Imperial Incompetence: Skepticism of the US/ROK Relationship in the Cinema of Bong Joon-ho

Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho has never limited himself to one particular genre of storytelling. Throughout his career, he has produced science fiction films, monster films, dark comedies and realist dramas, among others. Despite the vast disparity in genre, tone and set location of his films, there are several themes and concepts which remain consistent throughout the acclaimed director’s filmography. Many of these tendencies directly, or indirectly, connect to the Republic of Korea’s relationship with one partner-nation in particular: the United States of America. The purpose of this thesis is to examine six of Bong Joon-ho’s films, focusing on how they portray and critique the relationship between the ROK and the USA. It is also concerned with contributing to the discourse surrounding these films by including Bong’s most recent film Mickey 17 as part of its analysis. In the writing of the thesis, the author has considered scholarly writings within both the Korean and international discourses. Of particular importance have been cinema scholar Nam Lee’s assertions of Bong’s tendency to create “narratives of failure” and what he refers to as “leitmotifs of misrecognition.” These two predispositions within the director’s work, along with Noh Minjung and Moon Soyoung’s papers on how Bong’s films can be interpreted to Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on capitalism as a new religion for the industrialized age, aid in creating a clear image of Bong’s cinematic ethos as one where happy-endings are all but extinct and social systems and those in power are corrupt, incompetent, or malicious. The analysis is divided into two sections: the first concerned with Bong’s “globalized” films, where the action is set at least partially beyond the borders of South Korea, the second on the director’s “localized” narratives; entirely contained within Korea.This paper concludes that there are many ways in which Bong’s films cast a negative light on how the US still impacts the lives of South Koreans, even if doing so indirectly through socioeconomic structures often created decades ago. However, Mickey 17 dispenses with the long-standing “narrative of failure” in favor of a more optimistic, solidaric conclusion. If this change implies a larger shift in narrative attitude from Bong or is simply coincidence is yet to be determined and will need to be re-examined in the future.