Shuri

[Stephen Cremin]

In South Korea I guess Shiri/Shuri is considered to be showing North Korea 
in a positive light, because of the humanising of the female N.Korean spy 
.... and the actions of the North Korean group - "my people are eating the 
dead bodies of their children to survive while your's have grown soft eating 
hamburgers" - are given a moral standpoint.  News reports highlighted the 
fact that the last director to show North Korea in a "positive light" back 
in 1967 was sent to jail.  But bear in mind that I only get Korean reportage 
through the filter of the conservative English-language press (which when 
the [generally pro-unification] students were rioting a couple of years ago 
were very pro-business, very pro-equilibrium), and are not going to ask 
questions when everyone on a North Korean submarine landing in the South 
ends up dead.

The North Korean-focused film which has at year end received more critical 
acclaim is THE SPY, a comedy about a N. Korean agent who comes down to the 
South to steal their genetically modified "superpig" to feed the north.  
Much comedy is made of the bumpkin northerner in the big city, in the same 
manner as all those mainlanders in Hong Kong comedies of the early 1990s.  
And of course it humanises the bumbling spy very much in his relationship 
with his homestay family.  But its another step in the right direction: as a 
group the North are still not to be trusted but as individuals they're 
alright.  In production is the film "JSA" in which an investigation of a 
shooting at the N. Korean border reveals a friendship between the soldiers 
of both countries.

Back to the opening titles of Shiri/Shuri which explain the standoff between 
North and South.  Well, that only exists in the international edition, I 
don't believe it was on the domestic release print.  I don't imagine Korean 
textbooks bring up any ambiguity about who started the Korean War, etc.  In 
the film the Han Suk-Kyu character does state that the reason for the divide 
was the bad judgement of one man fifty years earlier ... which I interpreted 
as referencing the hasty American decision to "share" Korea, a consideration 
they wouldn't give to Japan despite Russia's insistence.  But others on the 
list have a much better grasp of the history and politics of all this than 
me.

Stephen Cremin

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