FILM

A SERIES OF MURDERS IN KOREA

becomes a reflection on national identity in Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder

By Jae Young Jang

Korea must choose one detective: but which one?

Now everyone knows who Bong Joon-ho is. After Parasite won the best picture Oscar for 2019, Joon-ho seemed to come out of nowhere, but he is no newcomer to the scene. Anyone with even a slight passing knowledge of Koren film knows that he has directed a number of striking films before Parasite. His serial killer puzzle, Memories of Murder, premiered in 2003 and it might be his best film. Joon-ho found inspiration for his movie from a series of murders that took place in Hwaseong, Korea and came up with his own vision of the investigation. Like all of Joon-ho’s films, Memories of Murder sheds light on social tensions in Korea. This movie eventually asks one basic question: Are we moving toward the right form of democratic society or are things getting worse?

The story is based on a series of murders that took place in Hwaseong in 1986. The plot of the film unfolds when a local detective, Park Doo-man (Song Gang-ho) teams up with Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung), a volunteer from the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency. A great deal of the drama of the film comes from the pair’s conflicting methods of investigation. Seo Tae-yoon focuses on scientific evidence, where Park Doo-man believes in his own intuition. Do-man insists that he can catch criminals just by looking into their eyes. However, in his zeal to get justice Doo-man is not above fabricating evidence.

Examining the Evidence

On the other hand, Seo Tae-yoon focuses on scientific precision rather than on gut impressions. He tries to solve the case with reasoning. His reliable methods and belief in logic leads the audience to expect him to successfully solve the case. Thus, in the way the plot of the story develops, the two detectives’ conflicting investigations tensely reflect the nation’s social and political tensions. Are we a nation of intuition or one dedicated to science and order?

You can see how Bong uses conflict and tension to investigate Korean society by the way he stages the first murder scene. The site is full of crime scene atmosphere: spectators gathering around to see what’s happening, police milling about, ambulances, and then, most disturbingly, you see young children running around happily playing. These contrasting images make viewers wonder what sort of world they live in or really what type of Korea they want to be part of. Perhaps the innocent bright-looking children reflect the idea of irresponsibility or not paying attention to the brutality around us. Bong doesn’t make an exact statement about who the irresponsible people are, but he opens up the possibility of blame.

Choose your method

And the idea of blame brings us back to what type of investigation this is and, more importantly, who has the power to determine the limits and authority of an investigation. At that time detectives were accusing underprivileged innocent people of committing the crime and citizens who merely happened to be around the outskirts of the crime scene. When the detective Doo-man is interrogating the first suspect, he takes his shoes, goes to the murder scene and artificially takes a footprint on the ground to manipulate the evidence. Even if he was guilty, it's an awful way of convicting him, because it relies on faulty evidence. The harsh and aggressive way the investigation treats this man is chilling.

At one point, Doo-man slaps the thigh of the suspect with an iron ruler, while Tae-yoon just watches. What does Joon-ho want to say in presenting the contrasting attitudes of Doo-man and Tae-woon. Although it is not obvious, the aggressive aspect of Doo-man’s tactics reflect the Korean government’s belief in authority at that time. Probably the more serious question in the film is what are Tae-woon’s beliefs?

Would you trust this man to make the right choice?

Ironically, when they arrest the last suspect, Tae-yoon takes a different attitude than before. While he strongly emphasizes the importance of documents and evidence during the course of the film, Tae-yoon eventually rejects his commitment to evidence, science, due process, and logic. At the moment he says, “I don’t need it all…” with the last suspect directly in front of him, we understand that he is betraying his beliefs. However, at the same time, Doo-man also loses confidence in his sense of how to run an investigation. In a way, these opposites become each other, which is disturbing.

Eventually, Joon-ho gives us an image of Korean society that is far from perfect. Just as a train that was passing by when Doo-man first manipulated the evidence, a train hits and kills the victim of his manipulative tactics. This situation expresses the bare facts of the times, when citizens are just spectators to injustice. In the end, Bong leaves us with a close-up of Doo-man staring at the screen. Is he going to use his vaunted skills of detection on us, the evil eye of intuition? It’s a disturbing question for any Korean viewer (really all viewers) and Joon-ho knows it.

©Jae Young Jang and the CCA Arts Review