“D.P.” (디피)

By Jae-Ha Kim
Substack
October 18, 2021

Private Ahn Joon-Ho (played by Jung Hae-In)
Corporal Han Ho-Yul (played by Koo Kyo-Hwan)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

The superb “D.P.” is not an easy series to watch. While not as gory as “Squid Game,” it’s more disturbing in many ways, because it deals with South Korea’s real-life mandatory military duty — which requires every able-bodied Korean man to enlist for approximately two years.

Smart, but poor, Joon-Ho enlists in the army when he is drafted. Almost immediately, the private is harassed by his seniors, who revel in torturing their underlings. He is disgraced for the grammatical errors his mother makes in the letters she sends him. And during one game, Joon-Ho moves his head, rather than have it bashed into a large nail on the wall (like the soldier before him). He’s punished for not accepting a hole in his head.

Based on his height, Joon-Ho is recruited to serve in the military police. And based on his ability to think outside of the box, he’s assigned to be a D.P. (Deserter Pursuit) —  a branch of the military police that brings back soldiers who’ve deserted. Some of the men left the barracks to protect their families. But most of the young men deserted to escape the daily torture of their fellow soldiers.

With his intuitive acting, Jung Hae-In  (“One Spring Night,” “Something in the Rain“) — who played an officer accused of beating a soldier to death in “Prison Playbook” — clearly is the star of this series. But some of the best moments belong to Koo Kyo-Hwan (“Peninsula,” “Kingdom: Ashin of the North“), who plays his fellow D.P. and knows how to work the system. He is calm and clever and, most important of all, isn’t an asshole.

The series runs less than six-hours and features compelling storylines that make it very easy to binge this in one day. There are some scenes that are very difficult to watch, most particularly the sexual abuse of a soldier, which snowballs into even more tragedy.

“D.P.” is based on Kim Bo-Tong’s webtoon, “D.P. Dog’s Day,” which he wrote based on memories of his own military service. That it’s set in 2014 is no coincidence. That’s the year that one soldier was beaten to death by higher ranking officers, while another soldier attacked his bullies, killing five. (More in The Blue Roof.)

On DKDKTV, Danny and David Kim (not related) discuss their own military days in the South Korean army. They said that while they didn’t experience the kind of abuse depicted in “D.P.,” they didn’t flinch at the dramatization, because it was plausible. While discussing sexual harassment on military bases, I found it really telling that Danny at first said it never happened to him. But as they continued to talk, he remembered instances of unwanted touching. We are so conditioned that harassment isn’t really a big deal, unless there are visible signs of physical trauma.

When people try to justify this kind of “bullying” — it’ll make them stronger, everyone goes through it — as little more than boys-will-be-boys hazing, what they are essentially doing is justifying institutionalized torture. And this has to stop. As one of the victims said to his sympathetic superior, “You all knew about it and did nothing.”

Airdates: Six episodes, each between 45- to 55-minutes , were released on Netflix on August 27, 2021. This series is rated TV-MA and should be followed. The subject matter is intense. It deals with an onslaught of realistic abuse and depicts suicide. This is not for young children.

Spoiler Alert: Jo Hyun-Chul was brilliant in his portrayal of Jo Suk-Bong, a slightly higher ranking private than Joon-Ho, and the closest thing he has to a friend on base. An artist who teaches children to draw, he snaps one day after too many months of being bullied, humiliated and forced to masturbate for the enjoyment of an sadistic officer. The final episode and a half revolves around him kidnapping and torturing one of his bullies (who’s now a civilian) and the aftermath that results in his own death.

And here’s some trivia for you: Jo is the younger brother of Jo Dong-Rim, who’s better known by his rapper name of Mad Clown.

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