitution because the sole reason keeping her there (Han-gi) is now dead. She has served her purpose within the narrative, and she now has no reason to live.

Again, as we have seen so many times before, division here is a masculine discourse. Han-gi is the one who attempts to break the division, and the woman is merely a masochistic object on which he acts out his sadistic male fantasies. The woman is not an independent actor, rather she is a function, used to drive the male toward his impossible redemption. Her existence relies on this masculine fantasy, without a male to subjugate her within a patriarchal power structure she is led inevitably to her death. Kyung Hyun Kim, in his book The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema describes our mutual contention with Kim’s films:

My contention rests not on the fact that his films consistently appeal for the abnegation of the men who have committed rape, or that Kim’s depictions of sexual violence are too graphic, but rather that only men are given performative roles in them. Women function as masochistic and passive objects predicated on the patented image of mother and whore. The male characters shuffle between virtue and irredeemability, between care and violence, and between reality and fantasy while often the women must remain immutable even in these ‘folktale-like’ films. (Kim, 9).

I share his question of whether Korean cinema could ever focus on a story of a woman who is not imagined as a whore, mother, or wife. There is a bigger question though: can there ever be a reimagining of division in Korean film or literature that transplants it from a reaffirmation of masculine dominance to a feminine one?

Once used the woman has no place in the diegesis any more.

Conclusions

This question of division in both The Square and Bad Guy, whether it is a national/ideological or an economic/class division, is portrayed as a masculine trauma where another division in Korean society is reaffirmed: the division of the sexes. Both protagonists suffer from a lack, be it physical or intellectual, sexual or economic, or combinations of all of them and they attempt to regain entry into a society that they have rejected or have been rejected by through violence and the subjugation of women. Yet these fantasies and acts of sexual power inevitably fail and the characters are drawn closer to death. Even though both works were created in separate times, during which Korea was as different and the division these works discuss, their method of dealing with national trauma is similar. The characters of Myong-jun and Han-gi are both prevented from interacting socially with the world around them by the very things that they have mastery over.  They cannot function in modern society lacking this ability to socialize, and take this out on the women in their lives. This question of division as a masculine subject, and the lack of a female counterpoint is something that deserves, and demands, further discussion.

Works Cited

Primary Sources

Bad Guy. Dir. Kim Ki-duk. Pref. Cho-Jae-hyeon, Won Seo, Choi Duek-mun, Kim Yun-tae and others. LJ Films, 2002. DVD. CJ Entertainment.

Choi, In-hoon. The Square. Translated by Kevin O’Rourke. Devon: Devon and Sidmouth Printing Group, English edition, 1985.

Secondary Sources

Kim, Kyung Hyun. The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004.

North/South division deeply affects families as well.

If Shiri is the ultimate example of right-thinking propaganda cinema (as blockbusters are usually conservative to allow them to gain the maximum audience), Kim Dong-won’s documentary Repatriation is on the opposite end of the political spectrum. Kim is essentially the father of modern Korean documentary film having been a part of the democratization movements of the 70s and 80s his humanistic style of documentary is an extension of the political beliefs and activism he practices in daily life. I plan on writing more about him and his work in this column so keep tuned. He is one of my film heroes and a genuinely pleasant man as well. This week was the 30th anniversary of the Kwangju Massacre and I felt I needed to write about something that was political and in the spirit of the Minjung movement that worked so hard for democracy in Korea. Kim Dong-won is both of those things and his Repatriation in which he spent 12 years chronicling his relationship with North Koreans trying to get back home after being released from jail is just that.

The heroes of the film.

While Shiri is concerned with making the working class and complex discussions of the problems surrounding division invisible, Repatriation relentlessly makes these marginalized sections of society visible.  The heroes of this film, the unconverted long-term prisoners and the politically active communities that shelter them until repatriation, are the very elements of society the agents in Shiri seek to suppress. It is a product of the Minjung movement mentality, and the fact it is shot on video sharply contrasts the high-gloss of the blockbusters I have discussed so far in this column. As it is an activist film, it is decidedly working class in its concerns and aesthetics. It openly (and forcefully) discusses the economic disparities of modern South Korean society, one of the major focuses of the Minjung movement. While Shiri makes the argument that reunification is impossible because of the barbarity and lack of progress (technologically and in terms of Westernization), Repatriation makes the argument that it is impossible for reunification until both Koreas can solve the problems that plague their systems of government.

From the very beginning the film positions the lower working class as more open, liberal, and willing to challenge preconceived notions and stereotypes. Bongchun-dong, director Kim’s own villiage, becomes the prisoners first home because, as the director says in his narration, that it is the only community that could accept these old men. Immediately their lower class allows them to accept other marginalized people into their midst. The fact that they had an active interest in the Minjung movement also helped, as the three main goals that the Minjung movement began with were the democratization of the government, social justice, and the reunification between North and South Korea in mind. Their presence in the community even reinvigorates their movement, and Cho Chang-son’s background as a poor farmer allows him to fit into the community better than Kim Seok-hyoung who was a well-educated intellectual. There is a sense in the film that money corrupts, and those with poor backgrounds are somehow more pure and innocent. This is directly referenced in the face of Kim Young-sik who is too honest to survive in South Korean society. He is not devious enough for the evils of capitalism, and the sweetest man in the film is shown to only follow his heart and for this he gets swindled.

The evil of North Korea.

The lower class is portrayed as being much more traditional and Korean, especially when compared to the overt Westernization that is present in Shiri. Again this is an artifact of the Minjung movement, which sought to define a new Korean identity and a connection between tradition and modernity. While characters sleep in western beds and eat at outdoor cafes in Shiri, the men and women in Repatriation sleep on the floor and eat Korean food. Folk songs and traditional medicine are prominently displayed. The film, being set in the invisible spaces that Korea does not want to show the world (see The Sangkye-dong Olympics for a very literal argument that this is true), creates a space in which the North Koreans can be human. We see them doing the menial labor that we only see one person (who is subsequently knocked over and out of frame) doing in Shiri. The South Korean government has failed to support all of its people, but North Korea is also at fault here. Though the prisoner’s view of North Korea is a country that is prosperous and successful, it is an outdated picture. They left at a time when Communism was working, and concerned with the problems of humanity. The film displays North Korea as another failed system, which also cannot support its people. In fact much is made of the food shortage in the film, with the prisoners refusing to believe it and Ishimaro Jiro’s inability to enter into North Korea because of it. We also see how the film positions the press in Korea as pandering to the upper-class conservatives. The wild accusations (and they may be true but it is doubtful) of cannibalism is also brought up in Shiri and serves as another way South Korea positions North Korea as temporally primitive and behind South Korea. Yet in this film it is used subversively to portray South Korea as afraid and insecure. There is no discussion of the United States aggressive stance (and economic stances) to North Korea as a factor in the mainstream press. Yet here is where we also get the problem with the film. By making the invisible entirely visible, it forgets the visible world and only gives glimpses into the upper class reaction (which is always portrayed as ignorant and prejudiced) to the repatriation. We get one young business man who’s time with the unconverted prisoners remind him of his activist days as a student. However, he disappears from the film after this leaving these invisible spaces to go back to the visible work of his job where he can go with the flow and forget.

Menial labor becomes a political message for the prisoners, as they use it to show not only the hard working spirit of the Korean people (working hard for the reunification) but also the problems with the South Korean society. They cannot get welfare, and live in utter poverty, not only because they are North Korean but also as lower class members upward mobility is next to impossible. Only by returning to North Korea are the prisoners able to move upward, and when they do they become products themselves to the North Korean government. They are used for propaganda, showcased as national heroes. Yet there is no mention in the North Korean videos of the years that the prisoners spent outside of jail. To this video we see, it is as if they went directly from jail to being repatriated. Just as they become products in the national economy of propaganda in North Korea, images of North Korea become consumer goods in South Korea. We see blockbusters such as Shiri and Joint Security Area becoming more popular, and North Korean images being cleaned packaged and sold to the public by the South Korean media. Yet even Kim Dong-won is hesitant as to whether reunification is possible once the prisoners return to the North, their new economic status changes them in his eyes and he prefers to remember them during the years they spent in Bongchun-dong. Reunification becomes impossible in this film for the opposite reason, the lower class can accept North Korea as comrades in their struggle but see both governments as flawed and broken. If North Korea were to enter into economic partnership with the South it would merely perpetuate the problems of capitalism into a new area. For reunification to work, both systems need to be radically altered and there needs to be open discussion of topics that both governments seem to want to keep invisible. Also I would like to point out with the recent UN report on freedom of expression in South Korea is worrying, and there needs to be more directors like Kim trying to engage the public in political discourse in an attempt to fight the apathy that the comforts of modern South Korean life have afforded the youth.

A tale of separation and friendship on the DMZ.

Park Chan-Wook’s 2000 film Joint Security Area begins with a murder mystery in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas. Two North Korean soldiers are dead and one soldier from both sides is injured as a result of a shooting on the North Korean side of the demarcation line. Both countries stand by their soldier’s depositions despite the conflicting truths of the reports. The North Korean soldier Sgt. Oh Kyeong-pil (Song Kang-ho) claims that Sergeant Lee Soo-Hyuk (the injured South Korean soldier played by Lee Byung-hun) attacked them, while the South claims that the North Korean guards kidnapped Sergeant Lee. In the end it is up to a Swiss military officer from the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission, Major Sophie E. Jean (Lee Young-ae), to find out what really happened. She is pressured from both nations to declare both depositions true to diffuse a politically volatile situation. Slowly she discovers the truth that the North Korean guards and South Korean guards were friends who were caught in this treasonous act by an inspecting North Korean lieutenant.

She is removed from the case after inciting tensions between the two sides with her adamant quest for the truth. She confronts Sergeant Lee in the end of the film with a choice. He can tell her the truth (about who shot first in the North Korean guardhouse) and she will not leave the incriminating evidence of the friendship for her replacement, or he can refuse and she’ll leave the evidence. By telling the truth he will also protect his friend and fellow South Korean soldier. This is where game theory can be used to show the rational progression of the choices in the film. What follows is heavily dependent on spoilers so do not continue if you want to see this film untainted.

THE GAME MATRIX

Game Key:
(x, y)=(payoff to Lee, payoff to Jean)
[x, y]=[payoff to Lee, payoff to Jean] in Anticipation Game
4=best, 3=next best, 2=next worst, 1=worst
Nash equilibrium in original game underscored
Non-myopic Equilibria (NMEs) in bold italics
Td: Deterrent Threat of Column

The Progression of States to the NME is as follows: III to IV to I to II.

EXPLANATION OF THE PREFERENCES

1. Lee Loses: (1,2): The worst for Sgt. Lee as he has told the truth and is incriminated along with his friend.  This is the second worst for Major Jean as she has gone back on her word, but she has learned the truth.
2. Compromise: (3,4): The second best for Sgt. Lee as will not be incriminated, but he has told the secret. The best for Major Jean as she learns the truth, and does not have to incriminate Sgt. Lee.
3. Lee Wins: (4,1): The best for Sgt. Lee as he keeps his secret and is not incriminated for it. The worst for Major Jean as she did not learn the truth nor did she follow through with her threat.
4. Jean Follows Through: (2,3): The next worst for Sgt. Lee as he is incriminated, but he keeps his secret. The next best for Jean because she follows through with her threat, but she does not learn the truth.

EXAMINATION OF THE GAME

The initial state of the game is (4,1) where Sergeant Lee is keeping his secret and Major Jean has yet to incriminate him. This is the state that Sergeant Lee and Major Jean reside in for the entirety of the movie up to Major Jean’s confrontation with Sgt. Lee.  Lee remains silent, and the audience learns of the forbidden friendship between the soldiers in a subjective flashback of the other South Korean soldier Private Nam (Kim Tae-woo), as he lies on the pavement after attempting suicide. Major Jean realizes that the soldiers were friends through deductive reasoning but she does not know the whole truth, nor does she know who shot first and started the bloodbath. Finally, through her removal from the case she has threat power.  Her knowledge of the incriminating evidence will be left to her replacement. This gives Major Jean deterrent threat power to induce the final outcome of (3,4) because if Sergeant Lee continues to stay at (4,1) she will force a move to (2,3) which is Lee’s second worst outcome.

Major Jean therefore incites the move to the outcome of (2,3) with the threat of the disc. Classical game theory states that this is the Nash equilibrium (both players making the best decision they can taking into account the other’s decision), and the play would not continue, as all other states are inherently unstable. However, and this is the benefit of using Steven Brams’ Theory of Moves, the characters are rational and forward thinking opponents, and Major Jean induced this state hoping that Lee with think through his options and realize that telling the truth (and thereby leaving the dominant strategy of not revealing the truth) will incite a better outcome for himself. Sergeant Lee does indeed leave from the Nash equilibrium and finishes the flashback started by Private Nam and moves to state (1,2) knowing that Major Jean will swiftly movie to (3,4): the games only non-myopic equilibrium (NME from now on). Non-myopic equilibria are equilibria resulting from both players making forward thinking decisions from an initial state of play and deciding to move or not and is can be dependent on who moves first. Theory of Moves shows that this is a rational progression of moves, even with Lee having left his dominant strategy and the Nash equilibrium. Although the game is theoretically cyclical (game play continuing forever), it is not probable in this situation. Once Lee tells Jean the truth he cannot return to not telling her the truth, as the information is already known. Therefore moving power cannot exist within the context of this game. Under these preferences, the moves the players make are indeed rational, and the outcome is the best for both players given the situation.

Sergeant Lee finishes telling the tale in a flashback that continues from where the last left off (the North Korean lieutenant coming through the door).  In this sequence we see that Private Nam shot the lieutenant and then turned his gun onto Private Jung (one of the North Korean guards played by Shin Ha-kyun) shooting him in the head. Sergeant Lee shoots him once and then attempts to shoot Sergeant Oh but his gun jams. Private Nam then goes battle crazy and shoots Private Jung many times in the chest, although he is already dead. This version of the events satisfies both Jean and the audience, as we believe that this is the truth, given the perceived preferences of Sergeant Lee. However, Sergeant Lee has deceived us and we were playing a misperceived game.  A last revelation comes at the end of the film that while Private Nam did shoot the Lieutenant, Sergeant Lee shot Private Jung, killing his friend and causing tragedy for all soldiers involved. So he has lied to Jean, in reality he was protecting himself as well.

REAL GAME MATRIX AFTER REVELATION

Game Key:
(x, y)=(payoff to Lee, payoff to Jean)
[x, y]=[payoff to Lee, payoff to Jean] in Anticipation Game
4=best, 3=next best, 2=next worst, 1=worst
Nash equilibrium in original game underscored
NMEs in bold italics

Progression of states to NME as follows: III to IV

EXPLANATION OF THE PREFERENCES

Note: Because she has misperceived the game due to Sergeant Lee’s deception Jean’s preferences remain the same while only his change.

1. Lee Loses: (1,2): The worst for Sgt. Lee as he has told the truth and is incriminated along with his friend.  This is the second worst for Major Jean as she has gone back on her word, but she has learned the truth.
2. Jean Wins: (2,4): The second worst for Sgt. Lee as will not be incriminated, but he has told the secret that he desperately had tried to keep: the guilt of killing his friend and causing so much tragedy.  The best for Major Jean as she learns the truth, and does not have to incriminate Sgt. Lee.
3. Lee Wins: (4,1): The best for Sgt. Lee as he keeps his secret and is not incriminated for it. The worst for Major Jean as she did not learn the truth nor did she follow through with her threat.
4. Jean Follows Through: (3,3): The second best for Sgt. Lee as he is incriminated, but he keeps his secret, presumably able to argue with Jean’s replacement who will most likely be more amiable to both countries desire to diffuse the situation. This is the next best for Jean because she follows through with her threat, but she does not learn the truth.

EXAMINATION OF THE GAME
This is how the game would play out from the initial state of (4,1) if Jean knew the true preferences of Sergeant Lee. Deception is a viable strategy on the part of Lee, as Jean has no reason at this point in the film to not believe this story. She is so invested in finding out the truth that she will believe Lee’s story as long as it has some glimpse of truth in it. She also has no dominant strategy to rely on, and prior communication exists with Jean’s threat of the discs. The first game is the one played out, but in reality (using Lee’s true preferences) this would have been the game. As it stands the result was (4,1) with Lee keeping his secret and Jean not incriminating him.

This state is severely unstable and play does indeed begin again in the film. Jean realizes along with the viewer that Lee may be the real killer of Private Jung, and he has lied to her in his telling of the “truth”. The initial state therefore remains as (4,1) but before Jean could move or even change her preference rankings as a result of the new information, Sergeant Lee commits suicide, and play ends due to an outside force. Theoretically, if play had not ended, Jean would move to (3,3) the game’s only NME as well as the Nash. Sergeant Lee refuses to tell the truth because the guilt for him of other people knowing that he shot his friend far outweighs the consequences of his incrimination. Also most likely the replacement for Major Jean will be quick to resolve the situation, as neither nation is interested in the truth, rather they just want the situation to be over. Therefore, he would not leave from (3,3), effectively ending play here. Again in this game cyclicity is not a factor, as Lee cannot take back the truth once it is told. Major Jean’s threat is no longer valid as the only state she can induce is (3,3) with a deterrent threat, and this is not a state she wants to incite. She has no logical reason to threaten him into not telling the truth within the diegesis of the film.

Because Lee kills himself, I suppose being the cause of one friends death and another’s attempted suicide is too much, play is stopped in a transition between (4,1) and (3,3) as Jean is rushing down the stairs to confront Lee and stop him from killing himself. Either way, even with the deception, the actions of the players can be seen as completely rational, with the exception perhaps of Lee’s suicide. Theory of Moves predicts exactly the motions the characters themselves in this highly complex thriller. When looking at these game matrices it does not seem that complicated at all anymore.

Works Used

Brams, Steven J. Theory of Moves. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Buy it on Amazon.

There are a lot of guns in this film.

Shiri (Kang Je-gyu, 1999) was the first modern Korean blockbuster, drawing about 6.2 million admissions nationwide and surpassing Im Kwon-taek’s 1993 film Sopyonje by becoming the first film to draw over 2 million viewers in Seoul alone. It even beat the international juggernaut Titanic in box office draw. It literally paved the way for Korean film to retake the domestic box office from foreign product. Starring Han Suk-gyu (Green Fish, No. 3, The President’s Last Bang), Choi Min-shik (The Quiet Family, Oldboy, Himalaya: Where the Wind Dwells), and Kim Yun-jin (Ardor, Yesterday, TV’s Lost) this film was released just as Korea was attempting to recover from the IMF crisis and was an early example of the chaebol (Korea’s big business) investing heavily in a film. The film is filled with reminders of consumer goods, deliberately portraying Korea as recovering and post-scarcity. The plot is a combination of Hollywood action and Korean melodrama. North Korean agents inflitrate South Korea and attempt to use the CTX bomb at a friendly soccer match between North and South Korea in an attempt to force reunification by violence. It is up to the South Korean intelligence agents to catch and stop them.

There is also a lot of melodrama.

Although a product of Korea’s division culture, Shiri depicts the division rather simply; returning to a Cold War mentality of a clearly defined line of good versus evil, with the North Koreans portrayed as monstrous Others. Immediately from the opening sequences the two Koreans are compared and distanced across a technological (and therefore economic) divide. The North Korean training montage takes place either in the fields and wetlands of North Korea, or rundown buildings whose bare and dirty concrete walls and dust reminds the viewer of a poor industrial nation filled with rundown and abandoned warehouses. The troops are in ragged uniforms and eat a communal meal of what we can only assume to be gruel. The troops use their bare hands and knives for much of their training. Their targets are other humans, and are dispatched with methods that are pre-modern in their savagery. As technology (and through it society) evolves weapons move from the personal to the distant, as well as from killing few to killing many. Sure the North Koreans have knives, deadly hands, and a few guns, but they must travel to South Korea to get the ultimate weapon: the CTX bomb. This is important as weapons technology is inextricably linked to economic progress and power. The society who has the most disposable funds can produce the deadliest weapons. North Korea obviously cannot afford this, and their nuclear program (which was a ever growing concern at the time) is never mentioned. In the sequence where the prisoners are tied to poles and stabbed to death, as well as the sequence where the commandos and the prisoners are set against each other in the locked room, the regimented and organized violence that one usually associates with modern warfare and military training descends into a chaotic and disorganized melee filled with primal rage.

Failure is not an option for North Korean commandos.

When guns are employed they are shown only wielded by a select few, and they use Styrofoam dummies and glass bottles as targets. This marks the training as decidedly low class and technologically inept. There are no computers to measure accuracy, rather felt pens and rulers. This is immediately counteracted with South Korea’s introduction in the film. The montage of Lee Pang-hee’s kills are displayed off of a computer display and South Korea is introduced as a (post)modern society. The music even changes from the bombastic military score used in the North Korean scenes to a techno beat that references the decidedly MTV influenced editing and visual tricks that accompany this montage. From this scene we are brought to a shipyard (shipbuilding is one of the key industries responsible for Korea’s economic growth and success under the Park Chun-hee regime and beyond) and the viewer sees South Koreas answer to the North Korean commandos. The same music score returns but in contrast to North Korea’s brutality and chaos these troops move in tandem and are outfitted in the most up-to-date gear. The familiar signals from walky-talkies accompany the scene as these well-trained (yet faceless) troops rush into the ship with their laser-sighted sub-machine guns. They move with the exact precision that the North Koreans were just shown as lacking, and have the technology (including rather unnecessary night vision goggles) that the commandos will not have until coming into South Korea. The task force is defined in spaces of high technology, their offices protected by an odd form of a biometric palm reader that reads the veins in the back of the hand, a technology not even available at the time, so that Korea is portrayed not only as at the forefront of technology but beyond it as well.

Technologically advanced, organized, and 'good'.

This technological excess also comes with financial wealth. In Shiri‘s vision of South Korea there exists no one of lower-to-middle class background. All of the agents that work at the station wear designer suits and have trendy haircuts. In street scenes, extras are all dressed fashionably and can be easily seen carrying shopping bags bearing name-brands on them. This product placement runs rampant through the entire film, as the director emulates the Hollywood blockbuster down the constant display of consumer goods as well. While much of the products fore grounded are Korean in origin, many are decidedly Western imports. Along with the various Korean soft drinks and snacks we see the characters digest we see heavy Samsung product placement (for they did finance the film). Yet along with these Korean products, American imports are clearly displayed. The characters meet at a Bennigan’s in an early dream sequence. In America, Bennigan’s is a faux-fancy restaurant for the lower-to-lower middle class, but in Shiri‘s vision of Seoul it is obviously linked to high culture. In fact very little of this vision of Seoul seems Korean. In David Scott Diffrient’s article “Seoul as Cinematic Cityscape: Shiri and the Politico-Aesthetics of Invisibility” he proposes that Shiri‘s vision of Seoul is post modern in that no clear temporality can be discerned as past, present and future are entirely obfuscated. The spaces within which the North Korean agents exist are behind the scenes: alleys, rooftops, control rooms, and construction sites. He calls these spaces zones of invisibility that contradict the hyper visibility of the rest of the city in which these products and advertisements are profuse within a space of Western culture imperialism. While I agree with this argument, I would like to take it further and connect these zones of invisibility to the working class, which are also invisible within the regular streets of Seoul. In fact I believe that the only time one sees any type of lower-class person is when during the first chase down the back alley of the supermarket, a vendor is knocked over. Even the invalid and sick are depicted as beautiful people who exist only in a resort like hospital on Cheju Island. These areas are the areas in which the North Koreans can hide because to the upper class agents they are literally invisible to them. These are the spaces in which they can disguise themselves as workers in order to hide the bombs, I don’t even think that they would need the disguise as the rest of the characters seem determine to avoid the spaces which provide the structure to their absurdly clean and ordered world. The pipes, wires and dust seem like they are enough deterrent and the only time an agent goes into these areas they are chasing a terrorist or a bomb, and even then they need to be provoked. In other words violence in this film is largely confined to a lower/working class space that the rest of the film seeks to paint as invisible and not part of the new Korea. This economic disparity is the reason that reconciliation cannot be achieved within the film.

In the South, North Koreans have magic access to guns and clothes.

North Korea is positioned as both backward and traditional, yet when the agents come to South Korea they are sort of magically transformed into stylish consumers who now have access to both good clothes and transportation (how did that one terrorist get a motorcycle?) but also they have access to superior weapons as well. Suddenly the grime is gone, and this severely undermines their statements at the end about South Koreans eating cheeseburgers and drinking coke, while children starve. This cookie-cutter cry (straight out of every Hollywood film that has terrorists in it) gives both a faux-liberal argument to the film, as well as makes their real argument that South Korea is no longer Korean but largely American clear. This acknowledgement of economic disparity allows them to be able to exist within both realms of visibility and invisibility. Like the character of Lee Pang-hee/Lee Myung-hyun, they can exist within both spaces until the South Korean agents must go after them to reinsert the status quo and suppress the invisible segments of society. To exist in the Western life style where they can go to plays, eat at outdoor cafes and then laugh about the rain they must destroy any marginal sections of Korean society. It also seems that they must do away with any sense of Korean-ness and exist merely as products of a global culture. We don’t see them in any scenes that have to do with traditional Korean culture rather the film instead fixes Seoul as a city that could be in anywhere. Both the interiors and exteriors are so banally Westernized the essentially become sterilized of any interest. It is only the moments of in-betweeness that hold interest, when the invisible erupts into the visible or vice versa. These are the moments of violence, as most of the action scenes in the movie takes place in these invisible spaces, something that Diffrient seems to ignore in his paper. There can be no reunification between the two Koreas because becoming partners with the North would be returning to tradition and acknowledging an economic problem that these agents seem determined to forget and ignore respectively. They are unable to exist in space in-between, where the safety of the status quo cannot protect them. They do not want to be challenged and neither does the viewer. It is an action move after all.

The impossibilty of reunification embodied in the female.

A Good Lawyer's Wife, Im Sang-soo 2003

I’m nerdy about a lot of things. One of the biggest things is Korean Cinema, which I studied while going to NYU. Every once in a while I will write a paper (or long article) eventually figuring that I will write a book. Today’s post is an experiment. Can I post a long article, and how to format it. This paper examines how the role of women in Korean family melodramas has changed over the years, and how it helps to define the Korean family (and through that a sense of what it means to be Korean). Enjoy, I’m fairly proud of this one.

Traditionally Korea’s national division is thought of as the geographical and ideological split along the 38^th parallel. This is certainly valid, as it is one of Korea’s most unique features: a country permanently in a state of war with itself.[i] This North-South division is a main focal point for much of South Korea’s literature and film cultures as the South Korean people struggle to answer questions of national identity in the post-war, post-colonial culture. Throughout the recent filmic and literary history, we have seen stories that imagine the division as issues of class division, sexuality, economic agency, and even memory and history among many other things. The site of this exploration also largely takes place within the family, as it forms the smallest unit of the country and the problems of the nation are easily translated into issues of family strife. Adding further tension is the fact that the family remains the essential building block of traditional, Confucian culture – an aspect casually at odds with modern, progressive values. One thing that is consistent among much of these films, short stories, and novels, however, is that national trauma is constructed as a masculine crisis that reaffirms a patriarchal power structure comfortable with the status quo, and unwilling to affirm the growing status of women in Korean society. The patriarch’s on-going resistance to female emancipation allows cinema and literature, to re-imagine social and cultural cohesion in a country struggling to find its post-colonial identity.

In this paper I will be discussing the role of women as it relates to the family structure and the attempt to redefine it in Aimless Bullet (Obaltan, Yu Hyônmok, 1961), The Coachman (Mabu, Kang Tae-jin, 1961) and A Good Lawyer’s Wife (Baramnan Kajok, Im Sang-su, 2003). I chose these films because they offer differing points in history in which Korea was forced to redefine what its national identity was, and in doing so redefines the institution of the family. The Coachman is a film with a conservative view of post-war history and as such contains the restructuring and continuation of the Confucian patriarchy in a new form of family that is actually based on female economic agency. Aimless Bullet is a far more liberal and pessimistic view of post-war Korea in which the family is broken down, something that is accelerated and supported by female suffering. In both films we see the roles that Korean film tends to relegate to women when put in context with the family: the Mother, the Whore/Corrupt Daughter, and the Filial Daughter. Through these roles the women serve as agents to help the male figure (and through him the nation) realize and take action towards (or resolve) his crisis, but their own crises are marginalized in an attempt to normalize South Korea’s history as a site of masculine anxiety and disorder. A Good Lawyer’s Wife, on the other hand, offers a look at the modern upper-middle class family and its dissolution. In this film the institution of family is attacked and questioned in Korea’s new post-industrial society, with the woman characters finding liberation through sexual freedom, and the trauma is familial, rather than historic or socio-economic.

Andrew Higson writes “Cinema never simply reflects or expresses an already fully-formed and homogeneous national culture and identity, as if it were the undeniable property of all national subjects; certainly, it privileges only a limited range of subject positions which thereby become naturalized or reproduced as the only legitimate positions of the national subject.”[ii] In this way, national cinema is a constantly changing matrix of meaning and identity creation. This is especially obvious in Korea, when post-war cinema became a site to explore memory, tradition, and attempt to invent definitive ideas and ideals of Korean-ness. Interestingly it chose to define tradition and history as specifically patriarchal in nature, even though Confucian ideals of patriarchy are not innately Korean, and, in fact, historically Korea was at one time intensely matriarchal.[iii] This re-imagining of history as a site of masculine power naturalizes a male-dominated society and creates the masculine figure as the legitimate site where national identity is explored. The family becomes the structure under which masculine power is normalized as the national subject and women are forced to either submit or be cast out, rejected as being something Other than Korean if they attempt to exert their own individual agency.

It may be useful here to briefly explore a film made during the Japanese colonial period first in order to place the introduction of Western goods and the idea of the Modern Woman in its historical context, as these markers serve as part of the discourse of Korean-ness as they relate to women in the films we will be discussing. In both Aimless Bullet and The Coachman Western goods mark a betrayal to the nation and the family within the body of the woman. Until recently Sweet Dream (Yang Ju-nam, 1936) was the oldest known Korean film in existence.[iv] The film follows the middle class housewife Ae-soon (portrayed one of the most famous actresses at the time Moon Yae-bong) who is vain and not interested in playing the role of the Mother within her family. She would rather shop for expensive Western clothes than shop for her daughter, and eventually ends up leaving her family to stay in a hotel with a con man that she thinks is a wealthy modern man. When she finds that he is really poor, she reports him to the police and leaves for Busan. On her way to the train the taxi she is in runs over her daughter, both women end up at the hospital where her daughter regains consciousness, but Ae-soon resorts to suicide for her betrayal. The movie was released in Japanese occupied Korea soon after Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House debuted during a time where debates about the rise of New Women were on the public consciousness.[v] Kim Su-jin writes:

In colonial Korea, the “modern girl” became another name for new woman. It was also an imaginary location where all the “bad” elements of emulation congregated, and was used as a term that effectively expresses the “vanity” and “shell” of a new woman. The elements included fascination with new goods and customs symbolized by bobbed hair and western-hybrid dresses, and the awakening to bodies and sexual desires. The Korean modern girl was a new woman as the object of envy, scorn, or voyeurism. But such objectification was ambivalent. On the one hand, bodies, sexuality, and modern customs were criticized as decadent and corrupt, but on the other hand, they were fascinating.[vi]

This is true of Sweet Dream as well. The narrative structure is simple and the characters are stereotypes. Ae-soon is merely meant to be as scandalous as possible (she smokes in bed with a man who is not her husband) in order to portray the idea of a modern woman as immoral and shocking. As far from a Confucian Mother and housewife as possible, Ae-soon must be punished by the narrative for forgoing her role as the Mother in order to pursue her own desires. Despite this the character type of the Modern Woman would be one of the most used in Korean filmic culture. They were fascinating for audiences at the time, and after the war especially.[vii] This early example of Korean melodrama lays the groundwork for much of the following filmic history, and sets the castigation of modern women as the site on which post-war cinema would bring to bear the trauma of division and the struggle for identity.

Aimless Bullet is based on a book by the same name, and is widely considered one of the best Korean Golden Age films[viii]. The film follows Chul-ho a clerk at an accountant’s office who is the head of a household living in Haebangch’on (Liberation Village): a village for North Korean refugees in a post-war Seoul. His meager earnings must support his mentally ill mother, his pregnant wife, his sister Myôngsuk, his children and his unemployed brother. He cannot even afford to pull a rotten tooth out of his mouth. The film is shot in a stark neo-realist style and depicts the brutality of life following the Korean War. It was produced in the brief period of freedom following the April 19 revolution and released right before the 5.16 coup.[ix] The film is intensely pessimistic; the trauma of the war has torn this family apart and drives its members to self-destruction in attempts to better their situation.

The women in Aimless Bullet are the ones who undergo the most suffering within the film. However their crises exist on the fringes of the diegetic world, and exist to propel the masculine crises even further. Kelly Y. Jeong writes that “the women’s suffering registers on screen only as the man’s symptom, because the camera does not capture the images of women’s suffering directly, but expresses it by visualizing how it affects men who are responsible for the women’s well-being.”[x] Unlike the females in The Coachman, who provide a stable base for the males to reestablish their own identities upon, the females in Aimless Bullet fail to provide a stable base for the masculine figure and because of this the family falls apart. The Mother figure in the film is insane, constantly screaming, “Let’s go!” in reference both to their economic situation in the Liberation Village and the fact that they have been disposed from their home in the North. Her suffering merely serves to drive the plight of Chul-ho home to the audience; her mad cries accentuate the impossibility of escaping the harsh realities of life in post-war Korea. Finally Chul-ho even appropriates his mother’s suffering as his own, when he echoes these insane words, bleeding in the back of the cab. The Mother is not denigrated, but rather created as a figure needed for familial stability and success. Clearly the Mother figure within the film is largely absent with one insane, and the other dying (on the edges of the frame) from malnutrition. Indeed this second Mother, Chul-ho’s wife, dies giving birth to their child bringing yet another burden onto Chul-ho while leaving her place within the diegtic world as the only person who could have taken the role of the Mother and created a stable home for the patriarch. Indeed, the lack of a Mother figure within the film is highly traumatic, and as Jeong points out the loss of the second Mother figure in the film eventually drives Chul-ho to recognize the impossibility of his situation and lead him to action, even if that action is self-destructive.[xi] With his wife dead, his brother in jail and his sister a prostitute Chul-ho is forced to realize that the structure and moral code he has held onto for the entire film cannot sustain him or his family (or indeed even allow the concept of a family to exist) within the harsh reality of post-war Seoul.

In The Coachman, the story begins with a broken family, whose mother has passed away. The father, Chun-sam, is a cart driver whose job, because of the rapid modernization following the war, is quickly becoming obsolete. Like many post-war art works, the family is lower working class and as such is to be seen as more connected to the Korean identity, as those who were in power or had money were often seen as (and often were) colonial collaborators. The absence of the Mother in The Coachman, however, is not as traumatic as in Aimless Bullet, but it is still a space that must be filled in order for the masculine crises to be resolved. Soowon, a maid in the household of the owners of Chun-sam’s horses, ends up filling this space as an emotional and economic agent that allows the family to be restored. Soowon is an interesting character as when she becomes the Mother in the family, the family is redefined as subject to female labor. It is Soowon’s economic agency that allows Chun-sam to continue with his job, and Soo-up to continue with his studies (which would eventually lead to upward social mobility).  She is allowed to have this independent wealth because she uses this wealth to invest back into the family, supporting the patriarchal foundation at the same time as creating a new family structure in which the patriarch is no longer the primary financial provider.

In Lee Soo-won’s essay “The Cheong Space: A Zone of Non-Exchange in Korean Human relationships” he proposes that in Korea because of the Korean concept cheong[xii], human relations are defined as non-exchange relationships where the individual sheds the sense of self and attempts to further the interests of others, with value placed on existing in solidarity with the group rather than what you receive from the relationship. Western relationships are based off of social exchange where the individuals enter into relationships for personal gain, which inevitably lead to conflict because of self interest.[xiii] Soowon’s financial investment also allows for a new structure under which the eldest son can use education to better his standing within society, rather than the traditional system of taking over his father’s place in the family business (which is failing under the pressure of modernization). It also represents this concept of cheong, and non-exchange relationships.  Yet Soowon’s financial success is favorable when contrasted with the daughter Okhee’s attempts at creating her own financial independence.

Unlike Soowon, who uses her wealth to further insert herself into a patriarchal family structure, Okhee is attempting to use material wealth to escape the family and attempt upward mobility only for herself. . Her attempts at economic agency is based off of the concept of social exchange, and it is this sense of independence from the family, as well as Okhee’s deceptive means of achieving it, that leads to her inevitable failure and a severe beating at the hands of the man she was trying to seduce.  Okhee’s leaving of the ‘traditional’ Confucian values for selfish capitalistic gain is marked by her appearance in Western dress as an attempt to disguise her class background. Early in the film, in response to Okhee’s complaint that her dress is too shabby, her friend Mija tells her “There is nothing you can’t fix for a larger gain, right?” This fix is obviously to reject the essence of Korean-ness that the film is struggling to identify within this lower class family, and accept a middle class western lifestyle of excess and overt feminine sexuality. The scene in which Mija teaches Okhee how to act western (and therefore modern) is a perfect example of this. Through the act of being taught how to walk and dress to please and entice wealthy men, we see Okhee consciously attempting to reject her old identity and create a new false identity as a modern woman. Remember Ae-soon? Like her and all Modern Women who leave the cheong space and the family behind, Okhee must be punished. Especially given the rather conservative sentiments of the film, rejecting a sense of propriety and Korean-ness will only be met with tragedy. Again Soowon is contrasted to Okhee as she helps the family to continue with their traditional makeup, all the while playing the role of the dutiful Mother and housekeeper, a role marked visually by her constant attire of traditional Korean dress. It is not that the film denigrates the financial agency of these women; rather it promotes it as long as it is serving the need of the family and is the wish of the patriarch. In Aimless Bullet on the other hand financial agency is left completely up to the masculine characters, even if they are economically impotent, and the female is left with only one method of financial income.

Myôngsuk’s character in Aimless Bullet is similar to Okhee in many ways. They both desire to get out of their family and financial situation and seek financial independence for their self rather than the family. In both films their betrayal to the familial structure (and therefore their Korean-ness) is marked visually (and aurally in Aimless Bullet) by Western culture. However the betrayal in Aimless Bullet goes far further than an aesthetic choice based on pretense. Myôngsuk’s betrayal is far more direct and incendiary; she goes from playing the Filial Daughter (as a sister to Chul-ho) to playing the Whore. While Okhee’s betrayal to the nation (if the family is the building block of culture) is only on the surface, Myôngsuk’s betrayal is both a physical and primal betrayal. She is literally selling herself to the foreign invaders, and her body becomes the symbolic site of the colonial experience. However Myôngsuk’s suffering, like the two destitute Mother’s in her family, is not her own and it merely serves to further Chul-ho’s downward spiral. Jeong writes “the film depicts the brother’s witnessing of his sister’s prostitution as more painful than what his sister’s own experience as a prostitute [is].”[xiv] The woman’s pain as a prostitute only exists to serve as a symbol for the threat of an invading masculine force against the Korean sense of masculinity. Myôngsuk is therefore portrayed as betraying the family and nation, and because her betrayal runs too deep she can never restore her relations with the patriarch of the family. In the end she attempts to buy her way back into the family by giving her brother money, but she can never return as she is marked as violated by the Other. Her money only spurs Chul-ho into self-destructive action, and the family is already destroyed beyond repair.

Okhee on the other hand is able to restore her filial relations with her father. She makes a conscious decision (after being beaten for her betrayal) to return to the patriarch and follow his wishes of finding financial agency through her work at the factory. Through this action she is redeemed and welcomed back into the family unit. She reenters the cheong space and its non-exchange relationships. She becomes useful to the patriarch while remaining loyal, something that the other Filial Daughter character in the film (Okrae) cannot. Okrae is the strongest example of traditional filial loyalty within the films, but she is deaf mute who cannot exert or insert herself within the world and therefore she lacks the agency that the female characters need in this re-structuring of the family. Jeong proposes that her suicide is a “final act of desperation but also of defiance and refusal of the status quo that oppressed her in life.”[xv] (Jeong, 176). I disagree; in my interpretation her suicide is a final act of service to the family. It is the ultimate expression of filial piety. She cannot function in the changing times and in order for the family to evolve, she must be disposed of. Her suffering is important yes, but as with the females in A Stray Bullet it is merely a projection of the patriarch’s inability (in this case his economic impotence) to provide for his family. With her gone, the film forgets her and her diegetic space (that of the caregiver within the home and kitchen) is filled with the new Mother, Soowon. Her absence is the catalyst that allows all the events to fall into place that bring the new family to fruition. In these ways the family becomes not only the site of national identity, but also an institution of safety that can protect its members from trauma. It is these concepts that are broken during the course of A Good Lawyer’s Wife.

A Good Lawyer’s Wife is actually a rather poor translation of the title and gives the impression that Hojung, the titular wife, exists merely to support her husband’s career. The Korean title Baramnan Kajok could be roughly translated to A Family Having Affairs. This is much more accurate as to what goes on in the film. Hojung begins the film as a seemingly modern example of a Confucian Mother. She had given up her career as a dancer to take care of her adopted son Sooin and support her husband Youngjak and his career. She enjoys much more freedom than any of the women found in the previous movies, due to the globalized nature of post-industrial Korea and the imported ideas of feminism. In fact the very Western visual markers that marked Ae-soon, Myôngsuk, and Okhee as betraying their Korean identity, are everywhere within this film. Korean identity is presented as global and westernized. Traditional culture is connected with the lower class, and is shown as backwards and in need of help by the upper class. Here history is acknowledged, but hidden.

Hojung is marked as modern and desirable because of these material objects. She still pursues her art by teaching at the local dance school, and the family also does not have to worry about economic power. They are part of the new wealthy upper class (the nouveau riche), and they have survived the trauma of the IMF Crisis. She is a devoted mother to her son Sooin, even if he is adopted, and even a dutiful daughter-in-law. She is helping Sooin through his coming to terms with his adoption and the father-in-law through his battle with liver cancer. Yes she is an agent to help these people through their trauma, but she never is subjugated to them. It becomes clear that she needs something more and is sexually frustrated and bored with her husband, as seen in the scene where she begins masturbating after he fails to please her. Her husband spends most of his time either at work or with his mistress, a woman who is sexually free and with whom he can inebriate his frustrations through sex.[xvi] Interestingly the film’s main tragedy, the death of Sooin, isn’t used as a punishment for the female’s affair (as the daughters accident is used in Sweet Dream) but rather is a direct result of an accident caused by Youngjak.

Hojung begins an affair with her high school aged neighbor, and in doing such sets herself free. Unlike many other Korean works where sex is a vehicle for the masculine to overcome his own inefficiencies, usually through the rape or subjugation of the Korean woman, here female sexuality is represented as power. Both Hojung and Byunghan, Youngjak’s mother, find freedom and happiness by taking their sexual agency into their own hands. Hojung actually exercises the trauma of her failed marriage and loosing her son by subjugating the younger Jiwoon, and finding her release through sex. In the climatic sex scene between the two she sheds tears of sadness and joy as she orgasms, which happens only when she dominates Jiwoon. She is now free, and the pregnancy resulting in this affair essentially replaces Sooin, much like Soowon replacing Okrae. It is a complete gender reversal of the traditional Korean cinematic paradigm. These affairs also break these ideas of the non-exchange Korean relationships, and are instead examples of social exchange relationships. Cheong ceases to exist as these women reclaim the sense of I. Unlike Myôngsuk, Okhee, and Ae-soon’s transgressions, these affairs are not punished and the trauma that is transplanted onto the women in that family here it remains within the realm of the masculine.

The Coachman and Aimless Bullet’s male characters suffer from economic impotence within the newly emerging post-war class system. Their trauma is directly related to the war and to the re-building of the nation. For instance in The Coachman, Chun-sam’s job as a horseman is in danger from Korea’s rush to modernity, yet through the female economic agency and the promise of upward mobility thanks to Soo-up’s promotion as prosecutor the trauma is healed. This film is conservative in the way that it depicts the modern myth of success coming from hard work, here it is directly connected the promotion of the family to an upper class that American aid and “guidance” created. The family in The Coachman insulates those within its structure from the outside world, and provides a stable base from which they can face the future. The historical trauma suffered in Aimless Bullet however, creates a space in which the family is torn apart due to economic and social lack. Insanity, violence and death result from this trauma and the family cannot provide shelter for the character.

The trauma in A Good Lawyer’s Wife is much more complex. The film does allude to the historical trauma of the war and division, but it is far from the main problem. Youngjak as working on a case involving an uncovered grave of Korean War victims, whose skulls are dug up and become an example of the atrocities that modern Korea would rather forget, but cannot. His father’s alcoholism is a result of the trauma of leaving his mother and sisters in North Korea, where they were killed, and as he lies dying he begins singing North Korean songs. (Echoing the Mother’s cries of “Let’s Go” in Aimless Bullet) Yet despite these facts it is the family that is the source of the trauma. Unlike in The Coachman, where humanity and decency are naively portrayed and the family becomes a mythological institution that can right all wrongs, the Hojung’s family is the source of the trauma. Their inability to communicate with each other, and the boredom with life that the bourgeois existence affords them, causes their unhappiness. It offers them no protection; rather their unhappiness only increases the more they attempt to hold the family together. The historical trauma does not affect them directly; to Youngjak the case represents a chance to exercise his professional power (perhaps because he lacks emotional power) for good. The father remains stubborn that the problem is his, remaining in good spirits despite the fact that this trauma has robbed him of a career, the ability to sexually satisfy his wife, the ability to be a good father, and the ability to die peacefully. His death, which would have served as a catalyst for destruction in an earlier or more conservative film, actually allows Byunghan to find happiness with another man, which in earlier films would go so much against Confucian thought it would be punished by tragedy. Here she becomes livelier and kinder, once she rediscovers the orgasm after 15 years. Her new husband is not set to become the new patriarch of the family; rather she completely leaves the family and the country. The new patriarch is Youngjak, but it is an empty patriarchy because the family is no longer in existence. Yet everyone seems to be fine in the end of the film, even Youngjak gives a little jig after one last failed attempt at reconciliation with Hojung. If The Coachman set up the new familial structure for post-war Korea, A Good Lawyer’s Wife completely tears it down.

If the family is the central building block of the nation, it is no wonder that Korean plays its cultural anxieties about national identity through the genre of family melodramas. Both Aimless Bullet and The Coachman place the Korean family within an economic division, and the division between tradition and modernity. They represent an era in which Korea attempted to determine where the line will be drawn between the two, and how to rewrite the familial structure in the face of modernity and Western influence. Yet while this history and new family are strongly patriarchal, the familial structure evolves (or destructs) because of the female. The Coachman’s family succeeds because the females provide the economic security necessary to guarantee the family’s future upward mobility and continued patriarchy. Aimless Bullet’s family fails because the females are either insane, sick, or betray their bodies and through them the nation to the Western Other. It is the woman who is connected most to the change in modernity versus tradition (as the visual codes of traditional and western wear suggest) and their suffering is readily but it exists only within the borders of the increasing male anxiety. By marginalizing feminine suffering, in normalizes a patriarchal power structure under which the female is only given several approved roles within the family. A Good Lawyer’s Wife, although very much removed historically, takes a similar look at Korea during a time of change. The growth of the bourgeois and newfound economic freedom in a capitalistic society, as well as the advent of women’s rights and equality, forces a new definition of the family. The women are strong and independent, and find happiness not through aiding the continuation of the Confucian system, but through sexual and emotional independence. Although the suffering belongs to the female figure as well as the masculine, the females are now able to exercise their own traumas, and the males have no outlet. The Confucian family does not provide protection against trauma; rather it antagonizes it. There is no alternative presented, and the film offers no answers. Korean society is having the same problem, and with the rising divorce rates it appears that it is time to reevaluate the concept of family.

[ii] Andrew Higson. “The Concept of National Cinema” Screen 30, no. 4 (Autumn, 1989) reprinted in Film and Nationalism, ed. Alan Williams, 63.

[iii] Confucian culture was imported from China along with Buddhism during the Three Kingdoms period (57 BC-668 when the Silla kingdom triumphed over Goguryeo), but would come to full fruition during the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) where Confucian ideals such as hyo (filial piety) were greatly encouraged and became the primary belief among the yangban rulers and scholars of the time. Traditionally Korea was shamanistic in nature, and only females could be shamans. There were also several important female rulers of early kingdoms.

[iv] This honor now belongs to Yun Baek-nam’s Cheongchun’s Sipjaro first screened in Seoul in 1934, which was recently discovered by a theater manager.

[v] http://www.koreafilm.org/feature/100_1.asp

[vi] Kim Su-jin. Excess of the Modern: Three Archetypes of the New Woman and Colonial Identity in Korea, 1920s to 1930s. Doctoral Thesis, Seoul National University 2005. 1.

[vii] The enormous popularity of films such as Jayu Buin (Madame Freedom, 1956) and Hanyeo (The Housemaid, 1960) attest to this.

[viii] The Golden Age of Korean Cinema lasts from the late 1950s into the early 1970s by which time government censorship and industry practices had resulted in a dramatic decline in quality of domestic films.

[ix] The April 19 Revolution (1960) was a student lead uprising against then president Syngman Rhee. In my opinion this was the one period of true Korean independence since before the Japanese occupation, and it allowed such works as The Aimless Bullet and Choi In-hoon’s novel The Square, which used the freedom of the time to ask difficult questions about the division of the country. This period was ended by the May 16, 1961 coup by Park Chung-hee’s military regime. The Aimless Bullet was quickly banned by the government for portraying post-war life in a harsh and negative light, as well as the perceived North Korean sympathies of the line “Let’s Go” said repeatedly by the Mother.

[x] Kelly Y. Jeong. “Projections of Masculinities: Nation Re-building and Postwar Korean Cinema,” from “Multiple Beginnings: Crisis of Gender Masculinity, Nationhood, and Many Arrivals of Modernity in Modern Korean Literature and Cinema,” Ph.d., diss. 2003, 188

[xi] Ibid., 191

[xii] Cheong is a word not easily translated into English. Loosely it is the idea of togetherness and belonging that exists when you have a space within a group. In sociological terms it can be viewed as the space in which the individual social units “I” and “You” become one unified “we”. However this “we” is not a unit made of two individual units, but rather a singular unit where the individuals have shed their sense of self and become one with their partners views.

[xiii] Soo-Won Lee, “The Cheong Space: A Zone of Non-Exchange in Korean Human Relationships,” in Psychology of the Korean People: Individualism and Collectivism, ed Gene Yoon and Sang-Chin Choi (Seoul: Donga Publishing Corporation, 1991)

[xiv] Kelly Y. Jeong. “Projections of Masculinities: Nation Re-building and Postwar Korean Cinema,” from “Multiple Beginnings: Crisis of Gender Masculinity, Nationhood, and Many Arrivals of Modernity in Modern Korean Literature and Cinema,” Ph.d., diss. 2003, 189

[xv] Ibid., 176

[xvi] Virtually all of the adult characters in the film are having an extra-marital affair, and rather explicit ones at that. The advertising campaign clearly pushed this aspect showing actress Moon So-ri in very provocative poses. It worked, and the film quickly became a box office success.