The peaceful life of Jeju Islanders is disrupted by the threat of crime and drugs in Kim Jae-hoon’s zany comedy, The Desperate Pursuit (필사의 추격, Pilsaui Chugyeok). Though nobody is really being desperately pursed, time moves quite slowly on Jeju, the film plays into a generalised anxiety in recent Korean film in which the local community is fearful of “foreign” incursion, not only from meddling mainlanders but from Chinese investors who are currently buying up land and thereby pushing locals out.
The main drama revolves around an old-fashioned market that Taiwan-based gangster Zhu (Yoon Kyung-ho) wants to use as a medical centre that will act as a drug hub. Everyone who works there uses Jeju dialect and is keen to protect this disappearing slice of their local culture. According to some, they’ve already seen off the yakuza and aren’t planning on giving in to Triads either, though Zhu has already proved himself more ruthless by murdering his mole at the market when he asked the gangsters to avoid using violence because it was making his job of convincing people to take the settlement money and leave more difficult. Meanwhile, detective Su-gwang (Kwak Si-yang) who has been transferred to the island temporarily due to excessive use of force in Seoul remarks on how the landscape has changed since he last visited with all the new Chinese-owned skyscrapers.
To that extent, the contrast between the area around the airport and the location Su-gwang eventually finds himself in couldn’t be more stark. Though he encounters difficulty finding accommodation ironically because he’s from the mainland and all the landlords assume he’ll end up doing a moonlight flit, echoing the issues faced by international residents in the city, he’s eventually billeted in a pleasant country cottage owned by Ms. Yoo (Ye Soo-jung), leader of the market resistance, despite the objections of the crotchety old man who rents the other room. He’s not anticipating having to do a lot of policing, but is put straight on the case of a known conman they think may be in the area despite having previously fled abroad to evade all the warrants out against him.
The conman is one thing, but the other disruptive force is the beauty clinic run by Dr. Yang (Park Hyo-joo) with the very ominous name of “Omerta”. Yang is cahoots with Zhu after having spent some time in China after losing her medical license due to providing illegal pain killers to her VIP patients in a damning indictment of amoral and exploitative status-driven culture. Their aim is to start dealing fentanyl in Korea through Jeju, though Yang warns him it’s a risky prospect with no infrastructure in place and in consideration of Korea’s tight drug laws, but Zhu is insistent. One of the chief weapons they have against Yang is that she only treats “VIPs” of which there aren’t any in the local community. In order to create a diversion, the local women eventually storm the place demanding treatment and accusing Yang of discrimination in their proud Jeju accents.
Meanwhile, Su-gwang and his colleagues battle police corruption while trying to attack the real source of disorder in the form of Zhu and his men who have already struck deals with the local authorities. Zhu speaks fluent standard Korean and claims to have had a Korean father, though he abandoned him when he was five, but is also irritated by the constraints placed on him in this new territory. It really does turn out that everything about personal connections in Jeju, though in a more positive sense than it first sounded as the islanders band together to protect the market and expel the corruption of Zhu’s gang who want to ruin the beautiful local landscape and corrupt the populace by dealing drugs.
It has to be said, however, that there’s something a little sinister in the justification of Su-gwang’s violent policing which is treated as a bit of joke while coming from a place of righteous fury at the contemporary society in which the rich and powerful are free to get away with their crimes thanks to their connections. Jeju, however, does seem to mellow him a little with its laid-back atmosphere and cast of quirky characters where everyone really does know everyone even if outsiders are still viewed with a degree of suspicion. Partly a kind of tourist ad for the local community, the film paints the island as a place of warmth both in terms of its climate and the kindness of the locals, at least once you get to know them.
Trailer (Korean subtitles only)
Windows on Worlds 