Seven in ten South Koreans in their 30s believe the film Assassin(s), about the 1974 killing of first lady Yuk Young-soo, distorts history, according to a survey released on Monday.
The Reform Research Institute, a think tank under the minor Reform Party, asked 1,017 adults whether the film’s questioning of who was behind Yuk’s killing amounted to historical distortion, and 58.2% said yes. By age group, 73.8% of respondents in their 30s and 65.7% in their 20s called it distortion, compared with 56.1% of those in their 50s, 55.2% of those in their 40s and 60s, and 45.7% of those aged 70 and over, the Chosun Ilbo reported on Tuesday.
The film, directed by Hur Jin-ho and released on September 23, suggests the possibility that former president Park Chung-hee or the Korean Central Intelligence Agency was involved in the shooting of Yuk, Park’s wife. The official account holds that Mun Se-gwang, acting on instructions from Chongryon, the pro-North Korea organisation of ethnic Koreans in Japan, carried out the attack alone. People in their 20s and 30s were not yet born when the killing happened, but they have produced parody posters and internet memes criticising the film, the Chosun Ilbo reported.
Assassin(s) topped the box office over the Chuseok holiday and drew 1.56 million cinema-goers, and it remained first in advance bookings among Korean films into its second week, according to Star News and the Chosun Ilbo. The filmmakers have said they had no political intent. Yonhap News Agency reported on Tuesday that the film had lost first place at the box office as the controversy grew.
Experts said the poll results reflect young people’s sensitivity to fairness. If cinematic imagination is allowed to distort a particular politician or historical event, the same standard must apply to other politicians and events, they said, according to the Chosun Ilbo.
I question whether people would have accepted it as cinematic imagination if a film with this kind of content had been made about another former president.
The remark came from a 28-year-old postgraduate student surnamed Cho, as quoted by the Chosun Ilbo. Parody posters imagining a mastermind behind the death of former president Roh Moo-hyun, with titles such as The Man with the Clock and the Rock(s) and The Pusher(s), have circulated on Instagram and Threads, and a meme targeting President Lee Jae-myung, titled Asura: Withdrawal of Indictment, the Five Trials That Stopped, has also appeared.
Choi Hang-seop, a sociology professor at Kookmin University, said the response also reflects young people’s rejection of an older generation presenting the history it lived through and its interpretation of it as the correct answer. “The so-called progressive camp, represented by the 386 group, has a strong belief that its worldview and view of history are legitimate and right, and a considerable number of people in their 20s and 30s would have found that hard to accept,” he told the Chosun Ilbo.
Analysts also cited the growing political diversity of younger South Koreans, who were long assumed to lean progressive but now include more who view the progressive camp critically, according to the Chosun Ilbo. A film going beyond raising questions about the record to present unverified hypotheses and arbitrary interpretations is read as a political message and met with pushback, the analysis held.
Public bodies and schools that planned group viewings have faced protests. A veterans support centre in northern Gyeonggi province, under the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, had planned a free screening on the 14th to mark discharged soldiers’ week, running October 6 to 8, but switched the film to The Intern after a run of complaint calls. On Friday a high school in Ulsan drew similar complaints when its plan for a group viewing became known, and posts sharing the school’s telephone number and urging complaint calls and petitions to the local education office spread on social media, the Chosun Ilbo reported.