Il Cento notti di orrore PART 6- More Recent Korean Horror Films: APP THE HORROR (2025), THE UNRIGHTEOUS (2024) & THE RITUAL a.k.a. THE FAVOR (2025)

 Here is the latest installment of the Il Cento notti di orrore – One Hundred Nights of Horror series.  There was a quite bit of lull from the last entry, which was up to Nos. 19, and now here we go with another set of Korean horror films. This is purely a matter of expediency and has little to do with the improved quality of Korean horror or any other consideration.  

Now that most of the VOD services in the US— led by Netflix and Amazon Prime— appear to be quite happy to bring in Korean horror films with the time lag of sometimes only several months from the dates of their domestic theatrical debuts, they are easily accessible in North America more than ever.  This is of course not necessarily the case with big domestic hits—horror or not—nabbed by a distribution company such as NEON and scheduled to play in the North American theaters, such as Colony, Hope and Whispering Waters (all of which have been reviewed in the official Koreanfilm.org site) and a few such as App the Horror which is yet (again, as of late August 2026) to find a North American distributor. But I will take whatever comes available, no complaints.

20.  App the Horror 귀신 부르는 앱: 영 (South Korea, 2026). A Heart People Production, Distributed by Sambaek Sanghoe. International sales handled by Anthology21. Released theatrically February 18, 2026.  Aspect ratio: 2.35:1, 1.37:1. 1 hour 27 minutes. “Unlock” 잠금해제. Director: Hyung Seul-woo. Cinematography: Um Jae-wan. Lighting: Kim Kang-min. Editor: Kim Ju-eun. Music: Kim Yong. Production Design: Seo Ji-hyung. Makeup: Kwak Hye-ryung. “Dawn Shift” 새벽출근. Director & Editor: Ko Hee-sub. Cinematography: Choi Jong-man. Lighting: Yoon Bang-su. Music: Kim Yong. Production Design: Jang Won. Makeup: Kim Do-hee. “Bound for Goseong,” 고성행. Director & Editor: Lee Sang-min. Cinematography: Kim Jong-su. Lighting: Park Jin-yong, Jung Jun-seok, Yoon Jung-mun, Choi Yong-gon. Music: Han Seo-jin, Lee Sung-kyung. Production Design: Kim Hye-rim. “Collector” 콜렉터. Director: Sun Jong-hoon. Cinematography: Ku Du-han. Lighting: Kim Ju-il. Editor: Kim Ju-eun. Music: Kim Yong. Production Design: Lim Hye-min. Makeup: Lee Eun-chong. “Oneself” 자신.  Director: Son Min-jun. Cinematography: Um Jae-wan. Lighting: Kim Kang-min. Editor: Choi Ha-neul. Music: Kang Hyun-jung. Production Design: Kim Jin-ju, Shin Sang-min. Sound: Kim Beom-yu. “Ghost Gate Room”  귀문방. Director: Kim Seung-tae. Cinematography: Kim Min-guk, An Dong-min, Song Ji-yoon, Kwak Seung-hee. Costume Design: Shin Yu-jin, Yo Won. Makeup: Kim Do-hee, Hwang Yun-na.  CAST:  Kim Young-jae (Dong-ju), Kim Ju-a (Han-byeol), Yang Jo-a (Sun-young), Kim Hee-jung (Na-yeon), Park Seo-ji (Jin-seo), Kim Young-seon (Mother), Son Min-jun (Min-jun), Anupam Tripathi (Suneta), Im Ye-eun (Collector), Lee Seung-yeon (Eun-a), Kim Gyu-nam (Ha-rin), Kim A-cheon (Old Landlord). Accessed through Watcha Korea VOD, July 2026. 

The anthology or portmanteau horror format has sustained itself in Korea for the last three decades. It has in fact been responsible for some of the stronger, and sometimes the more prestigious, horror projects, including the Three series, in which Kim Ji-woon and Park Chan-wook participated; Horror Stories (Min Kyu-dong, Jung Bum-sik, et al.); and more recent scrappy but decent examples like Body Parts. Given that many Korean filmmakers cut their teeth on short films, produced as school graduation projects for instance, they welcome the chance to show off their skills and style in a relatively brief form. The biggest drawback to the format is the gap in quality among episodes: it is a rare anthology horror film in which every episode is equally riveting, though examples that meet the criterion do exist, such as the British classic Dead of Night.  The pre-made, binge-watch-oriented format of Netflix and other channels allows filmmakers to address this problem to a degree, as Guillermo del Toro did with his superb Cabinet of Curiosities. However, for a feature film, say, two golden nuggets out of five, sitting alongside three bars of lead or balls of tinfoil, could bring down the value of the whole enterprise considerably.

App the Horror, an unfortunate title which sounds as dorky and uncommitted in English as in Korean, is based on the premise that a high school tech club has created a phone app supposedly letting you see and contact the ghosts, a very thin thread that really does not do much to connect the installments with one another. Despite this potentially frivolous premise, the overall atmosphere is cool and moody, with little low-rent humor or trendy gimmicks that usually characterize these films. Let us proceed from the lackluster and okay to the good and excellent, ignoring the order in which the segments appear.

The opener “Unlock” simply works as an introductory piece in which the said high school students invoke dead spirits through an elaborate ritual, amusingly (for me at least) supervised by a long-haired, suit-dressed guy seemingly modeled after Hieda Reijiro from the Yokai Hunter series. Very little to be said about it, even though it rather nicely evokes the atmospherics of late ‘90s-oughts J-horror.  “Dawn Shift” deals with two women who work for a death and decomposition cleanup service (also the background of Somebody), running into a ghost of a possible suicide victim. Director Ko Hee-sup is a veteran of web-dramas including Kim Min-chul starrer Replay: The Moment (2021), and not surprisingly, better at capturing realistic banters and frustrations of two women than scaring the viewers. “Collector” is the most straightforward and uncomplicated segment in the film, simply a string of booga-ooga scare sequences, about a very angry spirit murdered by a man taking illicit pictures of her with his smartphone, who haunt a discarded-lost handphone chop-shop crew member (competently essayed by the New Delian-Korean resident Tripathi, who broke out internationally playing Ali Abdul in Squid Game). The scare effects are actually the most effective in the film, but the episode has almost no content to speak of.

“Ghost Gate Room” has the flavor of a folk horror film in which an unsuspecting visitor falls victim to incomprehensible and sinister rites of a local community, in this case the site of the ritual turns out to be a nondescript one-room apartment unit managed by a creepy, possibly senile landlord.  Although the denouement is predictable, the film, directed by Kim Seung-tae, responsible for a low-budget alternate-universe SF Dream Maker (2021), does a fairly good job of wrangling suspense out of furtively glimpsed pagan (quasi-shamanistic) rituals and increasing anxiety of the protagonist (Kim Gyu-nam, TV drama Love Your Enemy).  Like a number of other recent Korean films, it does touch on one of the believable anxieties of the MZ generation Koreans (especially females) that their rare-find urban abode is figuratively (of course literally so in this film) a gate into Hell.

This brings us to the two standout episodes in the movie. "Oneself," filmed in an extremely contrasty, color-saturated style, deals with a disabled middle-aged man, played by the director Son Min-jun, whose short film Cut (2018) also played with the concept of subjective reality in a horror setting, who is cared for in a run-down facility and tormented by blood-drenched female spirits. Viewers soon learn, however, that this initially sympathetic figure harbors a sinister secret. Rather gory and nasty, the segment is also infused with surrealistic, religiously inflected visuals, and ultimately delivers a sort of meditation on the Buddhist notion of karmic retribution: can being tormented by a deteriorating and dysfunctional body constitute sufficient moral punishment for heinous deeds that took the lives of other people? 

Another standout segment, "Bound for Goseong," written and directed by Lee Sang-min, who has since made the huge hit Whispering Waters, is the only one shot in the 1.37:1 ratio.  It deals with the anxiety and terror of Jin-seo, a snooty high schooler reluctantly riding a bus to Goseong at the arrangement of her pushy mother, who has vaguely promised an improvement in her academic performance and other sundry benefits once she arrives. Confined mostly to the interior of the bus, the episode displays a subdued sense of humor as the driver remains utterly indifferent to the seemingly irrational presence of a creepy passenger; it ends, of course, in a clever, morally disturbing payoff, by which viewers are made to feel genuinely sympathetic toward Jin-seo. It is a rather effective intimate-space horror piece and displays Lee's capacity to wrangle excellent performances out of archetypal characters, the trait that helped Whispering Waters emerge as a commercial success.

On the whole, App the Horror, despite its unexciting conceptual hook, is an above-average Korean anthology horror film. We will continue to see the movies with portmanteau format produced in Korea, given that short-form content shows little sign of abating. Whether such reliance on the format can generally improve the proportion of good segments over lukewarm or bad ones remains to be seen. ☆☆☆★

21. The Unrighteous 원정빌라(South Korea, 2024). A K Dragon Production, Distributed by Smile Entertainment (international distribution: KT Alpha). Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1, 1 hour 27 minutes. Director: Kim Sun-kook (feature debut). Producer: Kim Hee-young. Cinematography: Choi Won-wook, Cho Young-dae. Music: Lim Dae-hwan. Released theatrically December 4, 2024.  CAST: Lee Hyun-woo (Joo-hyun), Moon Jung-hee (Shin-hye), Bang Min-ah (Yu-jin), Sung Byung-sook (Young-sun), Jung Min-sung (Moon-su), Lee Jae-gu, Ko Ju-ni, Noh Ji-hoon. Watched at the 2024 Bucheon Fantastic Film Festival, available at Amazon Prime as of August 2026.

 

Joo-hyun (Lee Hyun-woo, TV drama Cinderella at 2 am), splitting his days between a bank security post and cram sessions for the real estate broker's exam, shares Unit 203 of an apartment complex called Wonjeong Villa—badly in need of renovation, apparently located somewhere in Busan City—with his ailing mother Yeong-seon (Sung Byung-sook) and his niece Ye-ji.  Almost immediately, he gets picked on for parking space disputes and floor-noise complaints by Shin-hye (Moon Jung-hee, The Day I Died), the sneering tenant in Unit 303 directly above him. He, out of petty annoyance, stuffs her mailbox with a wad of brochures advertising for local church services.  What he could not have anticipated was that Shin-hye becomes an ardent believer and proselytizer for the ministry of Pastor Jung Mun-su (Jung Min-sung, Exit, Paradise).  Soon, most of the apartment residents, including Joo-hyun’s own mother, fall under the thrall of the oily pastor, singing and praising the lord in group meetings. With the help of Yu-jin (Bang Min-a, the vocalist of K-pop group Girl’s Day but also seasoned TV actress: Delivery Man, Beautiful Gong Shim), a neighborhood pharmacist with a personal interest in deprogramming cult members, Joo-hyun attempts to break the hold of the pastor’s hold on his mother, despite the harassment and persecution campaign by the cult that gets him fired from his job.  But then he learns, to his shock and panic, that the latter are preparing an unspeakable ritual replicating Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in the most literal form possible—with his niece as a potential offering.  

The Unrighteous is one of the Korean films I caught at BiFan but was unable to write about in time for the festival report. It in fact shares an angle with The Ritual, in its exploration of the dark side of Christian faiths that slip into the status of heretical cults. The film's message could be neatly summarized by the tagline on its poster: "Trust not thy neighbor." The serpentine hostility of the villa residents, and their indifference to the real suffering of fellow community members, are presented methodically and with a flavor of authentic social observation, often camouflaged by concerns about the resale value of their apartments and ensconced in the hypocritical language of spiritual care and religious faith.

The principals are adequate to good in their characterizations, with Bang Min-a a standout as a cool-headed, sharp-looking investigator. There is an inevitable surprise revelation about her identity, which is very much in the manner of Korean TV drama and frankly redundant. Director-writer Kim Seon-guk, for whom The Unrighteous is a feature debut, does a good job of wrangling credible performances out of the cast, although the direction occasionally reminds one of reading a webtoon rather than watching a work of cinema. The fiery climax is rather clumsily staged, failing to generate real terror or to draw viewers into the horrified consciousness of Joo-hyun, obviously the intended effect. 

The film is marred by low production values, including its use of AI-generated imagery in the end titles. It is one of those genre films that are more interesting for their subject matter and approach than for their filmmaking acumen or aesthetic accomplishment. It is too depressing to be a fun time-waster but not refined or creative enough to be a truly memorable horror film. Nonetheless, it deserves credit for telling this story of (Christian) faith going frighteningly haywire with a measure of gumption and commitment. ☆☆★★★

22. The Ritual (a.k.a. The Favor) 구원자 (South Korea, 2025). A Mayday Studio-Studio Big Us Production, Presented by Studio Big Us. Co-produced by iFilm Corporation and Grida Studio, Distributed by Mindmark. Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1, 1 hour 43 minutes. Director: Shin Jun. Screenplay: Kang Da-hee. Producers: Jung Hyun, Lee Jung-seok. Released theatrically November 5, 2025. CAST: Kim Byung-chul (Young-beom), Song Ji-hyo (Sun-hee), Kim Hieora (Chun-seo), Jin Yu-chan (Jong-hoon), Oh Han-gyeol (Min-jae), Ahn Se-ho (Dong-jin). Watched through subscription: July 2026, Amazon Prime.  

Young-beom (Kim Byung-chul, The Guard Post,Best Friend), a physician, relocates to a run-down country town, believing that this would prove beneficial, if not physically then at least spiritually, for his high-schooler son Jong-hoon (Jin Yu-chan), paralyzed from the waist down, as well as his wife Sun-hee (Song Ji-hyo, Unstoppable, Intruder), whose eyesight is gradually deteriorating. One day on a routine errand, Young-beom runs over an old man (Kim Seol-jin) on the pitch-dark road.  He makes a critical mistake of bringing the seemingly mortally wounded old man, hideously scarred with the apparently scorched skins and hands, to his tool shed. One thing leads to another and the creepy old man ends up touching his son, who is instantly cured of his disability. Sun-hee, convinced that their family was touched by a miracle, joins a church at the nearby village Obok-ri, where she is encouraged to testify to the blessed event. However, things begin to take a dark turn when she learns that one of the church’s most devoted member, Chun-seo (the musical actress Kim Hieora, best known for Frida: The Last Night Show, based on Frida Kahlo’s life), has a son, Min-jae, who suddenly developed a crippling disability identical to Jong-hoon’s, precisely on the day that the latter was cured.

The Ritual is the sophomore feature from writer-director Shin Jun, whose debut, Yongsoon, a coming-of-age story about a young girl, received good notices at the 2016 Busan International Film Festival. It belongs to the tradition of a horror story as a moral fable —think of "The Monkey's Paw," or even of the current megahit Obsession, different though its flavor is —that highlights the spiritual cost of having your dearest wishes come true. An evangelical Christian inflection is strong here as well, although in The Ritual it functions less as an actual theme than as a socio-cultural background that shapes how the "miracles" are interpreted. Shin suggests rather than states the problem with Obok-ri, a small town whose reputation for miraculous cures has sustained its church: the signs are kept vaguely disquieting, a cross on a pew that resembles a blotch of spilled blood, for instance, and the town ignores altogether those it has ruined, like Min-jae and Chun-seo, the real victims of these so-called miracles.

The film is lugubrious and takes itself too seriously, not to mention too bloody and gory in spots, but the moral conflicts that Young-beom's family wrestles with are compelling and manage to hold the viewer's interest until the end, helped by energetic performances from the leads. Song Ji-hyo, one of the most beautiful Korean actresses of the last two decades, has actively sought out character roles since her mega-success on the variety show Running Man: here she appears almost mousy, deliberately made to look pinched and unflattering, but the effect is not quite convincing. It would have worked better had her character been given a more active part to play opposite Kim Byung-chul. The biggest contributors to the proceedings are probably the special effects makeup team at Gepeto (Yun Hyang-jik, Kim Se-hee), who designed the old man's progressive deterioration in disgustingly realistic detail, as well as the "marks" left by the miraculous touch, which look like fingerprints and brands at once. 

The Ritual is a moderately interesting Korean horror film that attempts to go a bit further than the routine genre exercise, but it cannot quite scale the heights of similarly dour but compelling works about impossible moral choices, such as Somebody and Song Ji-hyo's own Intruder. ☆☆☆ 

As for the industry statistics, The Unrighteous barely played the theatrical market at all, collecting fewer than 18,000 tickets on no more than 164 screens. The Ritual, a.k.a. The Favor, did somewhat better, selling 34,000 tickets, but the figure is still disappointing given that the film stars Song Ji-hyo, a legitimate star actress. (For a comparison, Song's Intruder sold approximately 530,000 tickets, a solid hit but still not enough to make up for its relatively big production budget.) The clear commercial winner among the three films covered here is App the Horror, which raked in 101,537 tickets but we are not sure if this was sufficient to cover the film’s production cost.

Depicting Korean History Beyond "Factual Accuracy"-- An Interview with Professor Ki Kyong-ryang on Representation of History in Contemporary Korean Cinema and TV Dramas

Having been teaching Korean and Japanese history at a wonderful American public university for more than 25 years, I have always been meaning to put up a series of discussions regarding representation of history in Korean and Japanese cinema. Those who have been following my Q Branch blog know that many of my reviews of the Korean and Japanese films have engaged with the question of whether they could serve as good educational texts for my students interested in learning about Korean and Japanese histories.  

With this entry, I seek to launch a new series of interviews with some real academic experts on Korean history and culture that go beyond the usual hair-splitting exercises on how “accurately” a particular work of New Korean Cinema reflects Korean history and culture.  The recent controversy regarding the hybrid-genre TV drama Joseon Exorcist [Joseon Gumasa, hereafter JE] which was abruptly cancelled by its home station, SBS, in March 2021 after airing only two episodes, I believe provides an entry point for tackling the complex question of the representation of history in New Korean Cinema. 

The first expert who had graciously agreed to an interview despite his busy schedule is Professor Ki Kyoung-ryang, Assistant Professor of Korean History at the Catholic University of Korea.  He received his Ph. D. in Korean history, specializing in ancient period, from Seoul National University in 2017, and is currently conducting research on the castle-towns of Goguryeo kingdom.  Professor Ki has always been interested in the close communication between professional historians and the general public: he is a regular panelist in the podcast group Maninmansaek Yeoksagongjakdan and has been one of the vocal critics of the chauvinistic pseudo-histories that have gained a good deal of popularity over the years.  

This interview was conducted on June 20, 2021, through Zoom.  It has been edited and somewhat shortened for clarity and economy. However, I have done my best to capture the actual flavor of the exchange we have had throughout this highly informative session. The contents of this interview are copyrighted to Professor Ki Kyoung-ryang and Koreanfilm.org.  Any citation or reproduction without an explicit permission of Professor Ki is forbidden and will be regarded as a breach of copyright laws as defined by the United States and South Korean courts.  “Q” refers to Kyu Hyun Kim and “K” refers to Professor Ki Kyoung-ryang in the subsequent text.

Q: Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview despite your busy schedule! I found your writings regarding the convoluted and complex relationship between historical studies as an academic discipline and popular cultural presentation of Korean history extremely illuminating.  Your latest reflections on this issue were spurred by the abrupt cancellation of the TV drama due to the public outcry that it was “historically distorting” (waegok 歪曲) and subservient to the Chinese interests. I thought this unfortunate incident would mark an interesting occasion to examine this issue of the relationship between history and popular culture in the context of Korean cinema and TV dramas. Do you think the criticisms levelled at the drama were typical or somewhat unique? 

K: It is somewhat unique in the sense that this reflects a very recent trend. First, it was assumed that JE was reflecting the ideology behind the so-called Northeast Project (東北工程, short for Research Project on the History and Current State of the Northeast Borderlands, originally slated as a five-year plan between 2003 and 2007).  This project has angered many Koreans for its perceived treatment of Goguryeo, Pohai and other regions that Koreans consider as a part of their history as Northeastern borderlands of China. Throughout the subsequent decade, the Northeast Project has become a shorthand for Chinese arrogance and imperialistic intent among many Koreans. In truth, there is hardly any content in JE that explicitly promoted the Northeast Project.  However, the hostility directed at Chinese “appropriation” of Korean history, and in fact the underlying anger toward the imperialistic condescension implied in such behavior, happened to find a powerful vent through this episode.  One of the most controversial scenes set in an Euiju inn featured Korean characters eating what appeared to be Chinese food presented as “Korean” in a rather barbaric, brusque manner, provoking some viewers to see this as both misrepresentation of Korean culture as well as sly infiltration of Chinese-ness into a popular cultural product clearly set in Korea.    

Q: Generation gap may be a factor in this turn of events, don’t you think?

K: That certainly seems to be one of the reasons. The older generation probably does not quite understand how young South Koreans— those under 30s— take strong pride in the global success of their popular culture. And many among the latter are intensely aware how some Chinese pop cultural products seem to “copy” Koreans. 

An official poster for Joseon Exorcist.

Q: That is precisely the kind of behavior that Korean pop culture industry shamelessly used to indulge in three to four decades ago with Japanese pop culture. Comic books, TV variety shows…

K: Absolutely. Of course, Japan used to wholesale “copy” Hollywood and American pop culture, especially immediately after losing the Pacific War. The difference perhaps is that Chinese government, if not Chinese people, considers itself a “big nation” and many Koreans, who, like many other citizens of today’s world, tend to see the nations in terms of a hierarchical order, with Republic of Korea now at least in terms of affluence and cultural sophistication “ahead” of China, take a strong umbrage at this behavior.  There was in fact a Korean TV drama titled Mr. Queen [哲仁王后, 2020], which if I remember correctly was moderately successful.  However, there was some criticism of the drama at that time, because it was based on a Chinese source novel.  Its writer subsequently wrote JE and the critics quickly found a connection.  The station released an explanation that Chinese capital was not involved in producing the latter TV drama, but it was wholly inadequate in stemming the negative tide. 

Q: So, the “nationalistic” negative surge regarding JE is different from the familiar “nationalistic” animosity against Japan?

K: I think it is different. The latter tends to be tied to the issue of resolving the painful history of colonial experience. In contrast, the issue with JE is connected, I think, to the recent global success of the Korean popular culture and its incommensurability with what Koreans perceive as “hegemonic” behavior of the Chinese government as well as some among the Chinese population. In any case, the TV drama was more of a symbolic item, functioning as a lightning rod that attracted the powerful electric charge building up in the storm cloud of negative public opinion for some years.

Q: Most interesting.  Things have indeed shifted greatly since the times in which I had grown up in Seoul. Can we expand the scope of the discussion a bit, and inquire your opinions about the relationship between historical dramas (sageuk) and history as studied by academic historians as reflected in Korean cinema (and TV dramas) in the last decade and a half or so?

K: Broadly speaking, they have become more beautiful to look at, more aesthetically pleasing, better designed and materially better endowed.  Recent TV dramas appear to evince a stronger trend of moving away from the “realistic recreation of the past” model, mixing in deliberate anachronisms, fantastic elements and so on. But this trend is also discernible among theatrical feature films. Also the more successful TV dramas like Daejanggeum [Jewel in the Palace, 2003], I think, show a greater level of creative reinterpretation, rather than following conventional stories that every Korean knows already.

Q: Oh, I cannot go any further without asking what you thought of Daejanggeum!  [Laughter]

K: I actually enjoyed it a lot.  The drama focused on the everyday details of Joseon dynasty folks and upped the ante in terms of aesthetic quality.  Of course, many of the details took creative license with historical studies had so far revealed about the life in early Joseon dynasty, beginning with some of the impossibly appetizing cuisine that Janggeum and other members of the royal kitchen staff come up with in the show, which more often than not reflect our modern conception of the Joseon dynasty “great food” than the historical reality.  But what was really significant about Daejanggeum was, in my view, its characters and narrative were far more important than “history:” Korean history served as a background, neither its theme nor its raison d’etre. Watching the drama, or other ones like it, while superbly entertaining and even moving, does not necessarily give us new insights or understandings of the past. 

Q: So even Daejanggeum is limited as a historical drama? 

K: Well, to be honest, I sort of disagree with some of my colleagues, professional historians, who tend to believe that “accurate recreation of the past” is the reason why we make and watch historical dramas.  It might be a bit strange coming from a historian [Laughter] but I do not believe “history” has to at all times take priority over “literature” or other forms of creative endeavor.  Having said that, I do find the obvious tampering of well-known historical facts to score some plot points, or to emphasize a particular character’s villainous qualities, rather less effective or problematic. 

Q:  I wholeheartedly agree. I previously wrote about Lee Jun-ik’s Blades of Blood (2010) messing with the chronology of Joseon dynasty history, just to grind the director’s axe aimed at King Seonjo (r. d. 1567-1608) as a failed monarch. I have been complaining for some time about “presentism” in many Korean sageuk, using historical figures as shorthand projections of contemporary political figures, which at worst could be a form of disrespect for the historical personages.  In addition, the producers and writers of these movies and TV dramas seldom draw upon what I actually think are really “dramatic,” interesting and intriguing stories, utterances and events in the existing historical sources, even from the often-relied-upon Joseon wangjo sillok (Real Records of the Joseon Dynasty).

K:  I remember one of my junior colleagues who had spent considerable time digging up the more historically authentic cultural representations, such as dress designs, for a TV drama (which shall remain nameless here: let’s just stay it was set in Three Kingdoms Period) for which he was a consultant. In the end, he had to ask for his credit removed because his painstaking work was virtually ignored.  He was in essence told that his more authentic findings were “not attractive or magnificent enough.”      

Q: Can we talk about negative and positive recent examples among the sageuk, for now confining ourselves to feature films? 

K: Oh boy. [Laughter] You mentioned that you thought rather positively of Kim Han-min’s War of the Arrows (2011).  Let’s say I cannot say the same thing about his far more commercially successful next effort, The Admiral: Roaring Currents (2014).  However, Lee Joon-ik’s The Throne (2015) I can cite as one of the more positive recent examples.  I think the latter film successfully evaded the popular conception of Prince Sado as a tragic victim of the court intrigue and attempted to capture complexities of his character based on actual historical records, illuminating in the process some of the less-than-generous qualities of Yeongjo’ behavior as his father and other aspects of its supposedly well-known characters and events. 

 Roaring Currents, on the other hand, fails to present any fresh insight or interpretation regarding its central protagonist, Admiral Yi Sun-sin (1545-1598), not to say Choi Min-shik playing the general did not do a great job.  Presenting Admiral Yi as some kind of “democratic” or “populist” hero was possibly one of the reasons the film appealed so much to the contemporary Korean moviegoers.  However, aside from this almost pandering attitude toward the ticket buyers, the film was in my view not much different from the kind of nationalist biopic produced during the military dictatorships. 

Q: Having been a practicing historian of Japan for nearly thirty years, I was bothered by its shallow and stereotypical characterization of Japanese enemies, although this is more or less par for the course in Korean popular culture.

K: Right, there is a long Korean tradition of popular cultural representation of Admiral Yi, in which he is always exalted for being a great general, strategist, et cetera, by his Japanese enemies.  However, having said all this, I do acknowledge that there are few recent Korean sageuk movies set in the ancient, medieval or early modern periods that are as flagrantly bad as, say, some of the more obstreperously political “historical” films set in the modern period, such as Operation Chromite (2016).  Most of them seem to reach a certain level of competency these days, at least in terms of their production qualities. 

Q: Is there a particular subject, topic or figure in the entirety of Korean history you feel has been neglected or inadequately treated by Korean cinema? 

K: Hmm.  Nothing specific comes to my mind at this moment… however, I will say that Goryeo period has relatively been neglected, in comparison to the ancient (Three Kingdoms, Unified Silla) and early modern (Joseon) periods.  For Joseon period, of course, there are bountiful historical sources. Plus, it is easier for the producers to materially reconstruct the period details. The ancient periods could be rendered with the narratives centered on the wars and national conflicts.  During the Goryeo period, the Military Rule (1170-1270) era has so far received a lion’s share of attention, but among professional historians, the late Goryeo period under the Mongol [Yuan] Empire’s domination (approximately 1259-1356) is being cast in a new light. In these studies, the Goryeo regime “intervened” by the Yuan empire is reinterpreted not as a weak state completely under the thumb of the powerful Mongol suzerain but as a dynamic subject both influencing and influenced by the greater changes in Asia.  Having said this, I do not know if Korean moviegoing public is ready to accept a movie that truthfully explores the complex hybrid reality of late Goryeo dynasty.

 

 A portrait of King Gongmin, one of the later Goryeo kings and his
Mongol wife, Queen Noguk, a.k.a. Borjigin Budasiri.

Q:What do you think about my question that too many Korean sageuk films and TV dramas focus on kings, good or bad?

K: I think the interest in royal family might not easily abate, but the more recent producers and viewers appear to be more interested in princes than kings. 

Q: Aha. 

K: The princes are figures of possibility rather than establishment and serve as better identification figures especially for the younger generations of viewers.  I also think that it is to a certain extent inevitable that the public prefers to watch films and TV dramas featuring pageantry and pomp of the royal personages, an opulent and luxury-filled world far removed from their everyday lives, than those set in more mundane settings. Just like the way a good deal of modern-day-set Korean TV dramas take place among the chaebol super-rich!   

Q: My wish is that one day we could see a Korean film set in, say, Goryeo period and a viewer reaction would be “What the heck? How could this be Goryeo? This looks like a foreign country, not Korea!” And the filmmaker would respond, “You are absolutely right. The movie is set in a foreign country called Goryeo, not in Korea.”[Laughter] 

K: I am actually rather optimistic about the prospect of eventually witnessing a genuinely challenging cinematic sageuk, that, as you put it, renders the (mistakenly) familiar into the (truthfully) unfamiliar again.  Even regarding the ever-problematic superficial obsession on material details, as the example of the so-called “Korean hat” becoming widely popular among the non-Korean viewers due to the Netflix zombie sageuk series Kingdom (2019-2020) demonstrates, getting these details “right” could pay off with unexpected dividends.    

Q: I agree!  I only wish the producers and filmmakers understand that you don’t really need to invent a zombie epidemic (not that such an effort is not worthwhile) to tell interesting and compelling stories or portray amazingly fascinating characters set in the distant Korean past, that “real” history has an ample supply of these and more. 

Q: Well, regrettably we have come to the finishing line. Any final thoughts? 

K: I hope that more open and friendly channels of communication between academic historians and the creative people come into being, instead of the latter only consulting the former to maintain their baseline of “factual correctness,” which are often ignored anyway in the end, or the former viewing the creative products only to nitpick about how the latter got everything wrong.  We can probably help each other a lot more than we currently do, to the ultimate benefit of the Korean film industry. 

Q: Thank you so much for a hugely educational and wonderful discussion! 

K: You are so very welcome.

Il Cento notti di orrore PART 5- Recent Korean Horror Films: THE WITCH PART 1: SUBVERSION (2018), PENINSULA (2020) & BEAUTY WATER (2020)

No one is asking me to continue Il Cento notti di orrore – One Hundred Nights of Horror and I am just not giving up on it. I will gladly use the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse for not putting together the fifth installment within the year of 2020, although we dang well know that the delay, postponement or foot-dragging, anyway you want to call it, had absolutely nothing to do with the virus, as, if anything, indie and low-budget horror films have saturated the streaming and VOD services with vengeance, and I have happily been glutting myself with them. If I had to find the real culprit for the absence of another installment the stresses of online teaching would be closer to the mark.   Now that the Orange Maggot is ensconced in Florida instead of being the real-life Twitter-Dictator and the office of American presidency has been taken over by a real human being, who has presumably learned the lessons about how to cope with Republican anti-democratic obstructionism, things are finally looking up.   Everyone around me at UC Davis as well as Berkeley has received at least one dose of vaccine as of April 20, 2021, and I believe, barring another outbreak of something as virulent as COVID-19 in the coming months (I am less worried about the possibility of various mutant variants of the virus neutralizing the effects of the vaccine than some folks, and my prognosis is based on scientific findings as much as I can lay my hands on), I shall finally be able to go back to watching a motion picture in a theater (no doubt it would be a very different experience, post-COVID, but I will worry about it then). For this session, to make up for lack of new reviews for the official Koreanfilm.org page for the past two months, I have decided to use this slot for the short takes on three new Korean horror films.  

So picking up where I have left the list last time at No. 16, and now forging ahead.  The rating system is based on the Japanese critic Futaba Juzaburo’s invention: a white star ( ☆) counting for twenty points, and a black star (★) for five points, with somewhere between 55 and 60 points pinned down as the “average” score, given that few movies actually score higher than 90 or lower than 30.      

17. The Witch Part 1: The Subversion 마녀 (South Korea, 2018). A Geumwol Pictures-Peppermint & Co. Production, Distributed by Warner Brothers Korea.  Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1, 2 hour 5 minutes. Director & screenplay: Park Hoon-jung. Cinematography: Kim Young-ho, Lee Tae-o.  Music: Mowg. Production Design: Cho Hwa-sung. Editor: Kim Bang-joo. Costume Design: Jo Sang-gyoung.  Special Effects Makeup: Hwang Ho-gyun, Kwak Tae-yong.  Watched through subscription: June 2020, Netflix.  The entrepreneurial-screenwriter-turned-commercially-successful-director Park Hoon-jung (The Showdown, New World and the famed scribe for Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil) came up with V. I. P. in 2017, a critical and commercial flop. Perhaps because he was accused of rampant exploitation of female characters in that film, Park insisted on turning the central protagonist and head villain of his next film into females. Although the resulting The Witch Part 1: The Subversion has gained some notable support among the fans of gory action thriller subgenre, i. e. the so-called “Extreme Asian” cinema, and gives an interesting role to a talented young actress, Kim Da-mi (Marionette), the film is ultimately lugubrious, self-satisfied and pointlessly vicious. Kim plays Ja-yoon, a bright-eyed teenager adopted by a retiree couple (Choi Jeong-woo & Oh Mi-hee), but the viewers already know from the messy and unpleasant prologue that she is a product of some awful scientific experiment on children conducted by the South Korean government in a secret project spearheaded by Dr. Baek (Jo Min-soo, Pieta).  The foul-tempered and -mouthed scientist unleashes her other creations, including a constantly masticating, scarred thug Mr. Choi (Park Hee-soon) and an English-speaking twerp (Choi Woo-shik), to locate and retrieve Ja-yoon, in a plot rather similar to Brian De Palma’s psychokinetic thriller The Fury (1978).

The movie is certainly slickly put together, with some competent lensing by Kim Young-ho (The Pirates) and Lee Tae-o and suitably grungy but substantial production design supervised by Cho Hwa-sung (Illang: The Wolf Brigade) as well as Park’s sharp eye for composition and legible action sequences. However, I found the whole story and especially characterizations mostly irritating and enervating, sometimes borderline repellent.  You might say, aren’t the movie villains supposed to be like that?  Sure, but great villain characters have compelling charisma, convictions about the righteousness of their agenda, or at the very least entertaining or intimidating personality traits. All of the villains in The Witch are either low-brain-capacity, two-bit thugs (Mr. Choi) or hateful stereotypes of what some Korean men consider to be “deviant” males (The “handsome guy” played by Choi Woo-shik, for instance. At least I am grateful that he does not insert “fuck” into every other English sentence he tosses out). Topping them all is the female mad scientist Dr. Baek, who speaks and acts like a Korean middle-ager particularly well versed in assholery, only with her physical gender switched to “female.”  I did say the film is slickly made, but this does not mean that The Witch is a model of efficient and economical storytelling.  For one, it is interminably long, taking more than one hour to get the villains to properly reveal their hands to the viewers. There is altogether too much blood and sticky gore, some of them distastefully involving children.  I am not even going to go into the “science” of this alleged SF thriller, strictly voodoo stuff.  Unlike two decades ago, South Korean literary scene is today overflowing with sophisticated works of SF: a basic consultation with any of their authors would have yielded a far superior, more logically sensible basis for explaining Ja-yoon and her cohort’s superpowers. 

One possibly innovative element about the film is Ja-yoon’s characterization, or the way the film sets the viewers up to root for her only to pull a Lucy-with-a-football on them.  The “twist” is quite as nasty as the rest of the film (perhaps this was what the sub-title “subversion” was referring to?), but I do acknowledge that it does distinguish The Witch from, say, average American films of its ilk. The problem is that Kim Da-mi obviously is given no direction how to handle this about-face about her character and comes off as simply bug-eyed psychotic, losing much of the viewer sympathy accumulated for her throughout the film.  Nihilistic, show-offy, macho-bullshitty but competently made, The Witch is an old Tartan DVD-marketed Extreme Asia film to a tee. Those craving for the allegedly politically incorrect pleasures of seeing beautiful Asian kids doing ugly, cruel things to one another while spitting the kind of dialogues ranging between comic book one-liners and gangsta pig grunts might have a reasonably good time with The Witch.   ☆☆★★★ 

18. Beauty Water 기기괴괴 성형수 (South Korea, 2020). A Studio Animal/SS Animent/Triple Pictures Co-Production. Aspect Ratio, 1.85:1, 1 hour 25 minutes. Director: Cho Kyung-hun.  Screenplay: Lee Han-bin. Animation Director: Lee Sang-hoon. Cinematography: Moon Seong-cheol. Music: Hong Dae-sung. Based on a webtoon series Gigigwegwe by Oh Sung-dae.  Production Designer: Cho Hye-seung. Voice Cast: Moon Nam Sook (Ye-ji), Jang Min-hyuk (Ji-hoon), Choi Seung-hoon (Manager), Jo Hyeon-jeong (The Beautician), Kim Bo-yeong (Miri).  Purchased through Naver Series-On, October 2020. Ye-ji is an unhappy make-up artist working for a talent agency, perennially condescended to by the latter’s pea-brained, bitchy star Miri. Once an aspiring ballerina, Ye-ji is today heavyset and depressed, snapping at her indulgent parents and surfing the internet to unload her gripes as a vicious troll.  One day, she runs into a creepy commercial about a certain magic cosmetic liquid capable of transforming a person into an unimaginable beauty, by literally dissolving her unwanted flesh. Initially skeptical, she is astounded to learn that, not only the liquid exists and can be purchased by a large bundle of cash, but it also actually works.  Of course, she must not forget to strictly follow the instructions.

Yet another South Korean feature based on a webtoon series and a selection at the 2020 Bucheon Fantastic Film Festival, Beauty Water is a grungy, computer-animated entry in the body horror subgenre, effective in its own way but not really innovative or envelope-pushing. The overall approach is grounded in TV-drama-style narrative conventions. The animated figures are on the “realistic” side of the spectrum, except for a few instances wherein anime-like exaggeration and stylization are deliberately invoked (as in the first incarnation of Ye-ji’s “new face,” with its completely out-of-proportion huge eyes and non-existent nose). 

As is usually the case with low-budget horror films with high-concept premises (Larry Cohen’s horror opuses provide a good template), social criticism is more or less built into the film, resulting in some amusingly on-target satirical zingers. On the other hand, Ye-ji’s characterization makes it difficult for the viewers to fully invest in her: she thoughtlessly exploits her poor parents for both money and supplementary flesh (although how this “transfer of flesh” from one body to another is accomplished is not clearly explained) and typically regards other women as competitors for the affection of her handsome male paramour Ji-hoon. Ye-ji in the end receives a harsh punishment from the filmmakers for her presumably “shallow” and “selfish” desires, but it remains unclear whether the viewers should feel sad, chastened, or sadistically enjoy her awful fate. I also have an issue with the transgendered-as-a-monster stereotype that informs one of the film’s climactic “twists,” although, to be fair, this stereotype and its variants are alive and well in North American genre films too. Apparently the original webtoon’s Ye-ji was a far more pro-active and independent, although equally single-minded, woman who self-sculpts her face and body into that of an ideal beauty, instead of relying on a beautician for the latter’s surgical skills and her parents for financing her transformation: perhaps that part of her character could have been retained in the film.  Not a bad slice of gruesome body horror, Beauty Water still does not quite fully exploit the transgressive or satirical potentials of its premise. ☆☆☆   

19.  Peninsula 반도 (South Korea, 2020).  A Next Entertainment World/RedPeter Films/New Movie Co-Production.  Aspect Ration 2.39:1. 1 hour 56 minutes.  Director: Yeon Sang-ho. Screenplay: Yeon Sang-ho, Ryoo Yong-jae. Cinematography: Lee Hyung-deok, Jung Kee-won.  Music: Mowg. Editor: Yang Jin-mo. Special Effects: Jung Do Ahn, Yoon Hyung Tae. CAST: Gang Dong-won (Han Jeong-seok), Lee Jung-hyun (Min-jung), Lee Re (Joon), Kwon Hae-hyo (Mr. Kim), Jang So-yeon (Jeong-seok’s sister), Kim Min-jae (Private Hwang), Gu Gyo-hwan (Lieutenant Seo), Kim Han-sol (Young Zombie), Pierce Conran (American TV Commentator). Purchased through Naver Series-On, January 2021. As you can infer from the US-based streaming service’s import title Train to Busan Presents Peninsula, this is Yeon Sang-ho’s official sequel to his breakthrough zombie attack epic Train to Busan (2016).  There is no overlap of characters, except that both films take place in the fictional world in which a zombie epidemic had decimated the Korean peninsula. The screenplay wastes little time in setting up a McGuffin, a truck full of lucrative merchandise lost near Omokgyo, a bridge that crosses the Han River near its terminating point.  Han, a former naval special forces agent traumatized by his failure to protect his sister and nephew from the infection, agrees to the retrieval mission.  Once having arrived in the ruined Korean peninsula, however, he runs afoul of not only a horde of fast-running zombies but also a squad of renegade soldiers lording over civilian survivors, putting up gladiator death matches with the captured for their amusement.  He is also befriended by a seemingly crackpot Mr. Kim (the indie veteran Kwon previously voice-acted for Yeon’s The Fake) and his ersatz family, Min-jung (Lee Jung-hyun, A Petal) and her daughters Joon (Lee Re, all grown up from the days of How to Steal a Dog) and Yoo-jin (Lee Ye-won), who insists that a UN rescue mission is about to arrive and pick them up.

One of the most anticipated Korean films of 2020, Peninsula, while playing in the midst of the pandemic, did a fine business, racking up more than 3 million tickets and doing very well with the international pre-sales, and received mild praise-to-enthusiastic support from the critical community. Like many South Korean genre films made in recent years, Peninsula is highly competently put together. The strength and agility of the infected population is, again like in Train to Busan, terrifically illustrated, although their Energizer-bunny stamina after four years of lockdown and starvation is so unlikely it becomes funny rather than scary (The film notably downplays blood and gore effects, too, receiving the US equivalent of PG-13 rating for its domestic release).  The dynamic set pieces involving harrowing escapes from these super-fast zombies, even more video-game-like here, are surely the best parts of this sequel.  Yeon dutifully presses a few satirical buttons— Koreans are now referred to as “peninsula folks” as was historically so during the colonial period, for instance— but it seems clear that his heart was just not in it.  Neither is he particularly interested in realistically exploring the uncomfortable new status of Koreans as refuges of a global pandemic (for your information, North Korea has also been presumably overrun by the zombie virus in this world, although the country is never directly mentioned). Bong Joon-ho’s The Host in the end did a much wittier job of addressing the American and South Korean hypocrisies regarding the prospect of a global pandemic.  Yeon also for no discernible reason indulges in melodramatic touches (although as anchored in Gang Dong-won and Lee Jung-hyun’s competent performances, they are not as unpalatable as they could have been).  Finally, his human villains are typical macho-stupid Korean movie thugs: instead of providing dramatic tensions, you irritatingly wait for them to fast become zombie chows.

Peninsula is not a badly made film at all and is probably superior to the majority of Hollywood movies with a similar setup in terms of execution of its admittedly cliché-ridden premise. Yet, I found it ultimately disappointing, not only failing to measure up to the genuinely suspenseful direction and sympathetic characterizations of its predecessor, but also curiously forgettable and lackadaisical.  I hope I am not being unduly critical of this film due to the inevitable high expectation I had for the newest film from Yeon, a guy responsible for not just TTB but also Seoul Station. It is difficult to avoid the impression that he is slumming here to meet the unrealistically high commercial expectations to the best of his ability, rather than grappling with his personal demons and unleashing them unto the viewers. Those who have not experienced Yeon’s other jaw-droppers might enjoy Peninsula perfectly well as a smart, above-average piece of entertainment. ☆☆☆

THE THRONE (2015)- A Family Tragedy in the Early Modern Korean Court

THE THRONE. (SADO 사도 思悼)  South Korea, 2015.  2 hours 5 minutes.  A Showbox-Mediaplex Production.  Director: Lee Jun-ik. Screenplay: Cho Chul-hyun, Oh Seung-hyun, Lee Song-won.  Cinematography: Kim Tae-gyeong.  Music: Bang Jun-seok.

CAST: Song Kang-ho (Yeongjo), Yu Ah-in (Crown Prince Sado), Moon Geun-young (Lady Hong Hyegyoung), Kim Hae-sook (Dowager Queen Inwon), Pak Won-sang (Hong Bong-han, Sado's fathe-in-law), Jin Ji-hee (Princess Hwahwan), Park So-dam (Lady Moon).

When Lee Jun-ik, an acknowledged hitmaker with the innovative historical comedy Once Upon a Time in the Battlefield (2003) and its sequel Battlefield Heroes (2010) as well as historical dramas The King and the Clown (2005) and Blades of Blood (2010) under his belt, had announced that he will make a dramatization of one of the most disturbing and tragic episodes of the Joseon dynasty history, King Yeongjo’s (reign date 1724-1776) execution/murder of his own son, Crown Prince Sado, employing an unusually confounding and cruel method of shutting him in a rice chest until the latter died from dehydration and exhaustion, my honest reaction was apprehension.  While few could doubt Lee’s ability to put together superbly entertaining set-pieces— both spectacular and dramatic— and to extract vibrant performances from the newcomers as well as the industry veterans, the attitude he has shown in terms of approaching Korean history had been disappointingly “presentist,” all the more frustrating because his artistic visions anchored in the defense of the performing artists against the movers and shakers of the “big wheel” history had shown great potentials for challenging and destabilizing the monarch- and national-hero-centered historical narratives fed to the Korean public.  

Blades of Blood, for instance, makes a wholly unnecessary revision on the timeline of Hideyoshi’s invasion and Lee Mong-hak’s rebellion (1596), in order to seemingly maximize the incompetence and poor governance of King Seonjo (r.d. 1567-1608), missing a chance to delve into the massive socio-economic contradictions brewing under the surface of the Joseon political system exposed by the Japanese invasions. The King and the Clown does a better job of humanizing the “depraved king” Yeonsangun than many previous media treatments of him, yet it also misses a chance to bring to the foreground more than a few dramatically and even cinematically fascinating aspects of the deposed monarch’s life and the supporting characters surrounding him (to be sure, such a film would have looked a lot more like a Pier Paolo Pasolini film than a Ridley Scott one— possibly too bizarre and grotesque for public consumption, even though such bizarreness and grotesquery are unavoidable features of the existing historical documents regarding his life).

Moreover, the popular opinion in Korea toward Prince Sado had been greatly influenced by those pseudo-historians indulging in conspiracy theories disguised as innovative interpretations of Korean history and proffering them as sound alternatives to the ideas disseminated from within the “academia proper” (whom they often denounce as spiritual descendants of the “pro-Japanese collaborators”). One of the most popular among them, Lee Deok-il, argued in numerous occasions that Memoirs of Lady Hyegyeong (Hanjungnok, 閑中錄 ) possess little value as a historical source, since it merely reflects the political position of Lady Hyegyeong’s own Hong family and the Soron faction among the yangban literati. This did not sit well with both historians and Korean literature scholars who had spent many years scrupulously examining the Memoirs as a credible source of historical information as well as a valuable work of early modern literature. Scholars such as Jeong Byeong-seol have critiqued in detail Lee’s lopsided interpretation (by some accounts, baseless denunciation) of the Memoirs and its author, yet Lee’s arguments have remained extremely popular among the South Korean reading public (Writers such as the now disgraced Yi In-hwa presented a similar anti-Lady Hyegyeong reading of Sado’s death in his novel Yeongwon-han jeguk [The Eternal Empire, 1993]).     

Given these circumstances, I was concerned that Lee Jun-ik would wholeheartedly embrace the proliferating conspiracy theories and portray Prince Sado as a very much sane, reformist hero destroyed by the scheming yangban hyenas, who had managed to delude the aging king Yeongjo into mistrusting his allegedly brilliant son. Thankfully, despite casting of Yoo Ah-in (The Burning), a young star (although he is not exactly a liberal icon, especially among certain feminists) in the role of Prince Sado, Lee does not go so far as to embrace this “radical” interpretation. He accepts at face value several key information derived from the Memoirs: that Prince Sado indeed beheaded his servants and committed other outrageous and violent acts: that the primary motivation of Yeongjo (played by Song Kang-ho, The Parasite) for executing his son was not political capitulation to the factional hegemony of certain yangban officials, but his own complex feelings toward the prince, no doubt including more than some measure of disappointment, righteous anger and hatred: and that the psychological trauma resulting from Yeongjo’s perhaps unfair treatment of Sado was at least one factor in ultimately turning the latter into a “madman.”    

The Throne employs a complex flashback structure to go back and forth between the gruesome death throes of Crown Prince Sado over six days and the happier days of his childhood, marriage, and the narrative of his gradual alienation from his father Yeongjo.  Many episodes of the film are indeed directly culled from the Memoirs, especially Yeongjo's interaction with his son and other family members.  In the climax of the film, the movie also quotes from Yeongjo's epitaph written for Prince Sado, uncovered by historians and publicized only in 1990s (although Sado's final response to Yeongjo's statements in the film is entirely fictional... and rather trite in my opinion).

The Throne is admirably well-made, anchored by a grizzled yet amazingly nuanced performance by Song Kang-ho as Yeongjo and an energetic but (for me) not quite an authentic one by Yoo Ah-in as Sado.  Crown Prince Sado, Princess Hwahwan and a couple of other characters are too “contemporized,” not just their dialogue but also their characterization, which is a chronic problem with Lee’s historical films (but certainly not a problem limited to his works).  One can question whether Sado would have expressed his anger and sadness toward his father in quite such dramatic ways, or through caustic statements Yoo rather stylistically spits out in the manner of a contemporary youth rebel. It is also clear that Lee’s directorial decision is to make Sado as played by Yoo a sympathetic figure without denying the historical reality of his horrendous acts. The director downplays Sado's disturbing qualities and tries underhandedly to make his anger and resentment understandable to the viewers. There are areas in which the narrative or character interactions are obviously meant to draw parallels to the social or political situations in contemporary Korea, but they mostly fall flat, as evidenced by, for instance, Lee’s portrayal of Prince Sado’s obsession with the military affairs. Sado indeed enjoyed military games as a youngster, but I doubt that this would have led to his concern with the equitable distribution of military duties as was shown in the film (the resentment resulting from the inequities involving who gets to go to the military and who does not, of course, has very much been an issue in contemporary South Korea). The Throne (or any other Korean sageuk, for that matter) does not really need this kind of the insertions of “contemporary relevance.” I also did not find Yeongjo’s “I did this to avoid you making a traitor” rationalization tacked on to the movie's ending particularly convincing, although Song Kang-ho's great performance makes the sequence emotionally work.

As Korean historical melodramas go, The Throne charts a prudent middle ground, rejecting the shallow presentism of Blades of Blood (or comic ironies of the Battlefield series) but also the potentially alienating historicism of such films as Jacques Rivette’s Jean la purcelle (1994). It is an emotionally powerful mainstream motion picture, and while its heightened melodrama does weaken its professed respect for its historical sources (and most notably consigns all female characters, including Lady Hyegyeong herself, to the hoary role of the tearfully emoting “stand-by maidens”), I would rank it above average in terms of its concern for historical truths (and certainly above Lee’s much-praised Anarchist from Colony [2017], most of the power of which is ironically derived from Choi Hee-seo’s performance as Kaneko Fumiko, unjustly put into a supportive position to the Korean anarchist Pak Yeol), if not a truly great historical film. 

Some brief comments on the English subtitles: The subs translate “Hojo panseo 戸曹判書" as “Defense Minister” but as those who have learned about six ministries in the history class should know, it is “Census Minister.” “Dangpa” is also translated as “segregation” at one point but it should be “factions” or “parties.” “Yo 堯 and Sun 舜 ”which Yeongjo mentions while testing his grandson’s academic ability (later King Jeongjo) are mythical Chinese emperors Yao and Shun from the Chinese classics, mistranslated as “Yaw and Sun.”

Can It Be Used in Class?:

The Throne is an excellent example to be shown alongside Memoirs of Lady Hyegyeong as a form of the digest version of the story of Prince Sado, but of course, it loses much of the intriguing details regarding interpersonal complexities of the court life and even the latter’s rich characterizations of the personages populating her narratives.  I think the film could claim an advantage in urging the students to counter-imagine the alternatives to the “familiar (familiarly melodramatic),” contemporaneous aspects of the film, including the characterizations of major figures such as Yeongjo, Crown Prince Sado, Lady Hyegyeong and others, and thereby compel them to reach into the “strange and unfamiliar” territories of the actual Joseon dynasty history. We can ask the students: where do you believe the film becomes excessively melodramatic in relation to the accounts presented in the Memoirs? What aspects do you believe were “accurately” rendered or visualized, from the historical accounts given in the Memoirs?

From there, we could also explore the presentation of the Memoirs as a series of overlapping narratives, and as a form of confessional literary genre. If you were to launch into a radically different adaptation of the Memoirs for a motion picture, how would you, or how would you not, modify the characterizations of Yeongjo, Crown Prince Sado, Lady Hyegyeong and other personages? How would you change the subdued presence of female characters in the movie version? Would you have made it a lot darker, almost a horror film, about the madness of Prince Sado, in which Yeongjo’s action would have been morally understandable, if not entirely justified? Or into a political thriller about the inter-palace conflicts in which Crown Prince Sado and Yeongjo were actually schemers attempting to outmaneuver the other? There could be many other variations. Ultimately, if the students could learn a good lesson about the mysteries of human intentions and emotions from this tragic episode, including the impossibility of illuminating them to our complete satisfaction, that might be more worthwhile than them learning some factoids about the court politics of Joseon dynasty or about the powerful kings Yeongjo and (Prince Sado’s son) Jeongjo.

References:

Jahyun Kim Haboush, ed., and trans. The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyeong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Prince of Eighteenth-Century Korea . Second Edition, with a new Foreword by Dorothy Ko (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).

Jeong Byeong-seol [Chŏng Pyŏ ng-sŏl], “Kil ireun yeoksa daejunghwa [The Popularization of History Which Lost Its Way],” Yeoksa Bipyeong, no. 94, Spring 2011.