Five years ago, Jane Fonda announced “Parasite” as the best picture at the Academy Awards, ushering in an age of unprecedented global interest in South Korean film and television that has spanned generations and continents, enticing audiences above all with stories about the failings of contemporary capitalism.
Director Bong Joon-ho’s film — the first foreign-language feature to win the Oscars’ top accolade — explores themes of social mobility in South Korea, though such themes clearly struck a chord with Americans concerned about growing wealth inequality, too. In “Parasite,” which takes place in Seoul, members of the impoverished Kim family swindle their way into obtaining lucrative employment opportunities at the wealthy Park household. In their attempt to escape from poverty, the Kims not only forge documents and assume fake identities, but also throw other working-class families under the bus. The film calls the possibilities of both reform and revolution into question.
According to Nam Lee, a professor of film studies at Chapman University in California and author of “The Films of Bong Joon-ho,” this conflict — present throughout Bong’s filmography — is representative of “what has happened in Korean society in the last 20 years since the neoliberal restructuring: the collapse of the middle class.” Reduced to poverty after the closure of their family bakery, the Kims have become trapped in Korea’s informal gig economy.
Contemporary Korean film and television — from “Parasite” to Netflix’s wildly popular “Squid Game” — present the capitalist system that emerged in the country following the peninsula’s conflict over 70 years ago as fundamentally broken. Much like in the United States, it has generated class divisions that cannot be penetrated through perseverance or hard work. Their message is uniform: Either we destroy it, or it destroys us.
Hye Seung Chung, a professor of Film and Media Studies at Colorado State University, told New Lines that, like other globally acclaimed Korean films like Yeon Sang-ho’s “Train to Busan” (2016) and Lee Chang-dong’s “Burning” (2018), “Parasite” reflects the perception among millennial and Gen-Z Koreans that “wealth inequality has grown worse in the past two decades.” In Korea, she explained, “‘Gold spoon’ and ‘dirt spoon’ have become popular terms to describe one’s inescapable class belonging. If their parents didn’t purchase apartments in Gangnam, an affluent area of Seoul, when they were still affordable, it is impossible for them to dream of purchasing them on their own.”
According to Seung-hwan Shin, an associate professor of Korean Studies and Film and Media Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, the nuance and ambiguity with which “Parasite” addresses its socioeconomic themes reflects how contemporary Korean cinema has matured beyond the values of the Minjung movement, a socialist protest culture from the 1970s and ’80s, as the reforms of that era have since given way to renewed democratic backsliding in a post-Cold War world order. Minjung discourse, Shin told New Lines via email, was predicated on a clear moral distinction: the oppressed masses versus oppressive elements such as military dictatorship, exploitative conglomerates and foreign influence. However, this Manichaean or dualist way of thinking “began losing its critical cogency as civilian governments came to power and the Minjung movement’s enemies grew less clear after the democratization and amid the sweeping tide of globalization.” Democracy’s inability to address socioeconomic woes left many activists and intellectuals disoriented and disillusioned: “Filmmakers like Bong, Park Chan-wook (“Oldboy”), and others revitalized Korean cinema,” Shin added.
Following the success of “Parasite,” audiences around the world were introduced to Netflix’s dystopian thriller “Squid Game,” which quickly became the streaming service’s most-watched show. Another Korean-language film, Lee Isaac Chung’s indie hit “Minari,” based on his family’s move from the suburbs of Seoul to the plains of Arkansas, picked up the Best Picture Oscar in 2021, and Apple TV+ made the critically acclaimed “Pachinko” series, based on the best-selling novel by Min Jin Lee.
This year has seen the enthusiasm for contemporary Korean cinema, or movies made by prominent Korean directors, continue apace: Bong’s big-budget “Mickey 17,” starring Robert Pattinson, was a quick blockbuster; “Dark Nuns” added to the exorcism canon; and black comedy thriller “No Other Choice,” in which an unemployed middle-aged man devises a plan to eliminate his competition, is expected later in 2025.
Many acclaimed directors working today, including Hwang Dong-hyuk of “Squid Game,” Bong Joon-ho and the prolific Park Chan-wook, who made “No Other Choice” and the so-called “Vengeance Trilogy,” were student activists in the democratic Minjung movement. The movement’s name means “the people,” and it included coalitions of workers, farmers and students that protested against the U.S.-backed dictatorship that emerged as the country rebuilt from the destruction of the Korean War in the 1950s, which tore the peninsula in two. Their work, added professor Chung, “derives from their shared experience and memory of Korea’s political and economic transformations.”
The anti-capitalist fables forming the filmography of Bong — a longtime member of South Korea’s socialist New Progressive Party — have proven particularly adept at exploring globally recognizable themes of income inequality, economic exploitation and the emotional responses these conditions trigger in the hearts and minds of the exploited. Indicative of growing economic and political unrest in both South Korea and the U.S., his films have also become increasingly radical in their messaging. Where his previous films, notably “Snowpiercer” in 2013 and “Parasite,” probe the futility and ethics of revolution and revolutionary violence, his latest project — “Mickey 17,” which was released in March — ends on a less ambiguous, more hopeful note, suggesting that revolution is not only possible, but justified.
“Mickey 17” is Bong’s second English-language film, picking up from “Snowpiercer.” Unlike his previous science fiction epic, Bong’s newest film takes a different turn, one that suggests the director has perhaps returned to the optimism and resolve of the Minjung days. Loosely based on Edward Ashton’s 2022 science fiction novel “Mickey7,” it tells the story of a kind but simple-minded man named Mickey, played by Pattinson, who, after his macaroon business implodes, is desperate to escape a chainsaw-wielding loan shark and signs up to join a space colonization effort as an “expendable”: a bottom-rung worker who performs dangerous, life-threatening tasks under the pretext that he will be “resurrected” by a 3D printer whenever said tasks result in his death.
Mickey’s exploitation and dehumanization — his daily work routine sees him getting exposed to radiation and viruses, being left for dead in the icy caverns of the planet Niflheim and dropping out of the printer while the scientists in charge of the technology are busy watching TikToks — are largely played for laughs, with the film’s comedy derived from the paradoxical fact that what we are watching wouldn’t be funny at all if it took place in the real world.
Bong’s apparent point, though, is that this does take place in the real world. Despite its alien setting, “Mickey 17,” similar to “Snowpiercer,” is another not-so-subtle foil for the increasing mistreatment and disposability of nonfictional workers, from striking Amazon warehouse staff and Hollywood writers to the incarcerated Venezuelan migrants that the U.S. government has just sent to El Salvador to join the country’s “self-sustainable” prison labor program. Adding to the notion that “Mickey 17” can be interpreted as a work of social commentary are the parallels audiences saw between the primary villain and Donald Trump. Played by Mark Ruffalo, this unsuccessful politician-turned-space-captain (absent in the original book) resembles the American president in speech, mannerisms and personality.
“Mickey 17’s” protagonist is passive, docile and lacking in confidence, a departure from the proactive heroes of “Parasite” and “Snowpiercer.” Based on a French graphic novel, “Snowpiercer” takes place in 2031, when Earth has been hit by a new ice age and the last remnants of human civilization reside on a high-speed train forever circling the globe. Inside, passengers have been divided by class, with the working poor crowded into the back, a small group of rich elites living comfortably in the front and a sizable police apparatus situated between them. Captain America actor Chris Evans plays Curtis, a member of the underfed, overworked proletariat who leads a rebellion toward the front, aiming to take control of the engine and, with it, the train.
Where the revolution in “Snowpiercer” ends in defeat and disillusionment, the one in “Parasite” fails to materialize altogether. Instead, a new obstacle is introduced: Competition between workers prevents them from organizing against their common enemy. “Parasite” ends with Park patriarch Dong-ik’s death at the hands of his Kim family counterpart, Ki-taek, a morally ambiguous act of revenge motivated by the anger and humiliation the latter feels when he is confronted by the unfair, irrevocable difference in their social standing.
The protagonist of “Mickey 17,” having internalized the disregard shown to him by his superiors, downplays the gravity and injustice of his own suffering by telling himself he’s being punished for things that weren’t even his fault, like the car crash that killed his mother. Due to an unexplained and ultimately insignificant glitch, Mickey 18, also played by Pattinson, comes out of the printer with a completely different temperament. Like Ki-taek, he recognizes his innate worth and is willing to stand up to — and use violence against — those who don’t. But where Ki-taek’s murder of his employer accomplishes nothing except turning the former into a fugitive from the law, hiding underground, unable to provide for his family and rendered even more powerless and humiliated than he had been at the beginning of the film, Mickey 18’s mission to murder Ruffalo’s dictator character triggers a rebellion that replaces the regime with a fairer, democratically elected government.
If Bong’s earlier films included only subtle references to class, “Snowpiercer” wears its allegorical subtext on its sleeve, with Curtis representing a socialist revolutionary and the engine the means of production — the object that grants the train’s owners their exploitative power. “All past revolutions failed,” Curtis’ mentor, an old engineer named Gilliam, played by John Hurt, tells him before he and the rest of the workers set off on their mission. Despite its straightforward premise, Bong’s vision of revolution is neither simplistic nor naive. Upon reaching the engine, Curtis discovers that Gilliam was in fact an agent of the elite, orchestrating uprisings to give the workers hope and, more importantly, curb their population. As Curtis contemplates becoming Snowpiercer’s new ruler, its true heroes, technician Namgoong Minsoo and his daughter Yona, realizing the cycle will repeat itself, decide to bring the train to a stop. Surviving the crash, the two venture out into an uncertain future covered in snow.
The existential conflict that ensues between the Kims and the Park family’s previous employees also bears an unmistakable resemblance to the plot of “Squid Game,” in which Korean workers who are down on their luck (many, like series protagonist Seong Gi-hun, are deeply in debt), compete in extrajudicial variations of popular children’s games for huge cash prizes — all for the amusement of a shadowy cabal of businesspeople. The show’s success taps into rising inequality around the world: According to PC World, it has drawn almost 418 million individual viewers.
Crucially, the contestants in “Squid Game” aren’t being held against their will. At least, not entirely. If a majority of them vote to stop the games, they can all go home, but must forfeit the prize money. Tragically, the economic desperation that drives people to participate in these games in the first place often outweighs the fear of losing their lives. At the same time, the game’s mysterious organizers remind the contestants that their gamified form of competition, however deadly, is ultimately fairer than Korea’s own job market. “Here you are all equal,” they insist, “with equal opportunity and no discrimination.” As in “Parasite,” any chance to escape poverty and exploitation, however small and paved with blood, prevents workers from banding together to end the rat race once and for all.
But over time, new heroes are made: At the end of season one of “Squid Game,” protagonist Gi-hun refuses to accept his fate and decides to fight the system. In the official synopsis of the show’s third and final season, set to release in June, it looks like he will finally bring the deadly games to an end.
Seeking to explain the character and appeal of Korean storytelling, many Western observers have traditionally turned to the elusive concept of “han,” a shared sense of trauma, suffering and worthlessness unique to Korean culture and reportedly rooted in the country’s historical exploitation by China, Japan and the United States. Many scholars of Korean art and history, however, have taken issue with this interpretation. “Most of us think it’s anachronistic,” Kyung Hyun Kim, a professor of East Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine, told New Lines.
Describing han as a passive misery and sense of dejection in the face of wrongdoing, he believes the concept, while perhaps relevant to the country’s colonial past, “no longer fits the current mood of the Korean public, which actively demands accountability and justice.”
Looking closer at the socioeconomic aspects of the world-building in “Mickey 17,” one could argue that the film ends in a successful uprising because, unlike “Snowpiercer” or “Parasite,” it takes place in a society that has officially moved beyond capitalism and, with it, the constraints that the capitalist system imposes on the working class. Where the characters of Bong’s previous films either strayed from or were altogether prevented from walking the revolutionary path because of the small chance that they might be able to succeed within the existing system, Mickey and his crewmates live in a reality where power is no longer derived from accumulable wealth but exercised directly. After all, what good is money in the outskirts of outer space?
In this sense, the world of “Mickey 17” echoes the social order economist Yanis Varoufakis describes in his 2024 book “Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism,” in which he argues the rise of Big Tech and its digital platforms is dismantling competitive markets, turning waged laborers of both the middle and lower class variety into what essentially amount to serfs. It’s a frightful prospect, but one which, as shown in “Mickey 17,” does have a silver lining: When the prospect of upward mobility retreats completely, the proletariat is no longer divided against itself. And as Bong’s Mickeys soon discover, there is strength in numbers.
Instead of channeling the downhearted capitulation and compliance associated with han, today’s Korean cinema embodies its contemporary society’s increasing willingness to take the future into its own hands, whether by exposing the failings of neoliberal capitalism through art and media or by calling, successfully, for the removal of presidents. “We grew up during a period of social justice movements,” Kyung said. “As a result, our country has become litigious, ethical, and politically active — arguably more so than the U.S.”
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