Tag: Lee Yi-Kyung

The Moon (더 문, Kim Yong-hwa, 2023)

February 23, 2024by Hayley Scanlon

Feeling slighted by the international community, Korea attempts to dominate in space by becoming the second nation to send a man to the moon but does so apparently with egalitarian principles in Kim Yong-hwa’s futuristic science drama, The Moon (더 문). The conceit is that that pretty much everyone, having learnt nothing, is intent on colonising the moon because it is a rich source of a particular mineral that could become a valuable means of sustainable energy for Earth. Of course, Korea wants in but crucially wants to share what it finds with the world unlike the Americans who just want to keep everything for themselves.

A running current of Anti-Americanism is deeply felt early on as NASA and the US initially refuse to help when a Korean spaceship gets into trouble in a solar flare, while the International Space Committee from which Korea is expelled because of “conflicts between nations” also seems to be led by Americans. Moon-Young (Kim Hee-ae), the ex-wife of former flight director Jae-gook (Sol Kyung-gu), also works at NASA and has taken an American name after marrying an American, yet is treated with chauvinistic contempt by her bosses who question her loyalty and qualifications. The implication is that America wants to conquer the moon to secure its bounty for themselves in an ironic act of futuristic colonialism, but that the Koreans are going to the moon in the interests of science hoping to discover something that will benefit all mankind.

Having been expelled by the committee seems to fuel an exceptionalist drive among the Korean scientists who feel that they aren’t being afforded the respect they deserve internationally. This sense of internalised shame stems from the failure of their first rocket, the Norae-ho, which exploded shortly after taking off killing the three astronauts on board. Introduced to the three members of the Woori-ho, we can immediately sense that their chances of survival can’t be good seeing as the two older members mostly talk about their children, one of them planning to decide on a name for his as yet unborn daughter on the way. The third, Sun-woo (Doh Kyung-soo), has some complicated baggage with the mission and former flight director Jae-gook who was on duty at the time the Norae-ho exploded.

Sun-woo isn’t the only one with baggage as the scientists strive to overcome the traumatic failure of their first attempt. The Science and Technology Minster (Jo Han-chul) has his eyes mostly on his own reputation not wanting to oversee another catastrophic failure in Korea’s space programme. One of the two men in charge of the Norae-ho mission took his own life in atonement, while Jae-gook split up with his wife and retreated to the mountains working in a rural observatory. Perhaps precisely because of this, the quest to save Sun-woo, a former Navy Seal hired for his agility and athleticism who lacks experience and is unable to pilot the spacecraft alone, quickly goes viral pushing the Americans, who had been reluctant to help, to finally pitch in on a joint operation.

It’s this kind of panglobalism that the film eventually advocates as Moon-young sheds her American name of Jennifer and is fired from NASA for trying to help Sun-woo leading her to make a direct appeal to the international crew of the space station who hail from Canada, Australia, and the UK to save him out of astronaut solidarity. A voiceover reminds us that the Moon belongs to everyone, not any one entity, while praising those who were able to transcend nationality and ideology to work for a better world for all. It’s obviously an anti-colonialist sentiment though one that is eagerly pointed at American imperialism and its continuing effects in Korea even if it’s also true that the nation is smarting from being kicked out of the International Space Committee and desperately wants to be readmitted to secure its status on the world stage. Kim throws just about everything he can at Sun-woo and his little lander from solar storms to meteor showers and increasing despair shifting from one set piece to another as Sun-woo tries to overcome yet another disaster and fulfil his mission of returning home with ice samples in an act of redemption not only for the space programme but for himself as its orphaned son.

The Moon is released in the US on DVD, blu-ray, and Digital on 27th February courtesy of Well Go USA.

US trailer (English subtitles)

Bear Man (웅남이, Park Sung-kwang, 2023)

September 17, 2023by Hayley Scanlon

According to an ancient legend, bears who eat garlic and mugwort can become human though it’s not exactly clear why they’d want to. The debut film from Park Sung-kwang, Bear Man (웅남이, Woongnami) as its name suggests follows a pair of bear cubs who decide to give things a go in the human world but with wildly differing results as one is adopted by the researcher who allowed them to escape and the other by a vicious gangster who exploits him for his violent capabilities and shows him little love.

Love is something Woongnam (Park Sung-woong) got a lot of thanks to his devoted mother and though not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer had forged a promising career as a local policeman before he was let go after falling into a kind of funk on overhearing his father on the phone suggesting that the life expectancy for a regular bear is only 25 so he might not have much time left. Thanks to his nature as a bear man, Woongnam ages much faster than everyone else and already appears to be middle-aged though he is also blessed with immense strength and agility. After agreeing to bend the law by helping his feckless friend Malbong (Lee Yi-kyung) win in at illegal gambling Woognam comes to the attention of a group of police detectives investigating a shady gangster who notice a man looking just like Woongnam taking out a host of bad guys at the harbour.

There is something quite poignant in the puppy-like existence of Woongbok (also Park Sung-woong) who keeps looking up to his boss as a father figure with a mixture of fear and longing. He gazes enviously at a family crossing the road in front of him and later visits Woognam’s home where Woongnam’s mother thinks that he’s Woognam and tries to feed him his favourite foods while he just looks on silently without expression. Where Woongnam is basically good, not too bright but heart in the right place, Woongbok has been raised as creature of violence by his intimidating father figure and carries a threatening aura with his slick haircut and tailored suit.

The police want Woongnam to pose as Woongbok so they can take down the gangsters who have not only been trafficking drugs but also dabble in scientific research into viruses and their cures apparently about to unleash an epidemic in China to profit off the drug sales. It’s not all that clear what the scientists who released the bears were actually researching though there is a kind of parallel in the fact the other pair seemingly settled down, adjusted to their new environment and had a few cubs while Woongnam and Woongbok ended up becoming humans with bear-like abilities. Woongnam has to be prevented from entering hibernation and sleeps flat out like a bear but otherwise keeps his true nature secret even while covertly helping the townspeople out getting rid of beehives and freeing trucks stuck in the mud.

That would be about the extent of “policing” in this kind of small-town where there’s nothing much to do but catch fish in the river and chat to wild boar. Park builds on the surreality of everyday rural life with mounting absurdities such as the parade of teenagers who troop through the convenience store where Woongnam’s live-streaming friend Malbong works each of whom he is largely able to unmask thanks to his keen sense of smell, and the polytunnel that doubles as a gambling den for down on their luck farmers. Woongnam’s biggest regret is losing his position as a police officer and it’s his desire to get it back to make things up to the people who raised him that encourages him to go along with the detectives’ crazy plan even if means he has to undergo weird martial arts training inspired by Drunken Master and take lessons from a strange movement coach in how to walk like a gangster. Yet in the end it’s Woongbok’s innocent desire for familial love that becomes a source of salvation, turning against his gangster brethren to protect the warmth of Woongnam’s family home. Quirky in the extreme and defiantly absurd, the film nevertheless has genuine heart in otherwise strange tale of wandering sons and bears of men.

Bear Man screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

The Pension (더 펜션, Ryu Jang-ha, Yang Jong-hyun, Yoon Chang-mo, Jung Heo Deok-jae, 2018)

April 13, 2019by Hayley ScanlonLeave a comment

“We’re all lonely beings” the proprietor of a small mountain lodge advances hoping to comfort a distressed guest. The temporary denizens of The Pension (더 펜션), a four part omnibus set in a charmingly old-fashioned forest hideaway, are indeed mostly lonely beings making use of this liminal place to process the taboo away from the prying eyes of civilisation, embracing the savagery of the natural world as they cast off conventional morality to pursue their illicit desires be they vengeful, violent, protective or loving.

We begin with darkness as our first pair of guests, a man, Choo-ho (Jo Han-chul), and his wife Mi-kyung (Park Hyo-joo), seem to be all too interested in the family next door. Eventually we discover that the couple have come with ill intentions and revenge on their mind, though the man they’re after doesn’t seem so bad to begin with – he asks them to dinner with his wife and son who seem happy, but the atmosphere grows tenser as he begins to drink and a darkness creeps in. Before long Mi-kyung has set her mind on poetic justice, leaving the other couple’s young son in peril while Choo-ho struggles with his desire to stop his wife making a terrible mistake while not wanting to upset her.

Unhappy families continue to be theme with the second pair of guests – a married couple hoping to rekindle their listless romance in the peace and tranquillity of the remote mountain lodge. While the arrival is pleasant enough, perhaps too much so as the husband (Park Hyuk-kwon) puts on a show of making the effort, despair creeps in when he realises he’d made sure to bring his wife’s (Lee Young-jin) favourite coffee but forgotten the grinder. He wants her all to himself, but she just wants to go home and worries about their young daughter staying with a mother-in-law she doesn’t seem to like very much. Eventually the couple decide they need some time apart and she ends up meeting someone else (Kim Tae-hoon) in the woods to whom she recounts all the loneliness and isolation she experiences in her married life, seemingly trapped by conventionality but unconvinced that anything would be very different if she left.

The hotel owner (Jo Jae-yoon) might agree with her – a lonely soul he is too, though it appears he opened this hotel for just that reason, burying himself away from his heartache by coming to live alone with the transient presence of strangers and peaceful isolation of the woods. His mother, however, is not convinced and is constantly nagging him to get married – in fact, she’s set up a meeting for the following day meaning he’ll have to close the shop. That might be a problem, because he gets a surprise guest in the middle of the night, a distressed woman (Shin So-yul) intent on staying in a very particular room. Finding it odd, he can hardly turn her away with nowhere else to go but a TV programme on the causes of suicide (loneliness, the decline of the traditional family, economic pressures etc) convinces him he ought to check on her. Assuming she is merely lovelorn (as is he), he tries to comfort her with platitudes but pulls away from her emotional need only to find himself eventually wounded only in a much more physical way as he idly fantasises what it might have been like if he’d gone back to her room and been a bit more sympathetic.

Our proprietor is notably absent in the final segment, replaced by a much younger man (Lee Yi-kyung) with much more urgent desires. Despite being there to do a job, the boy has brought his girlfriend whom he alienates by failing to explain a mysterious text from another girl all while making eyes at the attractive young woman (Hwang Sun-hee) staying next door who claims to be “from the future”. When another guest turns up and starts making a fuss about a missing engagement ring she supposedly left behind, everything becomes much more complicated than it seems but one thing is certain – there is precious little love to be found in this hotel where everyone has come to embrace the side of themselves the city does not allow to breathe.

Much more cynical and obviously comedic than the preceding three tales, the final chapter perhaps bears out the message that it’s not so much rest and relaxation people have come to The Pension for, but “privacy” or to be more exact “discretion”. Some came for love, others for lack of it, but all of them are looking for something they are unlikely to find here though the first couple could perhaps have found it if only they had stuck together. Nevertheless, hotels are transient places for a reason – take what you need from your stay and leave the rest behind.

The Pension screens as part of the eighth season of Chicago’s Asian Pop-Up Cinema on April 16, 7pm, at AMC River East 21.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Confidential Assignment (공조, Kim Sung-hoon, 2017)

May 9, 2017October 28, 2019by Hayley Scanlon1 Comment

South Korean cinema has a fairly ambivalent attitude to its policemen. Most often, detectives are a bumbling bunch who couldn’t find the killer even if he danced around in front of them shouting “it was me!” whereas street cops are incompetent, lazy, and cowardly. That’s aside from their tendency towards violence and corruption but rarely has there been a policeman who gets himself into trouble solely for being too nice and too focussed on his family. Confidential Assignment (공조, Gongjo), though very much a mainstream action/buddy cop movie, is somewhat unusual in this respect as it pairs a goofy if skilled and well-meaning South Korean police officer, with an outwardly impassive yet inwardly raging North Korean special forces operative.

In the South, Gang (Yu Hae-jin) is hot on the trail of a suspect he’s been chasing for quite some time but just as he’s finally about to catch him, his phone starts ringing. The cute ringtone featuring a little girl’s voice saying “daddy, pick up – don’t pretend to be working” is impossible to ignore and so Gang answers, chats to his daughter, and lets the suspect get away. In the dog house at work, Gang winds up with all the rubbish jobs before finally being saddled with a “special assignment” – babysitting a North Korean policeman as part of a collaborative detail chasing a possible defector/dangerous criminal the North are keen to drag back home for possibly inhumane treatment.

The Northerner, Lim (Hyun Bin), has his own reasons for chasing the criminal in that he is the only surviving member of a squad wiped out when a superior officer decided to go rogue and run off with a set of plates for printing counterfeit money. The North need the plates back, but Lim’s motives are personal more than merely patriotic and what he wants is vengeance for the death of someone close to him rather than protecting the embarrassing secret of North Korea’s counterfeit currency conspiracy.

For obvious reasons neither of the two men is able to trust the other but the confusion and suspicion is only increased by Gang’s total lack of knowledge about the case. All he knows is that they’re looking for a defector – no more, no less. Lim isn’t happy about having a South Korean cop getting in his way and quickly ditches him as soon as possible only for Gang to turn on his ace detective abilities and eventually end up at the same place through policeman’s instinct. Gradually a sort of grudging camaraderie builds up between the two as they’re forced to spend more time together and their odd couple buddy cop antics become the film’s main draw.

Lim, knowing nothing of life in the South yet suspicious of Gang, goes along with some of Gang’s goofier attempts to rein him in such as extended gag in which he gets him to put on an ankle bracelet by telling him that it’s a secret detective’s badge, reassuring him that his is in the cleaners, only for him to meet another suspicious type out on the road. So that he can keep track of him better, Gang’s superiors order him to take Lim home so he can watch him day and night much to the consternation of his wife but delight of his slightly younger sister-in-law who is instantly smitten by Lim’s chiseled features. Lim reacts to all of this with obvious vigilance but comes to like and respect Gang’s family who eventually welcome him into their home without reservation, even taking pains to try cooking North Korean food when he appears reluctant to join them at mealtimes.

Never quite engaging with the political subtext, Confidential Assignment is less about North/South co-operation than it is about complementary skills and the creation of an unexpectedly complete buddy cop unit. Gang is instantly impressed (and a little scared) by Lim’s obvious physical capabilities as he leaps from high balconies and fights off a whole room of bad guys armed only with soggy toilet roll, but Lim also comes to respect Gang’s bravery, kindness, and dedication to his family. Confidential Assignment might not be the most nuanced cinematic portrayal of North/South relations but its good-natured warmth, silly comedy, and impressively staged action scenes make it one of the most entertaining.

Confidential Assignment was screened as part of the 19th Udine Far East Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)