From The Metropolitain:

“America doesn’t escape getting poked pretty hard in the first scene, but I think it gets interesting and unexpectedly balanced by another plot point that makes for an interesting mixture of “pokes” and “jabs” when combined with the many others. If you are the kind of American who finds yourself, deeply offended every time somebody takes a critical shot at the US, you might find yourself grumbling in your seat during the opening scene; if you’re a good sport and take it along with all the other sticking and moving that the director does, touching on a variety of places in Korean society, you’ll easily forget that first 30 seconds and take it with the sense of humor and grain of salt that it needs to go down smoother.”

From the author of the Marmot post in the comments section:

“If you cannot enjoy a really good film because it makes a small political point you disagree with, then you are the one with the chip.

You have not seen the film, so don’t pretend you really know what it is about. If the film was two hours of bellyaching about the US military presence in Korea, I would have hated it and criticized Bong for it.”

Gee. Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a Korea or with a Korea where it was just a coule of minutes in a film. Just a drop in an empty bucket. But most of us have experience the real Korea. This reference is a drop in a never ending sea of references. If you look around, it really is staggering.

In the 2000 case this movie specfically references, 20 gallons of a fromaldehyde derivative dumped in a sewer system that was treated 3 or more times before it touched the Han sent the newly NK-friendly the whole of South Korean society into a canipshun lasting 4 to 6 months. I have covered that fun here: http://www.usinkorea.org/2nd/e.....mping.html

A couple of years later - some Korean lumber companies were finally brought to court for allowing 271 tons of the same substance to run off directly into the Han. I guess you can imagine what kind of explosion in anger and hate and vile displays of calling for vengence those 271 gallons created - if you happened to see what the 20 gallons casued ——– but I don’t think those 271 tons even amount to 2 or 3 movie minutes in the Korean news. I didn’t hear about it. Later, I heard Yonhap mentioned it. I caught wind of it in an editorial http://search.hankooki.com/tim.....p;media=kt

Nope. No explosion. If I were making a movie about a monster created by pollution and linked the monster directly to fromalin dumped in the Han - I might pick those 271 gallons. But, that’s me…

My point overall is that this movie reference is just one in a constant, yearly barrage of messages. If we just looked at pollution and the environment alone, we’d be overwhelmed. I did this review looking at the English language press coverage of specific cases of pollution against individual Korean entities and those referring to USFK. It was 26 to 6 with no mention of any Korean business of significant size.

http://usinkorea.org/issues/yo.....korea.html

I’m currently doing a similar thing with the KBS and MBC video news archives, and I’m finding the same thing. I’m finding a lot of frequent stories about general pollution. How this stream, that moutain, the air in this city are all highly polluted. But, who did the polluting? If you watch the Korean news, you’d think it came from two places - small business, but more than that, USFK (and the US Embassy). Those are the ones singled out in the stories that go beyond the generic and talk about specific pollutors.

It is a lot like this article from the Donga English version.
http://english.donga.com/srv/s.....6072951308

“The government is taking emergency measures after perchlorate, known to cause thyroid disorders, was detected in a great quantity in the Nakdong River water system, an important source of drinking water for Yeongnam residents.”

“The water in which the concentration of perchlorate was detected surpassed the US EPA standard by 90 times was revealed to be water flowing into the Gumi Sewage Disposal Plant discharged from Gumi Industrial Complex 3.”

Reading that got my juices flowing. Maybe I was going to hear a specific reference to chaebol pollutors. But, what I got was:

“The government advised company A that had been discharging large amounts of perchlorate through detergents to reduce the use and discharge of perchlorate.

Company A is known to have lowered the concentrations of perchlorate in the sewage from 16,060ppb to 70ppb from July 17 by running the biochemistry disposal facility.”

Company A huh….

I don’t have the link handy, but this was very similar to a KBS story from a couple of months ago about stunted tree growth on a moutain near an industrial complex in Ulsan. It was typical of most others I’ve seen. A researcher or environmentalist took the reporter around to show the growth. The camera man did some long, long shots of the factories in the complex. They even went into the streets of the industrial area for a few shots. But, not only did the name of a chaebol or specific Korean big business that might operate those factories came up, when the camera came close to showing the factories, they blurred the shot so you couldn’t make out any logos or names on the buildings. I had to go online to find out Ulsan is a Hyundai stronghold.

So again —- maybe I’d have a chip on my shoulder if I was obsessing over a couple of minutes in an otherwise fine movie. But I’m talking about Korea…….

I’m talking about a society in which groups like Green Korea and other “radical” groups obsessed with how horrible the US and USFK are for Korea and spend every week of every month of each year trying to convince the “non”radical part that the evil is no longer necessary. We’re talking about a society in which pop culture references like the little tid bit in this movie abound. We’re talking about a society that could work itself up into such a frenzy over 20 gallons, and create a continual Process where 20 gallons regularly trumps 271 tons, that 6 years after the 20 gallons were dumped, a popular movie could use it as the basis of how the monster out of the highly polluted Han was made.

when i said many koreans are not catching the allegories, it was based simply on what my co-workers were saying. of course, they don’t represent the whole population, but based on what people were discussing on monday morning, i figured not many were catching it. perhaps, they were being sensitive to my pro-us stance when it comes to politics. but yesterday, one asked me if i understood the movie and catch all the subtle messages. i asked if she meant the anti-americanism. she said not the criticism of us policies but the criticism of the korean society in general and the meaning of family. i guess i’m a fool.

I’ve read two reviews by other bloggers about the new Korean blockbuster of the summer “The Host” or 괴물. Hopefully you can read both posts and both comment threads (one in English and one in Korean) that have developed under each…