Independent Work Module, Movie: Gwoemul (a.k.a The Host, 2006)

”The Host” – a film dealing with recent history of Republic of Korea

A film directed by Korean Bong Joon-ho in 2006 appears to be a mediocre horror-comedy. However, by taking closer look on metaphors and euphemisms of the film by remembering the history of the R.O.K and its sore points, the audience may find the film to be relevant reminder about the dark events and bitter, unhandled feelings of South Koreans. The plot summary is quite simple: six years after an arrogant and racially ignorant doctor of U.S. Army has dumped formaldehyde down the sewer, a deformed monster appears in May 18^th (a direct reference to Gwangju Massacre in May 1980) killing people on the banks of the Han River and captures Park Hyun-seo, daughter of the protagonist Park Gang-du. After the military seals the riverbank, Gang-du with his father, sister and brother no matter how dysfunctional their relations appear to be, have to unite the family and forget about their hostilities in effort to rescue Hyun-seo.

The formaldehyde dumping was real event in early 2000, later apologized by the U.S. Army¹ which inspired Bong. The movie itself is critical towards the U.S. military, after all the dictators who ruled the R.O.K between 1952 and 1987 had a full support of U.S. Government, no matter how atrocious². Later during the film, the U.S. Army prepares to use substance named Agent Yellow, a direct reference to notorious Agent Orange, indicating the Army does not care about the local environment nor the protests of the local people in their effort to reach the desired goal at all costs. However, an American soldier off-duty tries to assists Gang-du to save Hyun-seo and later dies to his injuries and is being portrayed as an ideal martyr, indicating the (South) Korean people do not feel antagonism towards the ordinary American people, instead respect their friendly attitudes, but dislike how the Army has used the subcontinent as a playground and people as pawn since 1945. The outrageous and inconsiderate actions of the military doctor whilst his humble and friendly South Korean assistant (who first tires to protest but in Confusian fashion succumbs to the will of the higher-ranking American) are themselves a perfect allegory of actions of the U.S. Army; this could also be interpreted as equivalent of Douglas MacArthur’s plans of using Atomic Bomb during the Korean War³ (that is, an euphemism of radical actions no matter what consequences, as well as with Agent Yellow).

The main characters (the Park family) are to be analyzed to understand as metaphors of the development and history of R.O.K; the surname Park itself is one of the most popular ones, quite similar choice when choosing the name Simpson to represent within one family the most common stereotypes of American people, thus creating stereotype of South Korean people. Father of Gang-du, Hee-bong is a humble man who used to be an embittered alcoholic neglecting his son; reference to Korean culture in which children are the most valued and beloved asset, and representing the agony of the older generation who felt themselves helpless to provide their offspring with adequate care; slow-witted behavior of Gang-du is explained by Hee-bong by the fact he didn’t take good enough care of his son, thus lack of protein in diet leading to harmful consequences (which Hee-bong tries to compensate by taking care of Gang-du). Gang-du himself is friendly, humble but slow-witted; he represents the generation as well as those people who had insufficient possibilities of developing themselves (before Hee-bong started neglecting his son thus leading to inadequate diet, Gang-du was a brilliant-minded boy but who was forced to steal by the circumstances); a perfect allegory of generation of wasted opportunities. Nam-il, highly educated but embittered alcoholic is representation of “Generation 386”; born in 1960s, politically active university students in 1980s and influential on their thirties which happened to be in 1990s (the generation that elected Kim Dae-jung as president of the R.O.K, a generation that also happens to be on the mercy of global economy and international competition thus leading to burn-outs and alcoholism; the rest of the family however refuse to feel pity towards bitter and cynical Nam-il, who fails in job interviews). Nam-joo, Olympic medalist archer and sister of Gang-du, is as well symbolism of competitiveness as Nam-il although more successful (even though she receives criticism for she hesitated to launch her arrow to the target one second too late to receive gold medal, allegory of seeking perfection in Korean and other Confucian cultures and the shame of failure).

The original Korean name of the movie “Gwoemul” translates as “monster”, symbolizing the situation created by U.S.A against which the family (South Koreans) must unite to defeat it. But the English name “The Host” isn’t reference to the monster which is believed to be a host on some unknown virus, but is instead a reference to the R.O.K, which is seen as a host of a parasite represented by the U.S. Army and the tragedy related to the presence of foreign forces. The movie has also references to the Japanese colonialism; Gang-du is anatomized without even local anesthesia, a direct reference of atrocities done by infamous Unit 731 in Manchuria during the 2^nd World War and bitterness of Korean people when it comes to the lack of any kind of apology by Japanese about the WW2 atrocities. Outside the container in which Gang-du is being held after the surgery (who surprisingly survives and recovers after which he escapes taking a nurse as a hostage, indicating the saturation point of ordinary people and their ripeness for resistance) both American and Korean military doctors are been seen having a Barbeque (within the quarantine area), indicating the lack of serious consideration when judging actions of U.S. Army and the relations between Korean military personnel and the oppressor (Park Cheung-hee, a dictator of the R.O.K between 1961 and 1979 was a professional collaborator military officer during the Japanese occupation and normalising the relations after the war as well as strongly supported by Americans during the Cold War⁴).

During the climax of the film, Nam-il is been seen throwing Molotov Cocktails to the monster, representing the political activism of “Generation 386” and their willingness to fight the injustice whilst Gang-du reaches his full rage, again a symbol of people united to fight and improve the situation. Gang-du who had dyed his hair blonde, is been seen to have abandoned the color and having his natural color appearing again, indicating the acceptance of his true identity as a Korean. And even though his child dies, he adopts orphaned little boy whose brother, the only relative has died. The movie ends Gang-du and the boy having a dinner, a strong metaphore of responsibility to literally nourish the future; people of this generation can guarantee the following ones all the good things this generation lacked. The ending also indicates hopefullnes: even though Korean people have suffered during the past decades the hope prevails and the new future will rise, the boy symbolising future (in Korean culture, children are the greatest asset) which has been properly nourished and treated with sincere love. In other words, no matter difficulties but life will carry on.

Sources:

1. http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jul/25/news/mn-58541
2. http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/22591/Development_of_Democratization_Movement_in_South_Korea-1.pdf
3. http://hnn.us/article/9245
4. Keith Pratt: ”Everlasting Flower”

Independent Work Module, Article: Development of Democratization Movement in South Korea

Development of Democratization Movement in South Korea

I happened to find this article whilst browsing through website of Freeman Spogli Institute, center for international studies in the Stanford University, in hopes of finding reasonable articles concentrating on South Korea. Written by professors Jung Hae Gu and Kim Ho Ki, the article concentrates analyzing the democratic movement in the Republic of Korea; its development, demonstrations, the state and socio-political circumstances behind the democratization process.

After the Korean War, agrarian country was rebuilt and urbanized whilst youth enrolled in to the universities, thus creating with demand of newspapers a new kind of intelligentsia. U.S. Military government, de facto ruler of the southern part of subcontinent between 1945 and 1948, established a strong political system to repel communism. However, the prolonged rule of Rhee Syngman, the dictator of R.O.K, caused criticism and new opposition party, Democratic Party, was established in 1955. Student-led demonstration which turned up to revolt, forced Rhee to withdraw after rigged elections in 1960.

However, General Park Chung-hee took the advantage of incompetence of Democratic Party-led government and took power with coup 1961. Students organized in 1967 demonstrations against amendment that would allow Park to continue his presidency. Militarizing the universities in the early 1970s established deep rooted unsatisfactory. 1973 rioting amongst students started again, after a murder of union worker and self-immolation of a factory worker Jeon Tae-il in 1971; social problems related to rapid industrialization and martial law in 1972 with Parks Yushin amendment to prolong his dictatorship enraged people. Park enforced the Yushin system during 1970s. The students also protested against Parks policy towards Japan which they considered humiliating to Korean people. Suicide of Jeon had secured students support to workers, and in 1979 after forcing the expulsion of Kim Young-sam, New Democratic Part President from National Assembly, massive demonstrations were broad. Situation finally escalated when leader of Korean Central Intelligence Agency murdered Park. Economic rise had guaranteed Parks legitimacy, but tightening grasp on power inevitably led to unpopularity of his regime, forcing it to resign.

General Chun Doo-hwan took power from interim government with a coup in 1980, which led to massacre of Gwangju; suppression of riots in the city enraged people, which took rapidly over police stations and army supply depots, after which armed forces crushed rebellion bloodily.  Chun regime purged rapidly officials and journalists critical towards the new regime, as well as establishing “Education Troops” to ”reform” population, resulting casualties in hundreds. In 1983, Chun regime decreased the control to polish its image for Seoul Olympics in 1988. Decrease of control resulted in activation of dissident movement again, and expelled politicians formed Council to the Promotion of Democracy. Blue-collar workers in large conglomerations had for the first time courage to go striking. Jung and Kim are making statement that massacre of Gwangju in 1980 and enragement caused by it was the key element for the new rise of democracy movement; however, they don’t justify their statement. After repressive operation following Seoul student demonstrations and death of student Park Jong-cheol 1987, Jung and Kim state that “citizens had no choice but […] street protests to bring democracy”. In1987, mass demonstrations lasting for 20 days, Chun regime had no confidence of suppressing demonstrations using military and declared amendment, which included e.g. direct election of president, a major victory to National Movement Headquarters to Win Democratic Constitution which, according to professors, eventually led to the democratic transformation.

Article written by professors Jung and Kim are analyzing quite well the situation, as well the socio-political changes (urbanization, industrialization and its problems) as well as birth of intelligentsia, thus taking look at longue durée effects of events. However, their statement about the direct effects of Gwangju massacre seems a bit too farfetched, especially without reasonable justifications; even when May 18^th 1980 has generally been considered to be one most important days in history of Republic of Korea and caused outrage, the statement is revoked when considering evidence of all other events during 1980s. I’d also like to know the effects of possible North Korean infiltrations to the democratic movement; considering they bother to mention attack by North Korean Special Forces to presidential residence in January 1968 which needed significant military intelligence preparations, I’d like to read whether the northern political factor had anything to do (attempts of infiltration, funding, anything) with the movement, especially considering the opportunity of taking advantage of radicalized, disillusioned students.

Ranting and rambling, volume 2.

Dear reader,

 

Even though I was absent for the second lecture, I was able to attend to third lesson; luckily, all the slides and necessary information what to do was online so I didn’t feel like totally clueless about what we were doing. And the task we had to write after some normal working within a group and conversations was a summary about really boring article concerning learning. Ironically, this subject feels a bit important, not only boring; the article is about ‘deep learners’ and ‘surface learners’, their motivations and strategies they use. And to sum it all up in one sentence, the ‘deep’ ones employed various strategies and were able to link ideas between paragraphs whilst being motivated thus having a deep level of understanding, and the ‘surface’ ones felt anxious about the text and applied poorly any strategies thus ending up with superficial understanding about the important points of the text. I actually felt my blood pressure started soaring when the lecturer announced we had only very little time to do a summary, and after a minute of quiet panicking I managed to have a grasp on the text, and I was actually able to write some good text in my opinion. Luckily, we didn’t have to give our texts to the lecturer and were assigned to return them for the following lesson.

Oh boy, hasn’t this course been quite a pain! Well, not really, but still… we didn’t have a lesson this week (ergo: returning of the summaries during the following lecture) which means more working and writing reflections about the tasks as well as jotting down my thoughts about the websites we were introduced to. It was quite a challenge with this “Free Rice” website, because first time I tried to open the link a warning from my Anti-virus Program popped up restricting the access to the website warning about detected hazard, but the computers of University of Helsinki do not seem to mind about the site, even though we use programs by the same company; I suppose I could trust the site since professional programs of UH find nothing suspicious at all (and later I noticed my program does not consider the page a risk either, could have been a false alarm and / or a mistake). The purpose of the site is a useful vocabulary learning game: every time the player gets the right answer, the sponsors donate ten grains of rice, and appears to be operated by UN World Food Programme. However, it’s quite a jolly page to learn new random words (as we are obligated to keep with us our personal dictionaries of words we need to learn, it’s quite a good page for).  Quizlet, as the name indicates, was all about of six different kinds of modes and very versatile platform, also a good site for learning some new words. TED (abbreviation stands for “Technology, Entertainment and Design”) and concentrates spreading new ideas as well as information through flash-video-format. I especially do appreciate that every video this far I have watched is by professors who are not only speaking coherently but explaining their ideas and findings in reasonably coherent words and terms and by using transparent examples to demonstrate their ideas, thus making the videos quite enjoyable. Cambridge Free English Dictionary was familiar for me before this course, but Visual Dictionary Online was a pleasant new acquaintance; a word or concept is described not only with definition but also with a picture / pictures, useful tool if you must have a definitive answer or like to know more.

Oh yes, I could also mention a few words about myself (even if it feels a bit repulsive, but I suppose you have the right to know). I study in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Helsinki in Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Arts Studies (what a monstrous conglomeration of words!),  majoring in General History. And as I stated during my first posting, I am writing this very blog due it is compulsory.

Well, I guess this is it for now…