The South Korean filmmaker Park Kwang-su is generally unknown in world cinema culture. He has been largely inactive in the past decade, with only one feature, MR. DADDY (aka SHINE DAY) in 2007, as well as a segment (“Face Value”) in the anthology IF YOU WERE ME (2003) and a segment in the first Jeonju Digital Project in 2000 (“http://www.whitelover.com”). But for those with an interest in Korean film history, he is one of the key figures. Park studied art at Seoul National University and then film production in Paris. He returned to Seoul and made his debut film, CHILSU AND MANSU, which is usually regarded as one of the first movies in what would become known as the Korean New Wave. From 1988 to 1995, it can be argued that Park was the most important and respected director in the country, making such politically charged works as BLACK REPUBLIC (1990) and A SINGLE SPARK (1995). His fall from prominence coincided with the fall of the Korean New Wave and the rise of the more commercially viable New Korean Cinema. It is noteworthy that Lee Chang-dong began as a screenwriter for Park and eventually carried on the mantle of the Korean New Wave into the next decade with films such as PEPPERMINT CANDY (1999), OASIS (2002) and SECRET SUNSHINE (2007). Although now often forgotten, Park is a filmmaker deserving of rediscovery by those now interested in the great films and filmmakers that came after him.

Watching the opening of CHILSU AND MANSU, one can understand the impact it would have on a Korean cinema that, with a few exceptions, had been unable to really deal with the reality of the society over the previous decades. Made following the end of the Chun Doo Hwan regime and the beginning of democracy in the country, Park begins with a shot of Mansu, a window cleaner, looking over the city as a siren blares in the background. Park then shows a 360 degree pan around the Gwanghwamun area, passing by such famous landmarks as the Admiral Yi statue (the difference with how this looks today is, of course, quite striking to anyone familiar with the area). Throughout Park grounds his style in the locations of his characters, impressively managing to integrate his actors into the urban environment. But he also establishes very early, through the character of Chilsu, the importance of fantasy as well. Not surprisingly, this fantasy world is very foreign, reflecting an increasingly postmodern, Americanized Korea. Chilsu begins by following a college educated girl, Ji-na, first to an arcade, where he fantasizes about driving along an open highway, and then on to her job at Burger King, where he pretends to be an art student and lies about going to America.

This lie extends later in the film, when Chilsu, working as a painter with Mansu, follows Jina into a department store and imagines being introduced to her mother. In reality, however, he cannot match up to this image and quickly flees the store.

The last half hour of the film abandons the fantasy of Chilsu and goes deeper into the dissatisfaction of the two lead characters, ending with a long sequence on top of a billboard. The problems of both of these working class characters can be found in the society at large, reflected through each man’s relationship with his father. We eventually learn that Mansu’s family has been affected by his father’s long imprisonment as a political dissident. And in flashback it is also revealed that Chilsu’s father worked as a pimp, providing girls to American soldiers, and is now living out his days as an unemployed alcoholic. Neither man is political. In fact, both seem to try to avoid it. Mansu hates his father for abandoning his family, and Chilsu only dreams of escape into fantasy, represented by America. They are very much “good” working class citizens according to state ideology, just as political protest and democratic reforms involving the minjung (the people) is occurring all around them. It is thus a strong irony that when they shout their general frustration from the top of the billboard, they are mistaken as political agitators and a huge media and police circus forms around them, characterized by a tragic-comic array of misunderstandings. Finally, Chilsu is led off by the police, while Mansu decides to jump.

There is not a great deal written about Park in English, but certainly a great place to start would be the chapter on his early films in Kyung Hyun Kim’s THE REMASCULINIZATION OF KOREAN CINEMA. His analysis is sharp as always, pointing out the psychoanalytic aspects of the characters. His final line about CHILSU AND MANSU is a great summation of the film’s thematics:

“The moment they begin to verbalize their frustration, in their effort to reconstitute their masculinity, they are found guilty by the state, subject to arrests and even death for a crime no one — including the state — knows exactly how to identify.” (151)

From our current perspective, it is easy to see how Park’s approach has become outdated. Although he mixes in the generic elements of melodrama and the male buddy film, Park is ultimately about denying rather than providing spectacle. Such a serious and politically-minded cinema would not be able to sustain itself in the postmodern Korean filmic landscape, and Park would become marginalized, not unlike his characters. Perhaps what is most remarkable is that such tough-minded and challenging work was ever able to gain a mainstream audience in the first place.

Unlike most of Park’s other films, CHILSU AND MANSU is available on DVD in many place around Seoul, as well as through Seoul Selection bookstore.

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