I watched the Korean movie The Host for the first time this week. The movie is directed by Bong Joon-ho who’s previous directing effort, Memory of Murder is one of the best Korean movies I have seen. The Host also went on to break Korean box office records. Despite such acclaim, I have been avoiding renting this movie because of the reported anti-US scenes in it, but the video store I frequent had a special where if you rent two new movies you get a third older movie for free. So I went ahead and picked up The Host to watch. To my surprise I found the movie even more anti-US than I thought it would be.
The very first scene depicts a USFK mortuary worker angrily ordering a poor, helpless Korean worker to dump toxic chemicals down the drain that ultimately ends up in the Han River and produces a killer monster. This scene is actually based off a real life incident that happened in 2000 that turned into anti-US orgy in South Korea. Of course like most anti-US issues in Korea, it was fraudulent, but since when has facts stopped anti-US activists an their government allies from exploiting and demagoging?
This scene was the widely reported anti-US scene that is often interpreted as meaning that the root cause of problems in Korea is the United States. The scene ended up not being the only anti-US theme in the movie. Additional anti-US themes included how the American military and government agencies ended up taking over the Seoul area around the Han River to stop the monster despite objections from the Korean government. This can easily be interpreted as meaning that the US military is robbing Korea of its sovereignty.
Then the movie goes on to show brave environmental activists trying to stop the US from deploying an “Agent Yellow” bomb to kill the monster because it will cause citizens of Seoul to become sick. The bomb goes off and people in the area begin to get sick from the gas from the bomb. This can easily be interpreted that the US is polluting Korea and doesn’t care about the after effects.
To be fair Bong takes pot shots at a lot of other things in Korea society as well and I wouldn’t care if he was taking pot shots at USFK for actual legitimate things. It would have been funny as hell if he had some GI punch out a taxi driver and steal his taxi to escape the monster. However, the water dumping scene to start out the movie was clearly anti-US propaganda and Bong pretty much admits to this in an interview included with the DVD as bonus material. The loss of sovereignty claims is also ridiculous because USFK are the ones wanting to immediately give operational control of the ROK Army back to the Koreans and the Korean government is the one delaying this. The environmental pollution claims are also fraudulent and are quite ridiculous considering the extreme level of pollution in Korea from Koreans themselves.
Even if you aren’t offended by the anti-US scenes the movie is only mildly entertaining any way. The story is stupid, the monster slightly cool, and the acting average. This is the worst movie I have seen my favorite Korean actor Song Kang-ho in yet. There are a few funny scenes but overall nothing memorable about this movie which left me wondering what was all the hype with this movie about anyway? The Host is crap and it is not because of the anti-US scenes in it. It is about as entertaining as the Godzilla remake was. So if you thought Godzilla was cool, you will probably like The Host. As for me I’m just glad I only watched it as a free rental. I would have hated to have wasted money on this movie.
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I see that you are really trying hard to find trouble between Korea and USA (at any cost). Although you are right on the anti-american scenes in the movie, sometimes a movie is just a movie, and should be regarded just as a piece of entertainment product.
Again you are right on your point of view, but if I were you I would prefer to see this (the anti-american scenes) as just a common example of Koreans/Asian’s stereotype toward most westerners, just like most westerner’s stereotypes toward Koreans/Asians. Oh yes, do you remember? In westerners movies Asians are mostly depicted as dumb, silly, shy, stubborn, and so on, and so are the westerners wrongly depicted in korean/asian movies (barbarians, troublemakers, dumb, silly, etc).
I said, I would prefer, because in fact there are anti-american scene in the movie, but sometimes the trouble is in the eyes of who sees, it’s up to the person, so if someone choose to see trouble, trouble will see, but if choose to see something else, than no trouble will be seen.
I think igniting anger or misunderstanding here does not help for the good relationship between Koreans and Americans in Korea, and on this blog (Although, as I said before, there are really anti-american scenes in the movie).
Yes, there are Asian stereotypes present in Hollywood movies. But most of that is self deprecating humor played out of cheap laughs.
The Host (didn’t see the film, saw some of the scenes in question) strikes me as a typical Korean films / dramas where Koreans stand up to their perceived oppressors in the most melodramatic fashion possible - even if it plays on stereotypes and lies.
Have you ever watched Korean historical dramas where the Japanese and the Chinese are denied even an OUNCE of humanity? They’re borderline Dr. Evil. They’re just scheming to rape the country and erase their culture. Korean dramas are VERY selective in portraying history.
It would have been funny as hell if he had some GI punch out a taxi driver and steal his taxi to escape the monster.
You should write the sequel.
Dr. Yu wrote:
I see that you are really trying hard to find trouble between Korea and USA (at any cost).
Yeah, quit looking for trouble, GI.
the trouble is in the eyes of who sees, it’s up to the person, so if someone choose to see trouble, trouble will see, but if choose to see something else, than no trouble will be seen.
Then why don’t you choose not to read this blog or at least choose not to see GI’s posts as something negative? Do you not see the contradiction in criticizing GI for criticizing people and things Korean? Take your own advice.
For the opposite side of the coin, you might want to see “Behind Enemy Lines 2″. I know, it’s a low-budget, straight-to-video action flick, but I thought it was much better than the first in terms of story. The US drops a SEAL team in North Korea to take out a reactor facility. Towards the middle of the film, there’s talk of the US just sending bombers and wipe out the reactor rather than risk the SEAL team. Funny thing is, there’s a scene with the Korean ambassador marching into the Oval Office and criticizing the president for making a unilateral action without consulting the Korean government. Any open military action in North Korea would start a war, devastating the peninsula. In the end, it takes a clandestine action with a joint SEAL and South Korean spec-ops team to take out the reactor. You definitely won’t see partnerships like this in a modern Korean flick.
Another good thing about this movie is that it actually had real Korean actors speaking real Korean with proper accents. Of course there were a couple non-Koreans in the film with bad Korean accents, but the story more than made up for it.
I just hope as you pen your rantings against the HOST that you will one day understand the message in this film and do your best to put down your obvious bias
[…] to cancer causing chemicals. This incident reached such mythical proportions in Korea that the most popular monster movie in Korean history was based on […]