Last Updated on September 28, 2020 by rob
In 1993 South Korea discovers to its horror that the North has a functioning nuclear program so Director Choi (Cho Jin-woong) of the National Intelligence Service orders Major Park (Hwang Jung-min) to enter the hermit state posing as a businessman in order to find out more. To do this Park must win the trust of the North’s Economic Council – in the shape of Director Ri (Lee Sung-min) and security official Jong (Ju Ji-hoon). But back home the military dictatorship governing South Korea finds itself threatened by rival parties promising democracy and Park suddenly finds himself a pawn in a political powerplay designed to keep his country’s authoritarian government in power.
Political thriller and humanist drama fuse beautifully in this masterfully told true story that’s one of the best Korean films of last year. I watched this late one night when I was so tired I fully expected to nod off after half an hour but the damn thing proved so gripping I sat through the whole 136 mins in one go. It’s great to see a story that starts off as one thing and then surprises you by going in a different direction, and yet you don’t mind, because what it’s turned into is something even more satisfying! At heart that’s thanks to a collection of strong characters who develop in pleasingly unexpected ways. Hwang Jung-min’s rough looks and working class demeanour make him perfect casting as Park, the South Korean spy who is told early on by his boss that he must be completely convincing in attitude, dress and manner otherwise that’ll be the end of him.
It’s advice that pays off later in the film in an edge of the seat suspense sequence when Ji-hoon’s menacing security chief has our hero shot full of truth serum and demands to know Park’s true motivation for coming to the country. But whether as comically indignant businessman, savvy spy or the patriot whose conscience is increasingly troubled by the cynical actions of his superiors, Jung-min makes the character believable and sympathetic. Equally good is Lee Sung-min’s superbly subtle performance as Director Ri, the Communist minister whose poker features and penetrating stare mask unexpectedly humanist concerns. And Ju Ji-hoon is suitably obnoxious as the North Korean security chief. It’s one of the film’s slyer gags that this thug, who sneers at Park for being a soulless capitalist, is ultimately shown to be exactly the kind of person Park goes through the movie pretending to be.
The film’s first half proves a taut yet also amusing tour through the labyrinthine power structure of North Korean society as Park’s proposal – to shoot advertisements for South Korean products on location round the country – unexpectedly gets him an audience with the country’s leader, Kim Jong-il. Although the film gets in a gag here – with a flunky declaring “The General will now enter!” at which point the film cuts to a pampered Pekinese poodle trotting in through the door – the man himself proves unexpectedly agreeable to Park’s business plan. That’s the first surprise. The second comes when Director Ri overhears his aide assisting Park in his spying but instead of throwing the pair of them to the wolves he has the aide reassigned and delivers a veiled warning to Park to watch his step. Why?
Could it have anything to do with a tour through Yongbyon province in which the state’s dire economic conditions are indelibly underlined as Park encounters – in imagery straight out of an Hieronymus Bosch painting – a mound of corpses teeming with starving, desperate children stripping the bodies and even (god forbid) gnawing on human bones? At the same time as one senses the spy mission receding into the background Park’s boss Director Choi (a not unsympathetic performance from Cho Jin-woong) finds himself ordered by his superior to scupper the electoral prospects of South Korea’s rising pro-democracy party and its leader Kim Dae-jung. But Park, already questioning why his agency is meddling in domestic politics, bugs a Beijing hotel meeting between both sides and discovers that the South is – and has been for a very long time – bribing the North into staging military incursions in order to frighten its own populace into voting for its authoritarian Government
The utter cynicism of this comes as a complete shock to both Park and the viewer and there’s a cracking scene in which an indignant Park confronts his boss and demands to know why the Communists in the North don’t want another supposed Communist in the South (the pro-democracy leader Kim Dae-Jung) to win power. All his boss can do is splutter in response. The answer of course is that Dae-jung’s win would overturn the self-serving status quo between ministers in both governments. So it’s a rousing moment when Park and Director Ri team up to persuade Kim Jong-Il to turn down the South Korean offer and stick with Park’s business plan. The stakes are sky high. If Kim Jong-Il accepts the South’s latest request – “My South Korean comrades can’t do without me” he tells Park, “Every election they run up here, asking me to fire artillery, shoot missiles… What else can I do? Got to help my compatriots” – then everyone in the dictator’s circle gets to continue living comfortably while the population slowly starve to death.
But if the dictator accepts Park’s business plan, with its potential to bring millions of dollars into the country, then there’s a chance that images like the horror show in Yongbyon might become a thing of the past. The consequences of Kim Jong-Il’s momentous decision and the ramifications for Park and Ri are as confidently handled by the film’s director as everything else here. A montage of South Korea’s 1997 presidential contest marking the country’s transition to a fully fledged democracy is stirring stuff. It’s even hard not to feel a twinge of sympathy for the odious Jong whom we glimpse being led away with the rest of his goon squad to the salt mines after he’s incurred the displeasure of his boss. The production values are very polished too. Park’s tour through North Korea’s capital, with its huge statues of the dictator presumably recreated using CGI, look completely convincing. I don’t normally feel the need to state that a movie is highly recommended. If it’s on the front page of this site you can take it as read it’s worth seeing but The Spy Gone North deserves the extra shoutout so, very highly recommended.
