“Parasite” (기생충)

By Jae-Ha Kim
Substack
April 6, 2020

☆☆☆☆
Kim Ki-taek (played by Song Kang-ho)
Kim Ki-woo (played by Choi Woo-shik)
Kim Ki-jeong (played by Park So-dam)
Gook Moon-gwang (played by Lee Jung-eun)

I had wanted to write an article about “Parasite” prior to the Academy Awards. Of course, it ended up making film history as the first South Korean movie to win Oscars for Best Director for Bong Joon-Ho and Best Picture. I had a pitch into an editor, who said she was interested. But then I never heard back from her. (It happens.) Between that time and now, life happened and I haven’t had a chance to share my thoughts about the film in a meaningful way.

Everyone already knows the plot of the film, so I won’t talk about that. But what I had wanted to discuss are a few key moments from the film that still stand out in my mind.

FYI, the following is full of spoilers. So do not read any further if you don’t want to know some of the storyline:

♦ Early on in the film, we see the Kim family sitting in their squalid basement apartment, folding pizza boxes to earn money. What’s never discussed is how the patriarch supported the family in earlier years. The days of salary men working for the same company until they retired are long gone. Men and women in their 50s often lose their jobs, because they’re too expensive for employers to keep around. They’re replaced by younger, less experienced employees who can be paid less. When I was in Korea during one trip, I hired a driver, whose previous position had been in managerial for a well-known airline. Because he had children to put through college still, he had to reinvent himself with a new career. Because he spoke several languages, he was in demand to drive around tourists. But he said many people he knew opened small restaurants or shops to earn money for their family after their forced retirement.

♦ The friendship between Ki-woo and his friend, Min-hyuk (played by Park Seo-Joon), appears to be genuine on the surface. But when you look at the dynamics, they’re using each other under the pretense of being helpful. Min-hyuk is going overseas to study and tells Ki-woo that he wants to start dating the rich girl he tutors once she enters college. (She’s currently a high school sophomore.) He says he recommended Ki-woo as his replacement, not only because he’s smart, but because he’s trustworthy. In other words, Min-hyuk doesn’t trust his rich, horndog friends not to make a move on the girl. But he trusts his friend, because what could Ki-woo possibly offer a rich, beautiful girl? Min-hyuk doesn’t view Ki-woo as competition, because of the latter’s lowly station in life.

During a pivotal scene where everything is going wrong for the Kims, Ki-woo asks his sister what Min-hyuk would do in their situation. She says Min-hyuk would never be in their position. That statement spoke volumes about their class difference and lack of privilege.

♦ After ingratiating himself to the wealthy Mrs. Park, the first thing Ki-woo does is charm her daughter. The two are making out in no time. She would’ve been about 15 or 16. He had already served mandatory military duty and failed his college entrance exam several times. So he was probably in his early to mid 20s. The class difference between the two was noted, but no one made a big deal about a man macking with a teenage child. Ew. For Ki-woo, the girl is less of a romantic interest than a means to raise his social position in life. He even tells his family the same thing Min-hyuk told him: once the girl enters college, he will officially date her. (Remember…when Min-hyuk had spoken of his interest in the girl, Ki-woo didn’t think it was odd that his adult friend wanted to date a child.)

♦ Once he has embedded himself into the Park household, Ki-woo brings in his sister, Ki-jeong (aka Jessica) as an art instructor for the Park’s younger child. She impresses Mrs. Park with her fake diploma from Illinois State. This is where I literally laughed out loud in the movie theater. There is no upper echelon Korean family that is going to be impressed by Illinois State. This has nothing to do with the quality of the school, but speaks more to the snobbery of a certain subsector of Koreans who look for brand names like Harvard, M.I.T. and Stanford when it comes to their children. (One of my younger relatives was a coveted tutor, because she was a student at Korea’s top school: Seoul National University.) This seemed to be Bong’s way of letting his Korean viewers know exactly how gullible and clueless the Park family was.

A few years ago, Korean American singer and former “American Idol” contestant John Park was a guest on “Running Man” — the same episode that BTS‘ RM appeared on. It was a segment about the smartest K-pop idols. Everyone acknowledged that RM, with his 148 IQ, was a genius. But the regular cast members gave Park a hard time, joking about his education. Kim Jong-Kook even insinuated that Park wasn’t that bright and that American schools weren’t difficult to get into. For a frame of reference, Park attended Northwestern University, which is ranked No. 9 (in the United States), according to U.S. News & World Report’s annual college ranking. Kim graduated from Dankook University, which isn’t one of South Korea’s prestigious SKY schools. Dankook is ranked No. 35 in South Korea. But Kim had never heard of Northwestern and he was comfortable enough about what he perceived the school to be to tease Park about it.

I can’t even imagine what Kim Jong-Kook would’ve said about Illinois State.

Release Date: “Parasite” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21, 2019. It opened in South Korea on May 30, 2019.

© 2020 JAE-HA KIM | All Rights Reserved