Revenge is a Dish Best Served Korean

Exploring Korean cinema’s knack for tales of vengeance

Outtake
Outtake
Published in
3 min readOct 27, 2016

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by Laura Smith

Oldboy. Image courtesy of Kino Lorber.

From the minute you see Min-sik Choi wake up in a suitcase on a rooftop, wild-eyed with savage-like hair, there’s no turning back from the deranged masterpiece that is Oldboy.

While Hong Kong mastered the modern action film, and Japan pushes the boundaries of horror, Korea has a true flair for revenge cinema. This vindictive form of storytelling was the key to both domestic and then international success thanks to prolific director Park Chan-Wook who kick-started the South Korean revenge cinema trend with his vengeance trilogy including Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003) and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005).

The films may not be narratively connected, but they represent common thematic threads and explore the confusion of justice and morals in modern society. Blowing up the line between exploitation and high art, Park’s fusion of sadistic revenge with graphic-novel style visuals made him a fixture on the festival circuit and won him a western fan base.

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Starting with a fascination with B-movie sensibilities, Park continues to bend genre conventions to cartoonish proportions. With his obsessive eye for detail, every frame is a visual delight. Park’s brand of vengeance may be bloody, but it’s not to be confused with the gratuitous torture and jump-cut laden fare of many a modern horror film.

Park is part of a generation of Korean directors who came of age just as newly democratic South Korea started to open up culturally. Along with Kim Ki-duk (Moebius), Kim Ji-woon (A Tale of Two Sisters), and others, he was at the forefront of the Korean New Wave, which was planted in the mid-90s, but really took hold and gained international recognition in the early 2000s. No longer relegated to just the festival circuit and arthouse theaters, South Korean films found their way to a hungry audience thanks to new platforms of DVDs and the internet.

The eye-for-an-eye mentality spans all countries and cultures, but what set Park and his brethren apart is tapping into the well of embroiled resentment, years of suffering at the hands of foreign colonizers, globalization, and other homebred sentiments that created the perfect breeding ground for revenge fantasy films.

Unlike the protagonists in other countries such as China, Japan, and America, whose films focus on violent professionals such as drug cartel bosses, Yakuza members or retired CIA agents à la Taken, the perpetrators in South Korean films are just ordinary people pushed into desperate circumstances. From a sloshed-up salary man in Oldboy, to a grieving PTA group in Lady Vengeance, these protagonists are not only portrayed as blameless, but you also root for them and grit your teeth when their carefully mechanized plans go awry.

Watch Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance on Tribeca Shortlist now.

Revenge takes on many forms in Park’s films: from quick execution and dental torture to the psychological torment of a Greek tragedy. Rage, family, incest, childhood, and social status are common narrative threads but the path is always the same. Revenge must be carried out to restore some sort of imaginary balance, no matter how dire the consequences.

Even amid the stylized bloodsport, Park’s characters always appear grounded and real, particularly in the case of Lady Vengeance. After being imprisoned for 13 years for a murder she did not commit, her retribution takes the backseat to an even more tragic crime that is repaid.

Catharsis is not guaranteed, there is no forgiveness, and the revenge is messy; these are all hallmarks of South Korean cinema. The burning question that remains on the audience’s mind is, would you do anything differently in their situation?

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Outtake
Outtake

Published in Outtake

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