Old Boy

yoB dlO

Interchangeable consumers

2

Old Boy engages the viewer through its conspiracy narrative. Viewers are engaged because of the everyday experience of unimaginable social forces that constrain our reality. It confronts social taboos and asks if we are experiencing life as a mere spectacle and if we are strangers in our own world.

Do we simply sit as a passive mass consuming what is fed to us through our television? Have we become an antomised population controlled by our citizenship and which ever multi-national our faith belongs to?

It’s time to stop being an interchangeable consumer, controlled by the multi-national co-operations, world leaders and puppeteering forces, which tell us what to buy, what to like and what to think. It’s time to think for yourself, consider what is behind the news bulletins, what is happening around the world and what is happening to you right now. There are many layers to the world, layers we don’t see, and layers we will never see, but it’s time to look.

Old Boy (2003) South Korea

OLDBOY

6

Introduction

153

Censorship

81

South Korean Democracy

16

Key Scenes

36

Under the Surface

128

Anti-America

97

Gwangju Maasacrre

141

Environment

42

Korea’s Division

125

Revenge as Global Capital

Introduction

Chapter ONE

Introduction

If they had told me it was going to be fifteen years, would it have been easier to endure?

Just imagine walking on the street, being kidnapped and held in a normal apartment.

You are free to move around the apartment and you are surrounded with normal things, but there is no way to leave. Every day you receive food through a hole in the door and every night you are forced to fall asleep as gas is injected into the room. You have no idea why you are there, and how long it will be until you are released. Days turn into weeks, weeks slowly turn into years. What would you do if you are suddenly released after 15 years?

Second in his thematic “Vengeance Trilogy” after “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” (2002) and before “Lady Vengeance” (2005), Park’s personal masterpiece represents the artistic nucleus of the three otherwise unconnected films. His story begins when drunken windbag Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) is kidnapped and confined to a prison for 15-years. He escapes and proceeds to hunt down and exact revenge upon his captors for taking so much away from him. And however rewarding his initial reprisals may be, Dae-su was released for a reason; someone watches his every move and indeed pushes his progress to a deliberate climax.

10

Based on the Japanese manga Old Boy, by writer Garon Tsuchiya and illustrator Nobuaki Minegishi, Park Chan-wook’s script uses the source merely as a springboard.

Assigning significance to each scene like a bard to his stanzas, Park is not a wasteful filmmaker. Actions are explained with a complexity of motivation and are not all understood until the last scenes, but indeed, they are motivated—Park makes certain of it. What may seem like grotesqueries in the first half of the film are later justified as dramatic irony, making additional viewings crucial to grasp the remarkable intensity of the narrative beyond its initial shock.

The specifics of how Dae-su escapes are unimportant, since he is set free and made to think he escaped. He is unleashed on the world in a hardened and empty form, and his only purpose is revenge. Hungry for life, meets sushi chef Mi-do (Kang Hyejeong). She serves him the live octopus as a delicacy, but not before he receives a call from his former captor. “Do you know who has done this to you?” the voice asks. guesses a few names from his notebooks, all wrong. The voice discloses, “I’m a sort of scholar. And my major is you.”

After his meal of cephalopod, finds himself in Mi-do’s home waking from a blackout.

She remarks on his dreams about ants, wherein he’s devoured from the inside-out.

She says in her experience, ants signify the dreamer’s loneliness, an aspiration toward an ostensible hive collective. Mi-do dreams about ants too, or rather a man-sized ant creature on the subway, sitting by itself, isolated. If her dream the ant has no one, what chance does she have? And so, Mi-do remains by Dae-su’s side, eventually as an adoring lover that needs him.

Shrouded by cryptic allusions and uncertain causalities, Park’s cinematic atmosphere contains a dreamlike quality best described as Kafkaesque. Indeed, the director cites Franz Kafka as an influence, except Park’s work drives forward, and unlike Kafka, resists falling into unspecified allegory. meets persecution for unknown reasons by an unseen oppressor just as Kafka’s protagonist in The Trial, and Park uses insect imagery in his dream sequences shaped by The Metamorphosis. Despite his literary citations, Park never loses his audience to pretentious intellectualism and always engages on raw levels. His objective is telling a compelling story with depth, doing so in a manner that offers metaphors in the action and the resultant weight in the subtext.

C |1 11

Following a carefully laid trail of breadcrumbs in the form of mysterious boxes and puzzling phone calls, Dae-su discovers his former high school classmate Lee Woo-jin is responsible for imprisoning him, for stealing his life. Dae-su’s crime was spreading gossip after seeing Lee and his sister sexually experiment as teens. The result was Lee’s sister committing suicide from shame. As much as burns for payback, Lee has smoldered for much longer, plotting his victim’s every move since adolescence.

The energy and flash and even dryly comic idiosyncrasy of Park’s direction, particularly in Oldboy above his other pictures, might distract from the events depicted, except they are just as unexpected. Constructing a thriller that avoids a predictable outcome where the hero aims to get the bad guy and in the end does, Park uses colour saturations, intentional grain, bright colors, and wild formal manipulation to match the feral nature of the story. Had the production any less oomph, the mise-en-scène would find itself desperate to catch up with the rapidly unraveling yarn. Finding equilibrium between method and story, Park instills purely emotional responses in his viewers. And as violent as his picture seems to be, he does not intend to exhaust the body through appalled reactions to the film’s sadism.

He exhausts us emotionally, exposing us to a painful dramatic beating that stabs and twists the knife with the final scene.

Studying philosophy and dabbling in film criticism at Sogang University, only after seeing Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo did Park think twice about his intended plans for the future. Following the Hitchcockian model, the director finds unique balance between art and entertainment in Oldboy, embracing each concern equally.

He weaves a story wrought with dramatic fire, which like Vertigo, mutates into something more perverse, more complicated, and yet more strangely evocative as the story advances.

Both pictures embrace a protagonist, whose character is sympathetic yet disturbed, stripped of layer after layer until naked in body and soul. Park’s film boasts savage physical brutality to signify a more appalling psychological affliction, embracing the undeniable connection between mind and body, whereas Hitchcock’s film largely remained in his character’s psyche. Both films refuse to allow a straightforward viewing, as we are asked to reflect on and ultimately participate in completing the narrative through our own subjectivity.

12

When the credits roll, our feelings about Dae-su’s decision are confused and traumatized into numbness, until, of course, we provide an answer for ourselves. Left with our uncertainties, Park allows the viewer to pass their own judgment. Does Daesu’s crooked smile in the last shot reflect a part of him not affected by the hypnosis?

Or perhaps he is finally happy, blissfully unaware of the wrongness of his love for Mido, which has its own depraved implications. There’s no doubt that any answer comes with its own ugly spin, leaving the viewer in an uncomfortable position no matter what their outcome.

High attendance in South Korea brought Park profitable box-office receipts coupled by widespread critical acclaim, including the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.

Since his 2000 hit JSA: Joint Security Area, Park’s homeland has found his pictures relevant examples of entertainment with a purpose, and he remains South Korea’s most popular and likewise respected filmmaker. Whether to identify and undermine the conflict between North and South, or to simply press the buttons of censors, Park’s films retain incredible capacity for equal parts audience involvement and social commentary. But the lasting influence of the film remains its emotional impact.

Along with the other films in Park’s thematic trilogy, Oldboy broods on the selfdeprecating vanity of revenge, and presents the most terrible case of the three against the futility of vengeance. In each, Park challenges typical uses of explicit violence by using it symbolically in support of his unforgiving narratives. Often dismissed as gratuitous exploitation, critics of his approach cannot see passed the respective film’s aggressive surface to value how it heightens the wealth of the story. This is a mistake. His is a visceral brand of storytelling, told with rich visuals, impassioned functionality, and poetic purpose.

C |1 13

14

15

Film Overview Directed by - Park Chan-wook Based on - Old Boy by Garon Tsuchiya, Nobuaki Minegishi Starring - Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jung Music by - Jo Yeong-wook Cinematography - Chung-hoon Chung Studio - Show East, Egg Films Distributed by - Show East Release date(s) - 21 November 2003 (South Korea), 15 May 2004 (Cannes Film Festival) Running time - 120 minutes Country - South Korea Language - Korean Budget - US$3 million Gross revenue - $14,980,005

16

15 years locked in a cell, only 5 days given to seek revenge.

C |1 17

Chapter Two Key Scenes and Themes

Key Scenes

In this chapter the key scenes from the film will be summarised and discussed in detail. Certain themes from Old boy will also be highlighted in this chapter and then discussed in greater detail later in the book.

20

SCENES

C|2 C |1

00 : 11 : 12 - Dae-su alone in his room, masturbates to the image of a woman on the television.

Fifteen Years

SCENE T W O

22

Dae-su wakes up in a hotel room complete with shower, bed, and television, the space fortified with a metal door and brick walls. He cannot leave. Daily meals of fried dumplings are given through a passage in the door. Periodically an electronic jingle announces the release of sleeping gas, and when regains consciousness, his room has been cleaned and his hair groomed. That cycle continues for days, months, years, without him ever knowing who has done this to him or why.

Television breaks the news of his wife and child dying in an accident; now he is all alone. Action programs provide physical training. He punches the brick walls to pass the time, developing callus-enforced knuckles. Plagued by bizarre dreams, or maybe hallucinations, he may be under the spell of hypnosis. Time is spent journaling long lists of potential enemies, and by the stack of notebooks, has not led a distinguished life. “Even though I’m no more than a monster,” he asks, “don’t I, too, have the right to live?”

This scene represents past oppressive dictatorships when the public was censored, receiving some information through their television.

23

Dae-s’s & Mi-do’s First Meeting SCENE F O UR

Dae-su has a craving after he escapes prison. “I want to eat something alive,” he explains. Served octopus, he bites into it without hesitation, chomping mouthfuls as he gathers its winding limbs. This is not a special effect. Four takes and as many octopuses later and the shot was perfect, the creature’s tentacles suctioning and caressing the actor’s face just right as he chews. Though detractors might declare animal cruelty, slice it up, serve with a garnish of pickled ginger and they call it sushi.

Consume it unprepared and the act has meaning. South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (2003) uses such gut imagery to create themes, assigning ultra-violence, sexual perversity, and sadomasochistic torture metaphoric reasoning that ripens the twisting narrative into a stark emotional confrontation.

This shows how Dae-su has become ruthless from 15 years of being locked up. He wants to consume them and feel it fight against him. He wants to have power over his surroundings, something he didn’t have for 15 years.

24

00 : 27 : 56 - Dae-su orders and eats a octopus while it’s still alive and moving.

25

Revenge SCENE SE V EN

Dae-su begins his bloody trek with the prison guard. Compelled by his singular desire for revenge, he removes one tooth for every year imprisoned. And then we see the full extent of Dae-su’s television-self-training: He enters a hallway—after exploring his future in dentistry—to find it filled with the prison-hotel’s goons.

Park takes a symmetrical, side-scrolling view of a massive brawl wherein defeats twenty some thugs by his strength, his sharpened will, and a hammer (Dae-su’s weapon of choice). This is not Jackie Chan’s graceful style of choreographed fighting, rather clumsy and desperate and natural combat. Shown in a single cut, the fracas, and Dae-su’s astonishing victory, positions him into the role of hero, only to be crushed as the story unfolds.

The famous one-take corridor scene was shot in three days. No CGI was used to cleverly edit the sequence like a single shot but the scene was actually shot in one take (although a little CGI was used to show Dae Su getting stabbed in the back with a knife and to correct some punches landing).

28

D a e - s u ’ S W EA P O N

00 : 41 : 33 - Dae-su uses a claw hammer to extract a man’s teeth in revenge.

C|2 29

01 : 06 : 18 - Woo-Jin joins Dae-su and Mi-do in bed whilst they are unconscious.

30

Dae-su’s & Mi-do’s Love SCENE ELE V EN

Lee Woo-jin arranged for to meet Mi-do through hypnotic suggestion, and orchestrated their love affair. Consider the scene where after and Mi-do make love for the first time, Lee gases them and joins them on the bed to appreciate his handiwork, caressing Mi-do’s bare hip like the third member of a demented ménagea-trois. But rather than finally getting his due, he is out-revenged by Lee, who enlightens that Mi-do is actually his now-grown daughter that believed to be dead.

This brings one of the largest taboos into Old boy, incest.

C|2 31

I want to eat something alive.

32

Each one I yank out will make you age for one year.

Ready to talk?

33

Truth SH O W D O W N

Lee exacts impossibly cruel justice best compared to the likes of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, wherein scores can only be settled through the vilest, beyond excessive retribution. Pitted between his romantic adore for Mi-do his lover and paternal love for Mi-do his daughter, begs Lee not to tell her. On his knees, he vows to do anything to prevent Mi-do from learning this, and then removes his own tongue both as punishment for his gossip mongering and to protect the truth from Mi-do. Empty now that his horror show is complete, Lee has no reason to live, and kills himself. resolves to find the same hypnotist that helped coordinate Lee’s revenge, and pays her to remove any memory that Mi-do is his daughter, and to separate him from the monster he became seeking revenge. and Mi-do can live happily ever after, free of bad memories or the knowledge that they are father and daughter. Ending on a heartbreaking, eerily romantic note, Park’s film asks how far the old maxim “ignorance is bliss” really extends.

01 : 39 : 26 - Woo-jin mercilessly kills his right hand man.

35

C h a p t e r THREE

Under the Surface

Under the Story

You want to torture me, but I can simply kill myself first Do you want revenge, or do you want the truth?

There are key areas of Korean history and Korean society, which will be discussed in further detail with examples of how they are voiced and explored in Old Boy. On the surface Old Boy is a mystery thriller, centred around the desire for truth and the cruelty of revenge. The viewer empathises with Dae-su because how he has suffered and how Woo-jin takes his revenge.

However there are political and social themes raised in the film, relating to South Korea’s history and the uncertain future.

Although the viewer has to look deeper into the film there are ideas to be considered and direct links between Old Boy and Korea.

38

The division of the Korea Peninsula is voiced in the film through a difficult subject, incest, and the love between a father and daughter. Simply the only reason North and South Korea are divided is because of World War II and the fact Russia and the USA couldn’t set aside their difference to build a united Korea. In an essence Korea is separate because they were stopped. Dae-su’s and Mi-Do’s love is apparent in the film and there is little reason the viewer can find why they shouldn’t be together.

Dae-su spends 15 years locked in a room. During this time he is fed images through a television of the goings on in the world, including the election of South Korea’s president. This represents South Korea’s struggle for democracy and the oppressive regimes which kept the people censored.

Woo-jin represents the Capitalism in South Korea. He is rich, has access to technology surveillance systems, and the fully automated loft he lives in mimics postmodern topology of information systems.

C|3 39

Laugh and the world laughs with you.

Weep and you weep alone.

40

Revenge is good for you health, but pain will find you agian.

41

Chapter FOUR

Korea’s Division

Old Boy’s Division To explore the division in Korea we must first look deeper into the theory linking the divide and Old Boy together. We must assess Park’s political imagination and how he connects the film to Korean history.

The radical nature and utopian impulse of Park’s political imagination is extended further if we take into account examination of kinship structures predicated on an incest taboo guaranteed to promote circulation and exchange among various communities. Kinship regulations prohibit incestuous relations in order to promote “socio-logically determined affinities” of exchange. Exchange takes priority and, elevated to a necessity, escapes the immediate deliberations of the community as well as localized interests which find themselves forced to assimilate to the laws of trade.

Breaking the interdiction against proscribed relationships threatens the international exchange networks, as well as their underlying symbolic codes. Hence the figure of incest in Old Boy belies a utopian impulse cognate to the suspension of all forms of exchange and all modes of production formed in their wake.

Through the figure of incest, coupled with the conspiratorial narrative that foregrounds this element as absent cause, Park’s political unconscious registers a more historically adequate expression of revenge. Evoked by the incestuous relationship that drives Old Boy’s narrative are the consequences of a divided Korea unable to conceptualize the absent cause that lay beneath a congealed separation and the national identities cemented in its wake. Just as Woo-jin and Dae-su fall victim to a symbolic order of which they are mere subjects, so Korea must reckon with an arbitrary decree imposed by international agencies that pre-empt a reciprocal engagement. Occluded from the political imaginaries of both countries are precisely the existence and excessive force of outside interests, which are always already the vanishing mediators of the present.

In other words, incest in Old Boy becomes at once, a means of cognitive mapping-a way to think local resistance within the socio-historical totality. During the final moments of the penultimate sequence, and culminating in the destruction of Woojin’s impersonal, computerized, corporate-apartment space, Dae-su severs his own tongue so as to obviate the forbidden nature of his carnal relations with Mi-do, now revealed to be his daughter. The dialectic of revenge that formed the film’s discursive parameters is at once terminated and transcended in the distressing image of Daesu lacerating his own tongue with a pair of scissors. Coinciding with the symbolic decimation of multinational corporate space is the obliteration of an entire discursive regime that intermediates necessity and contingency, the rule of exchange and its historically conditioned decree, respectively. The violent depiction of Dae-su’s sacrifice augments the conditions of possibility for change, the founding of a new social order incompatible with the logic of revenge and stripped of the limitations, anxieties, and fears that constitute what had become and continue to exist for us all as the fixed an inescapable reality.

44

The violent depiction of Dae-su’s sacrifice augments the conditions of possibility for change, the founding of a new social order incompatible with the logic of revenge and stripped of the limitations, anxieties, and fears that constitute what had become and continue to exist for us all as the fixed an inescapable reality.

C|4 45

North

The Korean Divide

U.S.A.

Japan

South

The Korean Divide

Russia

China

Korea’s Division The division of Korea into North Korea and South Korea also known as the Republic of Korea (ROK) stems from the 1945 Allied victory in World War II, ending the Empire of Japan’s 35-year colonial rule of Korea. The United States and the Soviet Union agreed to temporarily occupy the country as a trusteeship with the zone of control demarcated along the 38th parallel. The purpose of this trusteeship was to establish a Korean provisional government which would become “free and independent in due course.”

Though elections were scheduled, the Soviet Union refused to cooperate with United Nations plans to hold general and free elections in the two Koreas, and as a result, a Communist state was permanently established under Soviet auspices in the north and a pro-Western state was set up in the south. The two superpowers backed different leaders and two states were effectively established, each of which claimed sovereignty over the whole Korean peninsula.

48

The two superpowers backed different leaders and two states were effectively established, each of which claimed sovereignty over the whole Korean peninsula.

South Korean and UN troops withdraw behind the 38th parallel in the Korean War.

C|4 49

ko r e a n p e n i n s u l a

Map showing the 38th paraellel divide between North and South Korea.

50

Despite the initial plan of a unified Korea in the 1943 Cairo Declaration, escalating Cold War antagonism between the Soviet Union and the United States eventually led to the establishment of separate governments, each with its own ideology, leading to Korea’s division into two political entities in 1948: North Korea and South Korea.

In the North, a former anti-Japanese guerrilla and communist activist, Kim Il-sung gained power through Soviet support. In the South, elections supervised by the United Nations were held, a Republic of Korea was declared, and Syngman Rhee inaugurated as its first president. In December, the UN General Assembly declared this “a lawful government” and “the only such government in Korea.” On June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, sparking the Korean War, the Cold War’s first major conflict. At the time, the Soviet Union had boycotted the United Nations (UN), thus forfeiting their veto rights. This allowed the UN to intervene in a civil war when it became apparent that the superior North Korean forces would unify the entire country. The Soviet Union and China backed North Korea, with the later participation of millions of Chinese troops. After huge advances on both sides, and massive losses among Korean civilians in both the north and the south, the war eventually reached a stalemate. The 1953 armistice, never signed by South Korea, split the peninsula along the demilitarized zone near the original demarcation line.

No peace treaty was ever signed, resulting in the two countries remaining technically at war. Over 1.2 million people died during the Korean war.

After the war, the 1954 Geneva conference failed to adopt a solution for a unified Korea. Beginning with Syngman Rhee, a series of oppressive autocratic governments took power in South Korea with American support and influence. The country eventually transitioned to become a market-oriented democracy in 1987 largely due to popular demand for reform, and became a developed economy by the 2000s.

Due to Soviet Influence, North Korea established a communist government with a hereditary succession of leadership, with ties to China and Russia.

C|4 51

N O RTH EA Contrast of the Korean Peninsula

KOR

D

South

North

IV ID

S O U TH

ED

Dichotomies Oldboy, has a heightened visceral visual style, but its narrative style is different, the way the film gracefully transitions between its most intimate human moments and its most dreadful scenes of torture and self-destruction. Park uses the camera and narrative style of Oldboy to gently voice the sharp contrast of the Korean Peninsula.

The film presents multiple dichotomies — revenge and truth, laughing and weeping through visuals, dialogue, and through a recurring motif: “Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone.” In some scenes, it’s not clear if the characters are laughing or crying, representing the impossibility of distinguishing between the extremes of each. Dae-su laughs and cries as he exacts revenge on anyone who stands between him and his captor.

This difference, yet similarity relates directly to the conflict between North and South Korea. Two very different nations, yet similar who are still at war.

Laughing?

Crying?

54

c.4.

North Korea After the war, North Korea’s government focused on industrialization as it rebuilt the battle-torn country. As president, Kim Il-sung preached the idea of juche, or “self-reliance.” North Korea would become strong by producing all of its own food, technology and domestic needs, rather than importing goods from abroad North Korea’s communist regime invested its limited resources on building up the military and personal worship of then-dictator Kim Il-Sung. Due to the misuse of its resources, and also thanks to systemic flaws inherent in all planned economies, North Korea gradually fell behind South Korea, and its economy experienced negative growth after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

During the 1960s, North Korea was caught in the middle of the Sino-Soviet split.

Although Kim Il-sung hoped to remain neutral and play the two larger powers off of one another, the Soviets concluded that he favoured the Chinese. They cut off help to North Korea and it’s dependent people.

During the 1970s, North Korea’s economy began to fail. It has no oil reserves, and the spiking price of oil left it massively in debt. North Korea defaulted on its debt in 1980.

In the mid-1990s, due to it’s failing economy these and floods, North Korea suffered a great famine, which killed more than three million people. Nevertheless, North Korea’s leadership chose to neither reform like China nor transform into a democracy like Eastern Europe. Rather, the country maintained its own form of socialism, and personal worship was inherited by the son of the Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-Il. Kim Il-sung died in 1994, and was succeeded by his son Kim Jong-il. Between 1996 and 1999, the country suffered from another famine during this time that killed between 600,000 and 900,000 people.

Today, North Korea relies upon food aid, even as it pours scarce resources into the military. North Korea evidently tested its first nuclear weapon on October 9, 2006.

North Korea’s GDP for 2008 is estimated at $26.2 billion US. The per capita GDP is $1,700, which is very low and shows the lack of income for the average North Korean.

56

A US-based rights group has estimated that there are up to 200,000 political prisoners in North Korea.

Decades of this rigid state-controlled system have led to stagnation and a leadership dependent on the cult of personality.

Aid agencies have estimated that up to two million people have died since the mid1990s because of acute food shortages caused by natural disasters and economic mismanagement. The country relies on foreign aid to feed millions of its people.

The totalitarian state also stands accused of systematic human rights abuses. Reports of torture, public executions, slave labour, and forced abortions and infanticides in prison camps have emerged. A US-based rights group has estimated that there are up to 200,000 political prisoners in North Korea.

Pyongyang has accused successive South Korean governments of being US “puppets”, but South Korean President Kim Dae-jung’s visit in 2000 signalled a thaw in relations. Seoul’s “sunshine policy” towards the North aimed to encourage change through dialogue and aid.

C|4 57

59

South Korea After the war South Korea’s economy relied heavily on American aid and democratic rule was shaky. However, in choosing liberal democracy (at least in theory) and a market economy, Dr. Syngman Rhee, the first president of the ROK, and the other founding fathers of South Korea in the end proved wise.

South Korea’s economy grew rapidly in the 1960s and 70s, and GDP per capita passed that of North Korea in the late 1970s. While the economy was growing, democracy remained elusive. South Korea’s military regime, ruled first by President Park Chung Hee and then by President Chun Doo Hwan, used economic growth as an excuse to suppress freedom and the human rights of the citizens.

South Korea’s young, educated generation, which benefited from the economic growth and became the country’s new middle class in 1980s, sought and fought for democracy against the military dictatorship and achieved it in 1987, restoring fair, popular presidential elections. South Korean democracy was further stabilized after the opposition party’s long time leader and democracy fighter, Kim Dae Jung, won the presidency in 1997. Now, South Korea’s economy is 14th largest in the world, and boasts an active civil society.

South Korea is one of Asia’s Tiger Economies, ranked fourteenth in the world according to GDP. This impressive economy is based largely on exports, particularly of consumer electronics and vehicles. Important South Korean manufacturers include Samsung, Hyundai and LG. Per capita income in South Korea is $30,200 US, and the unemployment rate as of 2010 was an enviable 3.3%. However, 15% of the population lives below the poverty line, showing there is a gap between rural and urban areas.

60

South Korea is one of Asia’s Tiger Economies, ranked fourteenth in the world according to GDP.

C|4 61

62

63

Current Tensions In 2002 North Korea leaders in the capital, Pyongyang made a decision to reactivate a nuclear reactor and to expel international inspectors.

North Korea said it had successfully tested a nuclear weapon, spreading alarm throughout the region. Since then, intensive diplomatic efforts have aimed to rein in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. After years of on-and-off talks, a deal was thrashed out in February 2007 under which Pyongyang agreed to shut down its main nuclear reactor in return for aid and diplomatic concessions.

But negotiations stalled as North Korea accused its negotiating partners - the US, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia of failing to meet agreed obligations.

North Korean and South Korean soldiers keep watch over the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Tensions between North Korea and the rest of the world increased steadily again from late 2008 onwards, especially after the new South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, ended his predecessor’s “sunshine policy” of rapprochement with the North.

In April 2009 North Korea walked out of international talks aimed at ending its nuclear activities. The following month the country carried out its second underground nuclear test and announced that it no longer considered itself bound by the terms of the 1953 truce that ended the war between the two Koreas.

Tensions reached a new high in spring 2010, when the South accused North Korea of sinking one of its warships, the Cheonan, and cut off all cross-border trade.

Pyongyang denied the claims, and in turn severed all ties with Seoul.

After the US imposed tough sanctions in August, the North began to make overtures again. Its then leader, Kim Jong-il, signalled a readiness to resume six-party nuclear talks during a visit to China, and indicated a willingness to accept Southern aid to cope with major flood damage.

Kim Jong-il’s successor in December 2011, his third son Kim Jong-un, continued the dynastic policy of sending out mixed signals. He agreed to suspend long-range missile tests in order to receive US food aid in February 2012, only to challenge the US and the other frontline states almost immediately by announcing a forthcoming “rocket-launched satellite” for April, to mark Kim Il-Sung’s birthday.

64

This launch failed, but in October 2012 Pyongyang responded to the unveiling of a new missile deal between Seoul and Washington by saying that it had missiles capable of hitting the US mainland. A December satellite launch suggested that North Korea is developing such rocket technology, and brought immediate condemnation from the UN, US, Japan and China.

The following month, immediately after the UN Security Council condemned the launch, North Korea announced that it planned to conduct a third “high-level nuclear test” and rehearse more long-range rocket launches aimed at the US “archenemy”. It carried out its threat to perform a third nuclear test in February 2013, and swiftly received another set of UN Security Council sanctions on cash transfers and travel for its diplomats.

Undaunted, North Korea threatened South Korea and the USA with war and announced that it would restart all facilities at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex, including a reactor mothballed in 2007.

North Korea maintains one of the world’s largest standing armies and militarism pervades everyday life. But standards of training, discipline and equipment in the force are reported to be low.

North Korea maintains one of the world’s largest standing armies.

C|4 65

Korean Missile Crisis North Korea has issued a torrent of belligerent threats against the US and South Korea in recent weeks. North Korea launched a rocket in December 2012 and conducted its third underground nuclear test in February 2013. These actions led to international condemnation and stiffer sanctions, further provoking Pyongyang.

Bombs explode near South Korean army tanks during an exercise against possible attacks by North Korea near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in Hwacheon, South Korea, ,April 1, 2013.

Analysts have been assessing how close the peninsula is to an outbreak of military hostilities, and possible action by the international community. One of the big unknowns this time, however, is Kim Jong-un, who has only been in power since December 2011. The fear is that the young, untested leader might actually believe his country’s own inflated rhetoric about how powerful it is. There appears to be a general consensus that this crisis will almost certainly not peak with North Korea deciding to launch a full-scale war.

Instead, the big risk is that a small incident could trigger an escalation that runs out of control. The young leader is artfully playing a long game of diplomatic chess in which Pyongyang appears to be several moves ahead of the international community.

There are a number of domestic and international objectives behind Pyongyang’s provocations but “the underpinning reason is a powerful desire by the North to force the Obama administration to engage in direct and public negotiations. A policy of ‘strategic patience’ that seeks to contain North Korea without rewarding it for its bad behaviour, has resolutely resisted.”

At the beginning the new US defence secretary Chuck Hagel ordered America’s most advanced plane, the B-2 stealth bomber, over the Korean peninsula for the first time. The message to North Korea was intended by the Pentagon to be one not of provocation but deterrence, attack South Korea at your peril. The US military has moved ships and planes toward South Korea, relocated artillery battalions and canceled military leave as a precaution. The danger, Chuck Hagel says, is that the Korean peninsula is so heavily militarized that “one miscalculation could lead to a tragedy”, and that South Korea is less willing than before to simply accept North Korean provocations without reacting.

66

Thousands of North Korean soldiers fill the streets of Pyongyang in the latest game of brinkmanship, March 30, 2013.

C|4

67

htroN dna htuoS aeroK ta era .raw

O Plan 5029, which is a U.S. war plan that essentially simulates regime collapse in North Korea. It also envisions U.S. forces occupying North Korea.

70

North Korea announced that it planned to conduct a third “high-level nuclear test” and rehearse more longrange rocket launches aimed at the U.S. “arch-enemy”.

Behind the North Korean Crisis

U.S. propagandists and the mainstream media present foreign crises, like the current one with North Korea, as black-and-white morality plays with Official Washington behaving wisely and the adversaries as crazy. But the reality is always more complex The following is an interview between Christine Hong and Dennis J. Bernstein.

DB: There’s a lot of disinformation and patriotic reporting coming out of the U.S. Why don’t you tell us what is going on right now. What is the situation and how dangerous is it?

CH: You put your finger on it. All we see is media reporting that singularly ascribes blame to North Korea, which is portrayed as a kind of unquestionable evil, so what the U.S. is doing in response to the supposed provocation seems eminently justified.

I think we are in a crisis point. It doesn’t feel dissimilar to the kind of media rhetoric that surrounded the run-up to the U.S. invasion in Iraq. During that time also, there was a steady drumbeat to war. …

If we were to look at the facts, what do those facts tell us? I will give one example of the inverted logic that is operative, coming out of the media and U.S. administration.

In a recent Pentagon press conference, [Defense Secretary] Chuck Hagel was asked whether or not the U.S. sending D-2 stealth bombers from Missouri to fly and conduct a sortie over South Korea and drop what the DOD calls inert munitions in a simulated run against North Korea could be understood as provocative. He said no, they can’t be understood as provocative. And it was dutifully reported as such.

What we have is a huge informational landscape in which the average person who listens to these reports can’t make heads or tails of what is happening. What has happened since Kim Jong Un has come into his leadership position in North Korea is that the U.S. has had a policy of regime change.

We tend to think of regime change operations and initiatives as a signature or hallmark policy of the Bush administration. But we have seen under President Barak Obama a persistence of the U.S. policy of getting rid of those powers it finds uncooperative around the world. To clarify what I mean, after Kim Jong Il passed away [in December 2011], the U.S. and South Korea launched the biggest and longest set of war exercises they ever conducted. And for the first time it openly exercised O Plan 5029, which is a U.S. war plan that essentially simulates regime collapse in North Korea. It also envisions U.S. forces occupying North Korea.

An Alternative view on the current North Korean tensions.

What is routine during these war exercises, which are ongoing right now, as we speak, is they simulate nuclear strikes against North Korea. These workings are a combination of simulated computer-assisted activity as well as live fire drills. Last year, the first year of Kim Jong Un’s leadership, a South Korean official was asked about the O Plan 5029 and why he was exercising this regime collapse scenario. He said the death of Kim Jong Il makes the situation ripe to exercise precisely this kind of war plan.

It’s almost impossible for us in the United States to imagine Mexico and the historic foe of the U.S., Russia, conducting joint exercises that simulate an invasion of the United States and a foreign occupation of the United States. That is precisely what North Korea has been enduring for several decades.

DB: For some time now, the press has been stenographers for the State Department.

There is no independent reporting about this. You don’t see it in either the conservative or the liberal press. We do not understand the level and intensity of the so-called war games that happen offshore of North Korea. You made a dramatic point about imagining if North Korea wanted to conduct war games off the coast of the United States. The press plays a key role here in fanning the flames of a dangerous situation. How dangerous do you perceive the situation is now?

CH: I think that it’s hair-trigger dangerous. There are many reasons for this. Even the commanding general of the U.S. armed forces in Korea, James Thurman, said that even the smallest miscalculation could lead to catastrophic consequences. Even though many blame North Korea, I think everyone realizes this is a very volatile situation that has gone entirely unreported in the U.S. media.

China has stepped up its military presence. You have a situation where China is amassing its forces along the North Korea-China border, sending military vehicles to this area, conducting controlled flights over this area. It’s also conducted its own live fire drills in the West Sea. So you have a situation which is eerily reminiscent of the Korean War, in which you can envision alliances like the U.S. and South Korea, with China in some echo that slips into a relationship with North Korea.

I think it’s a very dangerous situation we are in right now. The abysmal nature of the reporting is that all you hear is jingoistic. One thing we need to understand is that U.S. and North Korean relations must be premised on peace. For over six decades, the relations have been premised on war. U.S. policy toward North Korea throughout the existence of North Korea has been one of regime change.

If you understand the basis of the relations of war, you realize that war doesn’t just get conducted on the level of battles or simulated battles. It gets conducted on terrain of information. So when you think about it that way, it’s easy to understand why misinformation and disinformation prevails with the reporting of U.S. and North Korean relations.

DB: Secretary of State John Kerry called North Korea’s actions dangerous and reckless and he continues to be part of a policy to send the most advanced stealth fighting weaponry, as if they could name enough weapons that would back down the North Koreans.

You can’t document this, but what is your take on the many countries in the world who are cheering, maybe not in the foreground, that somebody finally said, “no, you can’t make believe that we are an aggressor. You can’t turn us into an enemy when you are having exercises with 60,000 troops. You can’t plan to invade us and expect us to just stand by.” I’m sure there are many countries and leaders, many revolutionaries in this world, who are taking note.

CH: Of course. That is the other inverted reality. There is the reality of those of us who are in the U.S. and locked into the limitations of our positions here, and the rest of the world. This is classic U.S. Cold War foreign policy. … So much of what goes on in our name in U.S. foreign policy is far from pretty. It is a blood-soaked history.

If you pause to think about the lived reality of those people who are unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of U.S. foreign policy, then you realize that George

Bush had that plaintive cry, “Why do they hate us?” It was a kind of soul-searching incapacity to understand the causes of anti-Americanism around the world. But as you say, if we are going to have a sensible approach to procuring any kind of common future with the rest of the world, we are going to have to reckon with our foreign policy. And that is something that has yet to be done.

DB: I do get the feeling that the U.S. foreign policy is at least in part predicated on keeping a divide between the North and the South.

CH: Let’s go back to history. You nailed it. Since the inception of something called North Korea and South Korea, the U.S. has been instrumental throughout. If you go back to 1945, you see that scarcely three days after the bombing of Nagasaki, two junior U.S. army officers, Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel retired to a small room armed with nothing more than a National Geographic map of the Korean peninsula, through which, in a 30-minute session, with absolutely no consultation of any Korean, divided the Korean peninsula. This division of the Korean peninsula at the 38th parallel into north and south, and the creation of a southern government, had no popular legitimacy.

North Korea had a very long anti-colonial history relative to the Japanese. What was created is a divided system in which one in three Korean families at that time were separated. So a kind of state is visited on the Koreans who were colonized by the Japanese and were not a war aggressor during WW II. What this eventually assured is that there would be a civil war of national unification that would be fought by both sides, the North and South.

That tension has hurt U.S. purposes. The U.S. claims that it is doing all these very provocation actions, the stealth bombers, etc, because it needs to give a show of support to its South Korean ally. But of course, this fundamentally misunderstands history and the fact that the U.S., from the beginning, has exploited the division for its own geopolitical advantage.

DB: What do we know about what is happening in the South? Is there a grassroots movement that includes unity and shows concern for this kind of U.S. hegemony in the region?

CH: Absolutely. The specter of a nuclear war and a U.S. nuclear strike against North Korea would not just impact those people who live above the 38th parallel. It would inevitably impact the rest of the peninsula, environmentally, and in every way. These are two countries that are very much tied through families, communities, etc. This is an unimaginable outcome.

When the South Korean people have been polled as to which country they think is the greater threat, the United States or North Korea, they point to the United States.

In the South, as well as in the North, 60 years represents a full lifetime.

South Korean progressive activists have said “We had 60 years of a war system.” 2013 will be the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Korean War armistice that brought the Korean War to a temporary halt, but did not end the Korean War. After six decades of a war system, they have said 2013 is the first year of Korean peace. We’ve had 60 years of war, and we are inaugurating a new era of peace.

Heaven forbid the U.S. continues its strategy for de-nuclearizing North Korea. North Korea believes that nuclear power is the basis of its sovereignty. Heaven forbid that the U.S., rather than finding a way of co-existing with North Korea, actually deploys nuclear power to stop nuclearization. That would be the greatest irony of all.

DB: Amazing. If you had ten minutes to advise Barak Obama about what U.S. foreign policy might be helpful, what would you say?

CH: I would say that the U.S. would secure so many gains were it seriously to consider peace. Both Donald Gregg, the head of CIA in South Korea for many years and also the former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, and Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, and someone who actually runs a humanitarian aid organization that provides food relief in North Korea, both said, after Dennis Rodman returned from North Korea, that the message he was conveying to Obama was “Call me. We don’t want war.” They both stated that however irregular the form of the message, it could not be ignored and had to be considered.

Most U.S. presidents get a vision in their second term. In regard to North Korea, even G.W. Bush said engagement and diplomacy was the only way forward. I would only hope that Barack Obama would come to his senses about North Korea as well.

Anti-war protesters hold signs at a rally denouncing the joint military drills between South Korea and the United States.

When the South Korean people have been polled as to which country they think is the greater threat, the United States or North Korea, they point to the United States.

South Korean Democracy

Chapter FIVE

Democracy in Old Boy

Even though I’m no more than a monster don’t I, too, have the right to live?

Dae-su’s captivity represents an oppressive time in South Korean history, when there was no democracy only dictatorship rule. Old Boy is a film which would have not been allowed to be made under previous dictatorships.

Chan-Wook Park has used the camera to subtly voice his own concerns over South Korea’s current political conditions, while providing a commentary on their troubled past. When they mass protested and were finally able to hold their first democratic election. Suddenly they were opened to a global media, with access to a host of new information they’d never been allowed access to before such as the internet, global tv, news, cinema, etc.

Oldboy highlights this ‘TV generation’ – Dae-su’s only contact with the outside world for the fifteen years is his television, which he calls “clock and calendar. It is your school, home, church, friend and lover.” There is a montage scene with key moments in history such as Princess Diana’s death and 9/11 – but it also gives a brief history of South Korea’s struggles and shows their first democratic election.

The 1980s saw Korea go through a radical political change as they broke free of a controlling dictatorship and gained democracy, and it wasn’t until the 1990s when South Korean directors were given a relative amount of freedom to shoot the movies they wanted to make. Yet, due to bordering North Korea, there’s obviously a sense of unease in South Korea which is still apparent to this day.

To understand this change and new power directors received, we must first look at what first caused the rise in democracy in South Korea. The 1980s marked a large shift towards democracy and Anti-Americanism in Korea.

80

00 : 14 : 45 - Da-sue lies in bed and key events in the world are shown on his television.

C|5 81

Presidency in South Korea After the armistice, South Korea experienced political turmoil under years of autocratic leadership of Syngman Rhee, which was ended by student revolt in 1960.

Throughout his rule, Rhee sought to take additional steps to cement his control of government. These began in 1952, when the government was still based in Busan due to the ongoing war. In May of that year, Rhee pushed through constitutional amendments which made the presidency a directly-elected position. To do this, he declared martial law, arrested opposing members of parliament, demonstrators, and anti-government groups. Rhee was subsequently elected by a wide margin. Rhee regained control of parliament in the 1954 elections, and thereupon fraudulently pushed through an amendment to exempt himself from the eight-year term limit, and was once again re-elected in 1956.

The administration became increasingly repressive while dominating the political arena and in 1958, sought to amend the National Security Law to tighten government control over all levels of administration, including the local areas.

These measures caused much outrage among the people, but despite the society’s resentment, Rhee’s administration rigged the March 15, 1960 presidential elections and won by a landslide.

On that election day, protests by students and citizens against the irregularities of the election burst out in the city of Masan. Initially these protests were quelled with force by local police, but when the body of a student was found floating in the harbour of Masan, the whole nation was enraged and protests spread nationwide. On April 19th, students from various universities and schools rallied and marched in protest in the Seoul streets, in what would be called the April Revolution. The government declared martial law, called in the army, and suppressed the crowds with open fire.

Subsequent protests throughout the country shook the government, and after an escalated protest with university professors taking to the streets on April 25th, Rhee handed in his formal resignation on April 26th.

After the student revolution, power was briefly held by an interim administration under the foreign minister Heo Jeong. A new parliamentary election was held on July 29th, 1960. The Democratic Party, which had been in the opposition during the First Republic, easily gained power and the Second Republic was established. The revised constitution dictated the Second Republic to take the form of a parliamentary cabinet system where the President took only a nominal role. This was the first and the only instance South Korea turned to a parliamentary cabinet system instead of a presidential system. The assembly elected Yun Bo-seon as President and Chang Myon as the prime minister and head of government in August, 1960.

82

Syngman Rhee

The government declared martial law, called in the army, and suppressed the crowds with open fire.

C|5 83

The Rein of Park Chung-hee The May 16 coup, led by Major General Park Chung-hee on May 16th, 1961, put an effective end to the Second Republic. Park was one of a group of military leaders who had been pushing for the de-politicization of the military.

In December 1962, a referendum was held on returning to a presidential system of rule, which was allegedly passed with a 78% majority. Park and the other military leaders pledged not to run for office in the next elections. However, Park became presidential candidate of the new Democratic Republican Party (DRP), which consisted of mainly KCIA officials, ran for president and won the election of 1963 by a narrow margin.

Park’s administration started the Third Republic by announcing the Five Year Economic development Plan, an export-oriented industrialization policy. Top priority was placed on the growth of a self-reliant economy and modernization; “Development First, Unification Later” became the slogan of the times and the economy grew rapidly with vast improvement in industrial structure, especially in the basic and heavy chemical industries.

Economic and technological growth during this period improved the standard of living, which expanded opportunities for education. Workers with higher education were absorbed by the rapidly growing industrial and commercial sectors, and urban population surged. Construction of the Gyeongbu Expressway was completed and linked Seoul to the nation’s southeastern region and the port cities of Incheon and Busan. Despite the immense economic growth, however, the standard of living for city laborers and farmers was still low. Laborers were working with low wages to increase the price competitiveness for the export-oriented economy plan, and farmers were in near poverty as the government controlled prices.

Park ran again in the election of 1967, taking 51.4% of the vote. At the time the presidency was constitutionally limited to two terms, but a constitutional amendment was forced through the National Assembly in 1969 to allow him to seek a third term. Major protests and demonstrations against the constitutional amendment broke out, with large support gaining for the opposition leader Kim Dae-jung, but Park was again re-elected in the 1971 presidential election.

86

Parliamentary elections followed shortly after the presidential election where the opposition party garnered most of the seats, giving them the power to pass constitutional amendments. Park, feeling threatened, declared a state of national emergency on December 6, 1971. In the midst of this domestic insecurity, the Nixon Doctrine had eased tensions among the world superpowers on the international scene, which caused a dilemma for Park, who had justified his regime based on the state policy of anti-communism. In a sudden gesture, the government proclaimed a joint communiquĂŠ for reunification with North Korea on July 4, 1972, and held Red Cross talks in Seoul and Pyongyang. However, there was no change in government policy regarding reunification, and on October 17, 1972, Park declared martial law, dissolving the National Assembly and suspending the constitution.

The Fourth Republic began with the adoption of the Yusin Constitution on November 21, 1972. This new constitution gave Park effective control over the parliament and the possibility of permanent presidency. The president would be elected through indirect election by an elected body, and the term of presidency was extended to six years with no restrictions on reappointment. The legislature and judiciary were controlled by the government, and educational guidelines were under direct surveillance as well. Textbooks supporting the ideology of the military government were authorized by the government, diminishing the responsibilities of the Ministry of Education.

Despite social and political unrest, the economy continued to flourish under the authoritarian rule with the export-based industrialization policy. The first two fiveyear economic development plans were successful, and the 3rd and 4th five-year plans focused on expanding the heavy and chemical industries, raising the capability for steel production and oil refining. However, large conglomerate chaebols were continuously receiving preferential treatment and soon came to dominate the domestic market. As most of the development had come from foreign capital, most of the profit went back to repaying the loans and interest. Students and activists for democracy continued their demonstrations and protests for the abolition of the Yushin system and in the face of continuing popular unrest, Park’s administration promulgated emergency decrees in 1974 and 1975, which led to the jailing of hundreds of dissidents. The protests grew larger and stronger, with politicians, intellectuals, religious leaders, laborers and farmers all joining in the movement for democracy. In 1978, Park was elected to another term by indirect election, which was met with more demonstrations and protests. The government retaliated by removing the opposition leader Kim Young-sam from the assembly and suppressing the activists with violent means. In 1979, mass anti-government demonstrations occurred nationwide, in the midst of this political turmoil, Park Chung-hee was assassinated by the director of the KCIA, Kim Jae-kyu, thus bringing the 18-year rule of military regime to an end.

C|5 87

Park ChungHee

Park Chung-Hee’s rule of South Korea represents the authoritarian rule over South Korea, which relates to the incarceration of Dae-su in Old Boy and how he must fight for the truth.

Clock and calendar. It is your school, home, church and lover.

90

Suddenly there were opened to a global media, with access to a host of new information they’d never been allowed access to before.

91

After Park Chung-hee After the assassination of Park Chung-hee, prime minister Choi Kyu-hah took the president’s role only to be usurped 6 days later by Major General Chun Doo-hwan’s 1979 Coup d’état of December Twelfth. In May of the following year, a vocal civil society composed primarily of university students and labour unions led strong protests against authoritarian rule all over the country. Chun Doo-hwan declared martial law on May 17, 1980, and protests escalated. Political opponents Kim Daejung, Kim Jong-pil and Kim Young-sam were arrested and confined to house arrest.

On May 18, 1980, a confrontation broke out in the city of Gwangju between protesting students of Chonnam National University and the armed forces dispatched by the Martial Law Command.

South Korean city of Gwangju (2012).

92

The Republic of Korea is at a historic turning point as the decade of the 1980s begins. The last year of the 1970s saw the assassination of Park Chung-hee and the end of his Yushin system. What lies ahead?

C|5 93

Chapter SIX

Gwangju Massacre

The Gwangju Massacre In order for South Korea to be in a place where films such as Oldboy could be made to express South Korean culture, many people had to speak up against the rule of unelected leaders. A significant democratic movement took place in Gwangju, people died for freedom of speech and democracy.

On May 17, Chun Doo-hwan forced the Cabinet to expand martial law to the whole nation, which had previously not applied to Jeju-do. The expanded martial law closed universities, banned political activities and further curtailed the press. To enforce the martial law, troops were dispatched to various parts of the nation. On the same day, The Defense Security Command raided a national conference of student union leaders from 55 universities, who were gathered to discuss their next moves in the wake of the May 15 demonstration. Twenty-six politicians, including Jeollanam-do native Kim Dae-jung, were also arrested on charges of instigating demonstrations.

Chun Doo-hwan’s actions sparked an uprising in the city of Gwangju. 200 students went to the front gate of Chonnam University in Gyungju early on the morning of May 18. There they met thirty paratroopers, who had been sent to keep them off the campus. The paratroopers charged the students with clubs, and the students responded by throwing rocks. The students then marched downtown, attracting more supporters as they went. By early afternoon, local police were overwhelmed by 2,000 protestors, so the military sent about 700 paratroopers in to the fray.

Throughout the day on May 19, more and more furious residents of Gwangju joined the students in the streets, as reports of increasing violence filtered through the city.

Businessmen, housewives, taxi drivers - people of all walks of life marched out to defend the youth of Gwangju. Demonstrators hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at the soldiers. By the morning of May 20, there were more than 10,000 people protesting downtown Gwangju.

By the morning of May 22, the army had pulled out entirely from Gwangju, establishing a cordon around the city.

On May 27, at 4:00 in the morning, five divisions of paratroopers moved in to Gwangju’s downtown. Students and citizens tried to block their way by lying in the streets, while the armed citizen militias prepared for a renewed firefight. After an hour and a half of desperate fighting, the army seized control of the city once more.

96

There is no universally accepted death toll for the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. Official figures released by the Martial Law Command put the death toll at 144 civilians, 22 troops and 4 police killed, with 127 civilians, 109 troops and 144 police wounded.

Individuals who attempted to dispute these figures were liable for arrest for “spreading false rumors.� According to the May 18 Bereaved Family Association, at least 165 people died between May 18 and 27. Another 65 are still missing and presumed dead.

23 soldiers and 4 policemen were killed during the uprising, including 13 soldiers killed in the friendly-fire incident between troops in Songam-dong.

The government denounced the uprising as a rebellion instigated by Kim Dae-jung and his followers. In subsequent trials, Kim was convicted and sentenced to death, although his punishment was later reduced in response to international outcries.

Overall 1,394 people were arrested for some involvement in the Gwangju incident and 427 were charged. Among them, 7 received death sentences and 12 received life sentences. People suffered for the price of democracy.

The Gwangju massacre had a profound impact on South Korean politics and history.

Chun Doo-hwan suffered popularity problems because he took power through a military coup, but after authorizing the dispatch of Special Forces upon citizens, his legitimacy was significantly damaged. The movement also paved the way for later movements in the 1980s that eventually brought democracy to South Korea.

The Gwangju massacre has become a symbol of South Koreans’ struggle against authoritarian regimes and their fight for democracy.

C|6

Unreported Stor y & American Involvement Census figures reveal that almost 2,000 citizens of Gwangju disappeared during this time period.

May 19-20 The special forces beat people with clubs, stabbed and mutilated them with bayonets, and threw at least twenty to their deaths from high buildings. The soldiers used tear gas and live ammunition indiscriminately, shooting in to the crowds.

Troops shot dead 20 girls at Gwangju’s Central High School. Ambulance and cab drivers who tried to take the wounded to hospitals were shot. One hundred students who sheltered in the Catholic Centre were slaughtered. Captured high school and university students had their hands tied behind them with barbed wire; many were then summarily executed.

May 21 The local police refused further aid to the army; troops beat some police officers unconscious for attempting to help the injured. It was all-out urban warfare.

Gwangju convinced a new generation of young Koreans that the democratic movement had developed not with the support of Washington, as an older generation of more conservative Koreans thought, but in the face of daily American support for any dictator who could quell the democratic aspirations of the Korean people. The result was an anti-American movement in the 1980s that threatened to bring down the whole structure of American support for the ROK. American cultural centres were burned to the ground (more than once in Gwangju); students immolated themselves in protest of Reagan’s support for Chun.

Fundamental to this movement was a perception of U.S. complicity in Chun’s rise to power, and, more particularly, in the Gwangju massacre itself. These matters remain controversial. It is clear, for example, that the U.S. authorized the Korean Army’s 20th Division to re-take Gwangju – as acknowledged in a 1982 letter to the New York Times by then-Ambassador Gleysteen.

2000 citizens were actually killed compared to the 144 official citizen deaths.

The uprising, in protest against the pro-American military fascist rule, swept 17 cities and counties in South Jolla Province and Jonju City in North Jolla Province, involving more than one million people.

Backed by the United States, the South Korean military fascist clique mercilessly massacred the uprisers, regardless of sex and ages, saying “it is no bad to kill even 70 percent of the Kwangju citizens.

101

102

103

Truth About American Involvement On May 22, 1980, in the midst of the Kwangju Uprising, the Carter administration approved further use of force to retake the city and agreed to provide short-term support to Mr. Chun if he agreed to long-term political change. At a White House meeting on that date, plans were also discussed for direct U.S. military intervention if the situation got out of hand.

The documents show that the U.S. assurances to Mr. Chun were approved by Mr. Christopher and delivered May 9 by William J. Gleysteen, who was then U.S. ambassador to Seoul. ”In none of our discussions will we in any way suggest that the USG (U.S. government) opposes ROKG (Republic of Korea government) contingency plans to maintain law and order, if absolutely necessary, by reinforcing the police with the army,” Mr. Gleysteen cabled the State Department on May 7, 1980, as he prepared for a critical meeting on May 9 with Mr. Chun.

The massacre in Kwangju was Chun’s decision. The night after his coup, he and his allied generals deployed his Special Forces into Kwangju to enforce martial law decrees against demonstrations – and then instructed those forces to assault the demonstrators, with bayonets, M-16s, and billy clubs – when they resisted.

South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan meets with US officers during joint training exercises.

104

The United States didn’t order anything: instead, through its ambassador, it reassured General Chun that the United States would not oppose him if he decided to use military force against his own people.

C|6 105

When the melody turns on, gas comes out. When the gas comes out, I fall asleep.

I found out later it’s the same Valium gas the Russians used on those Chechen terrorists.

106

This is a quote from Dae-su. It relates to a similar conflict between the Republic of Korea army and protesters and that of the Russian army and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. This is again a subtle comparison to the harsh measures taken by Chun in response to Gwanju uprising.

107

After Gwangju In June 1980, Chun Doo-hwan ordered the National Assembly to be dissolved.

He subsequently created the National Defense Emergency Policy Committee, and installed himself as a member. On 17 July, he resigned his position of KCIA Director, and then held only the position of committee member. In September 1980, President Choi Kyu-ha was forced to resign as president to give way to the new military leader, Chun Doo-hwan, had forced his way into power.

In September of that year, Chun was elected president by indirect election and inaugurated in March of the following year, officially starting the 5th Republic. A new Constitution was established with notable changes; maintaining the presidential system but limiting to a single 7 year term, strengthening the authority of the National Assembly, and conferring the responsibilities of appointing judiciary to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. However, the system of indirect election of president stayed and many military persons were appointed to highly ranked government positions, keeping the remnants of the Yushin era.

The government promised a new era of economic growth and democratic justice.

Tight monetary laws and low interest rates contributed to price stability and helped boom the economy with notable growth in the electronics, semi-conductor, and automobile industries. The country opened up to foreign investments and GDP rose as Korean exports increased. The rapid economic growth, however, widened the gap between the rich and the poor, the urban and rural regions, and also interregional conflicts. These dissensions, added to the hard-line measures taken against opposition against the government, gave rise to intense rural and student movement, which had continued since the beginning of the republic.

In foreign policy, ties with Japan were strengthened by state visits by both Chun to Japan and Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro to South Korea. U.S. President Ronald Reagan also paid a visit, and relations with the Soviet Union and China improved. The relationship with North Korea was strained at the beginning, when in 1983 a terrorist bomb attack in Burma killed 17 high-ranking officials attending memorial ceremonies and North Korea was alleged to be behind the attacks. However, in 1980 North Korea had submitted a “one nation, two system� reunification proposal which was met with a suggestion from the South to meet and prepare a unification constitution and government through a referendum.

The humanitarian issue of reuniting separated families was dealt with first, and in September 1985, families from both sides of the border made cross visits to Seoul and Pyongyang in a historic event.

108

The government made many efforts for cultural development: the National Museum of Korea, Seoul Arts Center, National Museum of Contemporary Art were all constructed during this time. The 1986 Asian Games were held successfully, and the bid for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul was successful as well. Despite the economic growth and results in diplomacy, the government, having gained power by coup d’etat, was essentially a military regime. Public support and trust was low when the promises for democratic justice never materialized. In the 1985 National Assembly elections, opposition parties together won more votes than the government party, clearly indicating that the public wanted a change. Many started to sympathize with the protesting students. The Gwangju Massacre was never forgotten and in January 1987, when a protesting Seoul National University student died under police interrogation, public fury was immense. In April 1987, President Chun made a declaration in an attempt to overpower the opposition that measures would be taken to protect the current constitution at the end of his term, instead of contemplating constitutional reform that would call for direct election of the president. This announcement consolidated the people, with more than a million students and citizens participating in anti-government protests all over the nation in June 1987 in the June Democracy Movement.

C|6 109

Why did it take seven years after Gwangju to gain a free democratic election in South Korea?

ROK ROK ROK

112

A m e r i c a’s I n v o l v e m e n t i n D e m o c r a c y In October 1979, the conditions were ripe for a transition to democracy in South Korea. After two decades of stunning economic growth, the plunge toward recession had begun. Labor unions launched a wave of strikes and demonstrations.

Korean students also filled the streets in protest. Churches also lent their support to the movement. Finally, the workers, students and clergymen were joined by the parliamentary opposition, which had prestige but not power. Although the United States customarily favored stability in South Korea, the Carter administration resented the Park dictatorship, both because of its human rights violations and its apparent efforts to bribe American legislators. Under pressure, the Park dictatorship found itself beset by internal divisions, with hard-liners calling for the use of force and soft-liners advocating a measure of compromise with the protesters. This division culminated in the assassination of Park by his own intelligence chief. The reins of power then passed to a provisional government that committed itself to democratic elections and the protection of civil liberties.

Yet just six months later, General Chun Doo-Hwan, a protĂŠgĂŠ of Park, violently consolidated his control of the government, ushering in another seven years of dictatorship, for the people to indure.

In June of 1987, Chun Doo-Hwan found himself in a situation that would have been familiar to Park. Students, workers, church leaders and opposition leaders united once again to oppose the regime. Yet this time, the economy kept growing and the regime remained united. Chun also had an excellent relationship with President Reagan, who hosted Chun at the White House as recently as 1985. Nonetheless, Chun surrendered to the protesters demand for free and fair elections and for the restoration of civil liberties. The puzzle that remains is why South Korea became a democracy specifically in 1987, even though the prospects for a transition were so much more favorable in 1979. Chun clearly had the power to deploy the armed forces in defense of the regime, yet he chose not to do so.

Why not? Three factors account best for the failed transition of 1979-1980 and the success of 1987. First, the personal situation and interests of both Chun DooHwan and Roo Tae-Woo, his second-in-command, had changed significantly over the years. In 1979-1980, both men were ambitious young generals whose mentor and patron, Park Chung Hee, had just been assassinated. They had no qualms then about shooting their way into power. By 1987, Chun and Roo were political veterans who had presided over a return to the spectacular growth rates of the Park era. They were also determined to cement their legacy both by presiding over the first peaceful transfer of power in the history of the ROK and by hosting the 1988 Summer Olympics. Roo also recognized that he could prevail in a free and fair election, because of a divided opposition. Although reluctant at first, Chun and Roo accepted that compromise best served their interests.

A second factor that accounts for the different outcomes in 1979-1980 and 1987 is the increased unity of the protest movement. The four main constituents of the movement, students, labor unions, churches and the parliamentary opposition, were the same during both transitions. In both instances, these constituents sought to establish umbrella organizations , or chaeya, that would effectively coordinate the strategy and resources of the movement. In 1987, however, the chaeya achieved a much greater degree of efficiency and solidarity because they learned from the mistakes of the failed transition in 1979-1980.

The third factor that explains the difference between South Korea’s two transitions is the contrast between how the Carter administration and the Reagan administration approached both US-ROK diplomacy and the challenge of democracy promotion. Although strongly committed to human rights, the Carter administration hesitated to challenge the legitimacy of authoritarian governments, preferring to focus on preventing specific actions, such as torture and unjust imprisonment. Thus, while the Carter administration welcomed the democratic opening of 1979, it remained passive when Chun wrested power back from the civilians. Initially, the Reagan administration rejected democracy promotion, preferring to focus on the solidarity of anti-Communist governments, both authoritarian and democratic. Yet over time, the administration reversed its course. Thus, at a critical moment in 1987, President Reagan sent a personal letter to Chun Doo-Hwan, insisting that Chun find a peaceful solution to the prevailing crisis. Ironically, Reagan’s word carried considerable weight precisely because Reagan had embraced Chun without hesitation during the early and uncertain days of his regime.

It was America who determined when there would be democracy in South Korea.

The Sixth Republic The Sixth Republic began in 1987 and remains the current republic of South Korea.

It started with the election of Roh Tae-woo as president for the 13th presidential term in the first direct presidential election in 16 years. Although Roh was from a military background and one of the leaders of Chun’s coup d’etat, the inability of the opposition leaders Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam to agree on a unified candidacy led to him being elected.

Roh was officially inaugurated in February 1988. The government set out to eliminate past vestiges of authoritarian rule, by revising laws and decrees to fit democratic provisions. Freedom of press was expanded, university autonomy recognised, and restrictions on overseas travel were lifted. However, the growth of the economy had slowed down compared to the 80s, with strong labor unions and higher wages reducing the competitiveness of Korean products on the international market, resulting in stagnant exports, while commodity prices kept on rising.

Shortly after RDae-su’s inauguration, the Seoul Olympics took place, raising South Korea’s international recognition and also greatly influencing foreign policy. RDaesu’s government announced the official unification plan, Nordpolitik, established diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union, China, and countries in East Europe.

An historic event was held in 1990 when North Korea accepted the proposal for exchange between the two Koreas, resulting in high-level talks, cultural and sports exchange. In 1991, a joint communiqué on denuclearization agreed upon, and the two Koreas simultaneously became members of the UN .

When RDae-su’s tenure was over, Kim Young-sam was elected president in the 1992 elections. He was the country’s first civilian president in 30 years and he promised to build a “New Korea”. The government set out to correct the mistakes of the previous administrations. Local government elections were held in 1995, and parliamentary elections in 1996. Adhering to popular demand, former presidents Chun and Roh were both indicted on charges linked to bribery, illegal funds, and in the case of Chun, responsibility for the incident in Gwangju. They were tried and sentenced to prison in December, 1996.

Relations with the North improved and a summit meeting was planned, but was postponed indefinitely with the death of Kim Il Sung. Tensions varied between the two Koreas thereafter, with cycle of small military skirmishes and apologies.

The government also carried out substantial financial and economical reforms, joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1996, but met crisis with political and financial scandals. The country also faced various catastrophes at the time; train collision and ship sinking in 1993, Seoul’s Seongsu Bridge and Sampoong Department Store collapsing in 1994. These incidents, which claimed many lives, were a blow to the civilian government. In 1997, the nation suffered a severe financial crisis and the government had to approach the International Monetary Fund for relief funds. This was the limit to what the nation

could bear and led to the opposition leader Kim Dae-jung winning the presidency in the same year. Kim Dae-jung was officially inaugurated in February, 1998. South Korea had maintained its commitment to democratize its political processes and this was the first transfer of the government between parties by peaceful means. Kim’s government faced the daunting task of overcoming the economic crisis, but with the joint efforts of the government’s aggressive pursuit of foreign investment, industry’s cooperation and the citizen’s gold-collecting campaign, the country was able to come out of the crisis in a relatively short period of time.

In diplomacy, Kim Dae-jung pursued the “Sunshine Policy”, a series of efforts to reconcile with North Korea. This culminated in reunions of the separated families of the Korean War, and the summit talk with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. For these efforts, Kim Dae-jung was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000. However, as North Korea did not cooperate for a peaceful coexistence, and with the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 changing the US’s view on North Korea, the efficacy of the Sunshine Policy was brought into question. With the added allegations of corruption, support waned in the later years of the administration.

Roh Moo-hyun was elected to the presidency in December 2002 by direct election.

His victory came with much support from the younger generation and civic groups who had hopes of a participatory democracy, and RDae-su’s administration consequently launched with the motto of “participation government”. Unlike the previous governments, the administration decided to take a long-term view and execute market-based reforms at a gradual pace. This approach did not please the public, however, and by the end of 2003, approval ratings were falling.

The Roh administration succeeded in overcoming regionalism in South Korean politics, diluting the collusive ties between politics and business, empowering the civil society, settling the Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement issue, continuing summit talks with North Korea, and launching the high-speed train system, KTX. But despite a boom in the stock market, youth unemployment rates were high, real estate prices skyrocketed and the economy lagged.

In March 2004, the National Assembly voted to impeach Ron charges of breach of election laws and corruption. This motion rallied his supporters and affected the outcome of the parliamentary election held in April, with the ruling party becoming the majority. Roh was reinstated in May by the Constitutional Court, who had overturned the verdict. However, the ruling party then lost its majority in byelections in 2005, as discontinued reform plans, continual labour unrest, RDae-su’s personal feuds with the media, diplomatic friction with the United States and Japan, caused criticism of the government’s incompetence of political, socioeconomical issues and foreign affairs.

C|6 117

Roh Moo-hyun and his family members were investigated for bribery and corruption in April 2009. Roh denied the charges, but subsequently committed suicide by jumping into a ravine on May 23, 2009.

RDae-su’s successor, Lee Myung-bak, was inaugurated in February, 2008. Stating “creative pragmatism” as a guiding principle, Lee’s administration set out to revitalize the flagging economy, re-energize diplomatic ties, stabilize social welfare, and meet the challenges of globalization. In April 2008, the ruling party secured a majority the National Assembly elections. Also that month, summit talks with the United States helped ease the tension between the two countries caused by the previous administrations’ policy towards North Korea, and the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement was discussed. Lee agreed to lift the ban on US beef imports, which caused massive protests and demonstrations in the months that followed, as paranoia of potential mad cow disease gripped the country.

Many issues plagued the government in the beginning of the administration: controversies regarding appointment of high-ranking government officials, rampant political conflicts, accusations of oppression of media and strained diplomatic relationships with North Korea and Japan. The economy turned for worse as the global recession hit the country; the worst economic crisis since 1997. The Lee administration tackled these issues by actively issuing statements, timely reshuffling the cabinet, and implementing administrative and industrial reforms. After regulatory and economic reforms, the economy has bounced back, with the country’s economy marking growth and apparently recovering from the global recession.

The administration has also pursued to improve diplomatic relations with active summit talks: the United States; Korea-China-Japan Summits; and the ASEAN-ROK Commemorative Summit to strengthen ties with other Asian countries. The 2010 G20 summit was held in Seoul, where issues regarding the global economic crisis were discussed, showing South Korea’s global presence.

118

ehT tsri f tcerid noitcele 61 ni sraey 119

120

Social Instability Created Old Boy Oldboy was released in 2003, thus Dae-su was captured in 1987, an important date in South Korea’s history, as it was the year of “the first direct election in 16 years… one in which the people of Korea had regained their right to choose their own president”.

Park’s choice of reproducing images from his country’s recent history, from President RDae-su’s conviction for bribery in 1996, the financial problems of 1998 and 1999, to Kim Dae Jung’s effort to implement new policies in the new century, and his visit to North Korea’s president, Kim Jong Il, states the fragile balance of a whole society and explains in part, the rise of the suspense thriller and crime films that have emerged in the 1990s in South Korea. Uncertainty, anxiety and fear consumed the country’s citizens, and film spectators were more than willing to enjoy suspense and even extreme thrills through the voyeuristic mechanisms of film.

The social and economic events in South Korea caused there to be a desire for thrillers such as Old Boy, which in turn has links back to these social and economic events.

C|6 121

Chapter SEVEN

Revenge as Global Capital

Global Capital Park achieves a substantially more nuanced and historically adequate narrative figuration in Old Boy through a radicalization of revenge’s formal functions. Old Boy’s narrative structure is dictated by the logic of revenge, but here a restricted narration forecloses the spectator from any special knowledge as regards the motivating force behind the film’s representational and relational matrix. In this way, the film works to assimilate spectator knowledge and character knowledge as both dovetail in a search for the root cause driving the action and the narrative itself. Provided for us, in our identification with the protagonist, is the fundamental representational problem addressed in and through the film--what mechanism lay concealed from the surface text? That is, what excess simultaneously grounds and propels the narrative lines of action while remaining absent from direct representation? We contend that the particular narrative figuration of Old Boy gives representability to what otherwise remains unrepresentable: the excessive force of global capitalism itself, the absent cause of history.

The torment inflicted on Old Boy’s protagonist Dae-su remains unexplained throughout the film, just as his connection to the film’s antagonist--Woo-jin--remains confused by the structural organization of the narrative. The logic of revenge at work in the text takes on a consistency redolent of conspiracy theory and signals a fundamental shift in Park’s discursive horizon: namely, a play of figures determined to reconcile the immanent structures of late capitalism and individual experience, as they are ceaselessly marginalized and made incompatible by the overwhelming magnitude of a transpersonal global reality. The framework through which to approach this representational conundrum embodied in the “conspiratorial text, which, whatever other messages it emits or implies, may also be taken to constitute an unconscious, collective effort at trying to figure out where we are and what landscapes and forces confront us in a late twentieth century whose abominations are heightened by their concealment and bureaucratic impersonality”. In other words, the viewer’s engagement is amplified by the homology between a conspiracy narrative (a who done it? story) and the everyday experience of unimaginable social forces that constrain our reality. Thus, conspiracy texts like Old Boy preserve an affinity with the intention to map cognitively the unrepresentable, unlocatable social totality, a critical operation and necessary step in any substantive political praxis.

In this way, the problematic of representation germane to postmodern cultural production, defined by Jameson in relation to the function of cognitive mapping, finds articulation most adequately in the figuration of Dae-su himself, via his position in the narrative, as well as the audience’s identification with his trajectory. Bent on a revenge mediated by invisible forces, Dae-su’s line of action is distinguished from those immersed in the quotidian filmic reality. By virtue of his outsider, protagonist status within a conspiratorial text, Dae-su serves as a site of “uneven development,” that is, a representation that articulates both “a peculiar conjuncture and a certain

124

strategic distance from that reality, which tends to overwhelm those immersed in it”.

The uneven development of a figure like Dae-su as a marker of “nonsynchroncity” or “the coexistence of various synchronic systems or modes of production, each with its own dynamic or time scheme” .What appear in this specific configuration of Dae-su are not only discontinuous forms of economic organization but also relatively autonomous modes of historical consciousness corresponding to distinct discursive models. These uneven and contradictory symbolic networks extend the conditions of possibility for thinking the social totality; that is, they register at once the conjunctures and disjunctures that constitute existence within the structures of global capitalism and, in doing so, produce the necessary, critical distance for locating (and transcending) the excess that founds the given order. Thus, we proceed by way of tracing these distinctive symbolic fabrics at play in Old Boy. The horizon of narration that marks Dae-su’s path to discovery--and concomitantly our restricted knowledge arranged accordingly--is largely dictated by the film’s discursive parameters, the relational matrix established between Dae-su and Woo-jin.

Old Boy opens with a close-up of a trembling hand gripping the tie of a wouldbe roof-jumper suspended over the ledge of a building. Coupled with the highpowered non-diegetic score, this shot immediately communicates the harrowing tension in which we find and meet our protagonist. As his hand staidly cleaves to the whimpering suicidist, temporarily forestalling a plummet to death, a camera tilt upward partially reveals Dae-su’s shadowed countenance. This first shot effectively conveys the tenuous thread Dae-su himself holds on reality and anticipates his plunge into the abyss of revenge and his all-consuming advance in the direction of the unknown, which will come to be embodied in the elusive Woo-jin.

C |7 125

Through these nuanced depictions of the urban prison, Park effectively portrays in orwellian fashion the inordinate atomization of a populous and the accompanying helplessness of a citizenry rationally segregated from each other by simulated reality, or in other words, life experienced as mere spectacle.

131 The following sequences catalogue, via an extended flashback, Dae-su’s

126

imprisonment in an internment centre, a black-market prison run by the criminal underworld. Following his abrupt abduction, Dae-su is confined without explanation for fifteen years. Housed in a one-room apartment equipped with only a bed and a television set, Dae-su is made to forget his former life as a middle-class businessman (including his family, after reports of their murder circulate on the local news network), forced as he is to capitulate to a life of solitary confinement. Echoing the transformation and serialization of bourgeois and worker alike into interchangeable consumers, Dae-su’s intensified leisure space--complete with bed, toilet, and cable TV--reflects middle-class self-internment in a world of commodity goods (advertisements and sensational news stories appear to be Dae-su’s only connection to the outside world). Through these nuanced depictions of the urban prison, Park effectively portrays in Orwellian fashion the inordinate atomization of a populous and the accompanying helplessness of a citizenry rationally segregated from each other by simulated reality, or in other words, life experienced as mere spectacle.

At the same time, however, Dae-su’s undergoes a radical self-transformation during this period of unexplained and brutal confinement, which points toward the nascent possibilities amidst ahistorical simulacra. Through agonizing introspection, copious documentation of a derelict past, and extreme ascetic practices, Dae-su works to understand his wretched circumstances. Chronicling Dae-su’s spiritual quest, Park draws on a distinctly modern utopian impulse tied to the power of the self and the redemptive qualities of the individual. Despite the pervasive, unseen forces circumscribing Dae-su, this utopian impulse emerges, coinciding with the transformation of the self and the regenerative process affected by trenchant psychological self-examination. Thus, Dae-su’s incarceration simultaneously figures the rationalized system of exploitation intrinsic to twentieth-century models of modernization, and on the other hand, the deterritorializing possibilities amidst late capitalism where the intensification of economic standardization gives way to qualitatively new knowledges and discursive regimes, as well as latent relationships to oneself and to others.

After our protagonist’s release from the black market prison, Old Boy immediately introduces a sub-plot involving Dae-su’s seemingly whimsical romance with Mi-do, a young sushi chef. As the film progresses, Old Boy knits this seemingly distinct narrative thread with the overarching story involving hero and villain. Mi-do reads Dae-su’s diaries chronicling his years in isolation, incredulously probing him about their veracity. Meanwhile, Mi-do’s attraction to the mystique surrounding Daesu is clear, and the two commence an awkward love affair. No sooner, however, is their strange romance inaugurated then it is swallowed up by the forces of revenge, encapsulated in Dae-su’s pursuit of the identity of Woo-jin.

These disparate story lines dovetail in a traversal of the past that serves to piece together the manifold particulars, while progressively concretizing the representational excess that at one and the same time eludes and conditions the film’s narrative and Dae-su’s uneven development. Following a series of investigations into his past, Dae-su is able to recall his implication in the death of a female highschool class-mate rumored to have committed incest with her brother. The girl, unable to face the ridicule of her peers, is believed to have committed suicide, leaving the brother--who we are to find out is Woo-jin--to orchestrate a life-long searchand-destroy mission of Dae-su’s slip-of-the-tongue that exposed their secret.

Old Boy’s conspiracy ultimately points back to Woo-jin, a figure articulated to the impersonal, hegemonic nature of global capitalism. The connection is evident in Woo-jin’s corporate affiliations, technological surveillance mechanisms, and the fully automated landscape of his company loft, which mimics the postmodern topology of cybernetic information systems. Additionally, his overriding influence upon the narrative can be read as an attempt to map out the concealed bureaucratic forces associated with a detached, free-forming multinational complex.

Additionally, through Woo-jin and the figuration of incest, Old Boy recalls a fundamental prohibition, the transgression of which inaugurates the cycle of revenge, a discourse incapable of speaking its cause, the incestuous union. What gets revealed here is a conflict between “old boys” (schoolmates) rooted in a rigid familial structure predicated on a forbidden. A fundamental prohibition sparks a ceaseless expansion of torture, murder, tyranny, and repression. In this way, Old Boy represents not only the symbolic fabric of global capitalism (embodied in Woo-jin), but also the absent cause behind the violence and suffering that are its actual, historical consequences.

The radical nature and utopian impulse of Park’s political imagination is extended further if we take into account an examination of kinship structures predicated on an incest taboo guaranteed to promote circulation and exchange among various communities. Kinship regulations prohibit incestuous relations in order to promote “socio-logically determined affinities” of exchange. Exchange takes priority and, elevated to a necessity, escapes the immediate deliberations of the community as well as localized interests which find themselves forced to assimilate to the laws of trade.

Breaking the interdiction against proscribed relationships threatens the international exchange networks, as well as their underlying symbolic codes. Hence the figure of incest in Old Boy belies a utopian impulse cognate to the suspension of all forms of exchange and all modes of production formed in their wake.

128

Interchangeable Consumers Old Boy represents not only the symbolic fabric of global capitalism, but also the absent cause behind the violence and suffering that are its actual, historical consequences.

C |7 129

130

131

T Dae-su

R T V Fighting for Truth or Revenge?

Mi-do

E N

R Woo-jin

G

U H

Through the figure of incest, coupled with the conspiratorial narrative that foregrounds this element as absent cause, Park’s political unconscious registers a more historically adequate expression of revenge. Evoked by the incestuous relationship that drives Old Boy’s narrative are the consequences of a divided Korea unable to conceptualize the absent cause that lay beneath a congealed separation and the national identities cemented in its wake. Just as Woo-jin and Dae-su fall victim to a symbolic order of which they are mere subjects, so Korea must reckon with an arbitrary decree imposed by international agencies that pre-empt a reciprocal engagement. Occluded from the political imaginaries of both countries are precisely the existence and excessive force of outside interests (the global structures of capitalism), which are always already the vanishing mediators of the present.

In other words, incest in Old Boy becomes at once not only an allegory for global capitalism--a figure that represents both the excessive force and its the absent cause--but also, and at the same time, a means of cognitive mapping--a way to think local resistance within the socio-historical totality. During the final moments of the penultimate sequence, and culminating in the destruction of Woo-jin’s impersonal, computerized, corporate-apartment space, Dae-su severs his own tongue so as to obviate the forbidden nature of his carnal relations with Mi-do-now revealed to be his daughter. The dialectic of revenge that formed the film’s discursive parameters is at once terminated and transcended in the distressing image of Dae-su lacerating his own tongue with a pair of scissors. Coinciding with the symbolic decimation of multinational corporate space is the obliteration of an entire discursive regime that intermediates necessity and contingency, the rule of exchange and its historically conditioned decree, respectively. The violent depiction of Dae-su’s sacrifice augments the conditions of possibility for change, the founding of a new social order incompatible with the logic of revenge and stripped of the limitations, anxieties, and fears that constitute what had become and continue to exist for us all as the fixed an inescapable reality, that we are in.

134

Fight For Truth Old Boy’s political nature is of historical significance precisely because present day divided Korea finds itself in a unique position relative to the ubiquitous presence of global capitalism. As a relic of the Cold War and continuing to adhere to this split, the Republic of Korea remains perhaps the most significant illustration of the coexistence of discontinuous modes of production, and concurrently, discontinuous modes of consciousness that give evidence to the primacy of “discursive struggle as the primary mode in which ideologies are legitimated and delegitimated today”.

Korea serves as an example of “nonsynchronicity,” not only in its incommensurate relationship to the larger global system, but also in its particular knowledge of and relation to the struggles ushered in by the dominant mode of production. In other words, Park’s political unconscious has something singular to share regarding resistance to and transformation of the forces of global capital.

C |7 135

Through these nuanced depictions of the urban prison.

136

The viewer’s engagement is amplified by the homology between a conspiracy narrative and the everyday experience of unimaginable social forces that constrain our reality.

137

The Environment

C h a p t e r E I G HT

Cinematic City Film cities, whilst fictional constructs, perpetually reaffirm the central paradigm of the contemporary critical canon; that truth, justice and reality cannot be observed in isolation from the human mind and that there is no universal interpretative ground for establishing a reliable vision of the world. The urban architecture in Park Chanwook’s films uncovers a complex web of interconnections and persistently reflects the equivocal signals that contradict, reconstruct and reformulate his cinematic settings.

The filmmaker challenges, problematises and transforms his film space accumulating and accentuating diverse and often conflicting spatial elements in order to discover appropriate framework for his narratives. The cinematic space in his latest film, Old Boy, is both persuasive and elusive, generating an overall sense of instability and subverting the coherent reading of his text. It frames, contextualises and typifies one of the most persistent poetic motifs in Park’s work - an omnipresent contrast between the relentless attempts of his heroes to identify, formulate and transform the fundamental patterns of their unsatisfactory human condition, and the painful, paralysing acknowledgement that, limited by the totality of power relations, they are not in a position to determine or understand the nature of their experiences and to control and articulate their actions. Examining the cinematic spaces of personal introspection in this meticulously structured and highly evocative cinematic text, may provide a framework for the discussion of Park’s poetics and the way it pertains to the cultural experiences of the audience.

140

c.8.

141

The Prison At the onset of the film, Park focuses on the main protagonist, a disgruntled businessman Dae-su (Choi Min-shik) who is confined by a group of criminals and spends fifteen years in a private prison. The film metaphor of urban space as the place of confinement is probably as old as the cinema itself. However, in Park’s film, the urban maze does not merely turn against the innocent citizen, as is the case in the noir series and the classic films of Welles and Hitchcock, or reflect his/her unbearable circumstances as in Fassbinder’s 1970s films. The seemingly naturalist prison cell in Old Boy is removed from everyday ‘reality,’ and emerges as a deeply personal, individual space. The squalid flat on the outskirts of the city reflects the state of mind of the psychotic, disturbed urban dweller, a fragment of his inexplicable ordeal. Dae-su is confined to the dilapidated room with a bed, basic toilet facilities, a small, distant window, a TV set -- the only contact with the outside world -- a cuckoo watch, a desk and a lamp. In the centre of the room, we see a grotesque, demonic portrait -- a call for introspection -- that with time begins to resemble the central character. This detail seems far more disturbing than the subhuman conditions in the jail in which the inmates are held indefinitely and without justification. Heralding the disastrous quest of Dae-su, Park infers that the brutality and hostility of the urban environment are inextricably entwined with the suffering of his hero. It is not surprising that the tales of death and misery, triggered by the trauma of unrequited love permeate the urban space in which Dae-su, ironically, longs to return.

142

00 : 12 : 50 - Dae-su trains, for fighting, in his room.

143

How’s life in a bigger prison, Dae-su?

144

The squalid flat on the outskirts of the city reflects How’s the state life inofamind biggerofprison, the psychotic,Dae-su? disturbed urban dweller, a fragment of his inexplicable ordeal.

145

The School

How do you remember it?

146

The main protagonists in Old Boy are linked by a set of tragic events buried in the recollections of their high school days. Park uses Sangkok High School website to introduce the setting, and blends the virtual world with the blurred legacy of the past. High school reminiscences are important for Dae-su and give a particular dimension to his quest. The symbolic return to school is an ultimate opportunity to learn something about oneself, and help continue his shattered existence. Yet, the melancholy and nostalgic yearning for the past are substituted by a sense of fear and apprehension, as Dae-su realises that he himself was from the very beginning implicated in the object of his quest.

Cold and deserted, the seemingly naturalist setting of the school campus emerges as yet another space of personal introspection. Dae-su’s reminiscence is deliberately staged, stylised, and, as he traces his own footsteps, it begins to look like a reenactment of a long forgotten crime. The classroom scene that Dae-su observes through the broken window is imbued with voyeuristic overtones. The intense blues and reds permeate the traumatic experience as the musical motif links the fragments of the disconnected narrative. The couple in the science lab are seen as naive and innocent while Dae-su, anguished by his unexplained suffering, for the first time emerges as an intruder, a perpetrator.

01 : 32 : 23 - Dae-su remembers what he saw when he was younger.

C |8 147

The Penthouse Apartment The final confrontation between Lee Woo-jin and Dae-su takes place in a lavish apartment, a blend between a living habitat and an office, occupying a floor in a highrise building overlooking the city. The water features, neat and regimented seating arrangements and large glass panels, facing the central business district, imply power and control. They are juxtaposed to the intriguing, evocative and highly personal fragments of the past that surround the two main characters. The haunting presence of framed photographs and the playing of recorded conversations suggests dark and menacing overtones in their evocations of the past. Self-absorbed and narcissistic, Pak Chan-wook’s characters finally begin to recognise the pain and misery they inflicted on those they loved most. Discovering the truth behind his ordeal, Dae-su attempts to redeem himself, asking for forgiveness and cutting off his tongue in agony.

The subdued suffering of Woo-jin emerges even more brutal and devastating. His painstakingly slow and detailed way of getting-dressed, precedes the cold, businesslike confrontation with his adversary. Nevertheless, as he descends in the elevator, reminiscing on the sombre event that changed his life, he is far from a callous masterminder who doles out punishment. Woo-jin’s suicide is the final act of a distraught human figure determined to end his suffering.

It is not surprising that, at the end of the film, Dae-su’s symbolic death also heralds his departure from the urban environment. Accompanied by Mi-do, he seeks solace in the Natural world, in which snow conceals all traces of human suffering. Dae-su’s absent, benevolent smile invokes the proximity of the sublime surroundings. His silence echoes the unspeakable secret and hope that his pain could be assuaged by the love of his child and the transcendence and sensible simplicity of the Natural world.

148

Discovering the truth behind his ordeal, Dae-su attempts to redeem himself, asking for forgiveness and cutting off his tongue in agony.

The final showdown.

c.8.

149

Censorship

Chapter NINE

Old Boy Censorship Oldboy represents one of the most successful Korean films in the western world, being received on a global level. This makes it one of South Korean’s well known cultural exports. Dae-su emerges from the confines of his room, with the only knowledge of the global world coming from the television which was in his room.

He then has to fight to find the truth about his incarceration. This links the generations of South Korea’s fighting for freedom of speech and press, the truth.

Oldboy is known for its violence but also has a romantic twist on incest. In a country where male and female genitalia have to be digitally blurred, Park Chan-wook is able to display the intercourse between a farther and a daughter. The director doesn’t reveal this until later in the story, which almost makes the audience feel guilty when they found out what they watched previously in the film. This highlights the issues and desires surrounding censored material.

Park flips censorship on its head. He also displays western audiences with a social issue. The eating of a live octopus happens in South Korea, but not in the western world. Park is able to put all cultures in a self-questioning position when that singular person is watching Oldboy.

DESIRE 152

LOVE

Dae-su and Mi-do having sex for the first time.

C| 9 153

You see, they say that people shrivel up because they have an imagination. So, don’t imagine anything, you’ll become brave as hell.

154

You need not worry about the future, imagine nothing.

155

156

157

Implied Violence Dae-su’s temporary heroic revenger function allows for Oldboy to, unfortunately, be misinterpreted as exploitation, even pigeonholed into a category of films that use violence as a primal indulgence of the senses. On the surface, Park’s variety of filmic bloodshed is represented with staggering savagery; he pushes the limits of censorship by suggesting teeth ripped from the mouth with Dae-su’s hammer, scissors stabbing into an ear and later cutting a tongue from its mouth. Of course, these acts are chosen for their force, their ability to confront the viewer by their concept alone. Park avoids glorifying the content and implies violence by cleverly cutting around the acts themselves. He shows the tail of Dae-su’s hammer clasping onto the hotel warden’s incisor like a nail; blood begins to ooze from the victim’s gums, and then Park cuts away to show a collection of removed teeth. If the director were interested in mere exploitation, his camera would have focus on the deed in all its horrible reality.

But the gory details are unimportant, thus they are not shown. The action registers enough significance when communicated through smart, if unrevealing edits.

Violence takes the blame because the film’s revenge scenes rest on dramatic turns more graphic than the portrayed bloodshed, and the strength of those turns makes everything else seem explicit.

158

Letting your imagination get the better of you.

C| 9 159

Anti-American

C h a p t e r TE N

American Old Boy There is a American thriller remake of the film Old boy. Principal photography began in October 2012 and the film is scheduled to be released on October 11, 2013. This is interesting as although America and South Korea have a close relationship there is a certain amount of Anti-American ideals in South Korea. These are mostly centred around American occupation. However the fact a South Korean film with American influences is having an American remake is interesting.

Directed by Spike Lee and written by Mark Protosevich.

An advertising executive is kidnapped and held hostage for 20 years in solitary confinement. When he is inexplicably released, he embarks on an obsessive mission to discover who orchestrated his punishment, only to find he is still trapped in a web of conspiracy and torment.

Why a Remake?

Re-makes very rarely do justice to the originals, but it is well worth making them in hopes that they do turn out as good, or in rare cases better. The original film was adapted from a manga series, but I’m sure a lot of the people that enjoy the film have never read the books, and the same would apply.

162

163

Anti-American South Korea The Anti-Americanism in Korea began with the earliest contact between the two nations and continued after the division of Korea. In both North Korea and South Korea, anti-Americanism after the Korean War has focused on the presence and behavior of American military personnel (USFK), aggravated especially by highprofile accidents or crimes by U.S. servicemembers, with various crimes including rape and assault, among others. The 2002 Yangju highway incident especially ignited Anti-American passions. The on-going U.S. military presence in South Korea, especially at Yongsan Garrison (on a base previously used by the Imperial Japanese Army from 1910-1945) in central Seoul, remains a contentious issue. However, 74% of South Koreans have a favorable view of the U.S., making South Korea one of the most pro-American countries in the world.

While protests have arisen over specific incidents, they are often reflective of deeper historical resentments. Robert Hathaway, director of the Wilson Center’s Asia program, suggests: “the growth of anti-American sentiment in both Japan and South Korea must be seen not simply as a response to American policies and actions, but as reflective of deeper domestic trends and developments within these Asian countries.” Korean anti-Americanism after the war was fueled by American occupation and support for authoritarian rule, a fact still evident during the country’s democratic transition in the 1980s. Speaking to the Wilson Center, Katharine Moon notes that while the majority of South Koreans support the American alliance “antiAmericanism also represents the collective venting of accumulated grievances that in many instances have lain hidden for decades.”

After the Japanese defeat in World War II the United States set up a self-declared government in Korea which pursued a number of very unpopular policies. In brief, the military government first supported the same Japanese colonial government.

Then it removed the Japanese officials but retained them as advisors. At the same time the Koreans, before the Americans had arrived, had developed their own popular-based government, the People’s Republic of Korea. This popular government was ignored, censored, and then eventually outlawed by decree of the U.S. military government. The military government also created an advisory council for which the majority of seats were offered to the nascent Korea Democratic Party (KDP) which mainly consisted of large landowners, wealthy businesspeople, and former colonial officials. The military government, and this advisory council, set up elections for a legislature, with the power to pass, amend, and repeal laws.

164

The elections were boycotted and protested throughout the country by the peasantry.

The uprising was suppressed with police, U.S. troops and tanks, and declarations of martial law. The only representatives elected that were not of the KDP or its allies were from Jeju-do. Furthermore, the U.S.’s refusal to consult existing popular organizations in the south, as agreed upon at the Moscow Conference, and thus paving the way towards a divided Korea, embittered the majority of Koreans.

Finally, pushing for United Nations elections that would not be observed by the USSR-controlled north, over legal objections, enshrined a divided Korea, which the majority of Koreans opposed.

However, 74% of South Koreans have a favorable view of the U.S. Making South Korea one of the most pro-American countries in the world.

C | 10 165

In 2008 an investigative commission said more than 200 cases of alleged large scale civilian killings by the U.S. military had been registered, mostly air attacks.

This popular government was ignored, censored, and then eventually outlawed by decree of the U.S. military government.

No Gun Ri Massacre The No Gun Ri Massacre occurred on July 26–29, 1950, early in the Korean War, when an undetermined number of South Korean refugees were killed by the 2nd Battalion, 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (and a U.S. air attack) at a railroad bridge near the village of No Gun Ri (revised Romanization Nogeun-ri), 100 miles (160 km) southeast of Seoul. Estimates of the dead have ranged from dozens to 500. In 2005, a South Korean government report listed 163 dead or missing and 55 wounded and added that many other victims’ names were not reported. The U.S. Army cites the number of casualties as “unknown.”

The massacre allegations were little known outside Korea until the publication of Associated Press (AP) reports in 1999 containing interviews with 7th Cavalry veterans who corroborated Korean survivors’ accounts. The AP also uncovered warfront orders to fire on refugees, given out of fear of enemy North Korean infiltration. After years of rejecting claims by survivors, the Pentagon conducted an investigation and, in 2001, acknowledged the killings, but referred to the three-day event as “an unfortunate tragedy inherent to war and not a deliberate killing.” The U.S. rejected survivors’ demands for an apology and compensation.

South Korean investigators disagreed with Pentagon findings, saying they believed 7th Cavalry troops were ordered to fire on the refugees. The survivors’ group called the U.S. report a “whitewash.” Additional archival documents later emerged showing U.S. commanders ordering the shooting of refugees during this period, declassified documents found but not disclosed by the Pentagon investigators. Among them was a report by the U.S. ambassador in South Korea in July 1950 that the U.S. military had adopted a theater-wide policy of firing on approaching refugee groups. Despite demands, the U.S. investigation was not reopened.

Prompted by the exposure of No Gun Ri, survivors of similar alleged incidents in 1950–1951 filed reports with the Seoul government. In 2008 an investigative commission said more than 200 cases of alleged large-scale civilian killings by the U.S. military had been registered, mostly air attacks.

168

The tunnel where the South Korea refugees were shot, the circles show American bullet marks.

C | 10 169

Yangju Highway Incident

50,000 People Rallied The biggest anti-American protests South Korea has experienced in recent years.

170

The Yangju highway incident, also known as the Yangju training accident or Highway 56 Accident, occurred on June 13, 2002, in Yangju, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. A United States Army armored vehicle, returning to base in Uijeongbu on a public road after training maneuvers in the countryside, struck and killed two 14-year-old South Korean schoolgirls, Shin Hyo-sun and Shim Mi-seon.

The American soldiers involved were found not guilty of negligent homicide in the court martial, further inflaming anti-American sentiment in South Korea. The memory of the two schoolgirls is commemorated annually in South Korea.

Full apologies were issued by American civilian and military officials at various levels of authority immediately after the incident and repeated throughout the course of the legal proceedings. In addition, visits were made to the families of the two victims, and compensation was paid to the surviving family members. U.S. President George W. Bush also phoned then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and expressed his regret over the deaths of the two South Korean schoolgirls.

However, the acquittal of the two servicemen sparked anti-American demonstrations in various locations, termed “the biggest anti-American protests the country has seen in recent years� by a BBC report covering the December 2002 visit of then U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to South Korea. The same report also suggested that presidential elections in South Korea, set to take place that same December, may have focused attention on the issue as a larger referendum on the U.S.-ROK relationship, and thus exacerbated tensions. In addition to anger, sadness, and outrage at the death of the two girls, this move sparked protests in several locations as South Koreans expressed a desire for greater control over foreign military forces stationed in South Korea and urged that the SOFA be revised accordingly.

Father Mun Jeong Hyeon, a Roman Catholic priest active in the anti-USFK movement, began a hunger strike outside the U.S. Embassy in Seoul.

In addition to a series of large demonstrations at U.S. military installations and a rally attended by more than 50,000 people in Seoul during the second week of December, attacks, including fire bombings, were launched at the Yongsan Garrison and both the South Korean and American personnel responsible for guarding U.S. military installations in South Korea. In one incident in December 2002, an unarmed U.S. Army officer, Lieutenant Colonel Steven A. Boylan, was attacked by three South Korean men wielding a knife outside the Garrison. Colonel Boylan suffered only minor injuries, however this shows the direct anger the South Koreans felt.

C | 10 171

r e f e r e nc e s

References This book contains writings taken from a variety of sources brought together to form a complete theoretical breakdown and expansion on Old Boy and it’s relation to Korean history.

If you want to continue research follow these links to the original research content. www.imdb.com/title/tt0364569/ www.myfilmviews.com/2010/12/05/old-boy-2003/ www.ferdyonfilms.com/2009/oldboy-2003/496/ www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Post-Script/191765324.html www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/102821/oldboy www.koreanfilm.org www.nknews.org/2012/02/the-u-s-and-the-1945-division-of-korea/ www.historytoday.com/rowena-hammal/destined-fail-how-division-korea-ledkorean-war-0 www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/592578/38th-parallel www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/asia/koreanpn.htm www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2013/apr/04/rising-tensions-korean-peninsulapictures#/?picture=406675194&index=0 www.rttnews.com/1989075/korean-peninsula-contrasting-picture-of-freedomgrowth-and-oppression-poverty.aspx www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15256929 www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15289563 www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kn.html www.indexmundi.com/south_korea/ www.indexmundi.com/north_korea/

www.consortiumnews.com/2013/04/06/behind-the-north-korean-crisis/ www.blogs.koreanclass101.com/blog/2009/08/25/presidents-of-south-korea-anoverview-and-timeline/ www.asianhistory.about.com/od/southkorea/p/The-Gwangju-Massacre-1980.htm www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/special/2012/09/178_75100.html www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/116919/Chun-Doo-Hwan www.gwangjuguide.or.kr www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/322280/South-Korea/34995/The-SixthRepublic www.imdb.com/title/tt1321511/

Old Boy