Watch Korean retro gangster films online

Choi Min-soo in the 1995 film "The Terrorist"

By Yun Suh-young

The Korean Film Archive is showing nine Korean gangster movies for free online (www.kmdb.or.kr/vod) until the end of June.

The video-on-demand service, which began June 1, introduces Korean gangster movies that represent different time periods in Korean history from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Viewers can watch movies beginning with the country’s first gangster movie, “Gallant Man,” a 1969 piece, to the more recent and popular 1995 action flick, “The Terrorist,” starring Choi Min-soo.

Local gangster films have won the hearts of audiences for faithfully depicting Korea’s “geondal,” a milder term denoting gangsters, in accordance to the respective time period. Geondal have been dealt with in various genres ranging from action and comedy to anti-communism propaganda films and crime thrillers.

If classic Hollywood gangster flicks tend to depict the dark side of criminals in a city dominated by violence during the Great Depression, their Korean counterparts more often portray the warmer, humane side of these men, who have a sense of justice and passion for loyalty, according to the Korean Film Archive.

Another difference between Hollywood and Korean films is that heroes in the latter are willing to abide by law and order, unlike many American characters that commit crimes for personal gains such as money and power.

These geondal are different from gangsters in that many of them have no choice but to enter the underworld due to war and other domestic ills of the times, upholding a sort of civil disobedience. They unite to defeat the public enemy — Japanese colonialists and leftist communists — and stand by the weak. They are prepared to give up their life for such allegiances.

Korean gangster movies began appearing in the late 1960s. Kim Hyo-cheon’s “Gallant Man” has influenced other hit franchises such as the “Myeongdong” and “Kim Du-han” series. “Gallant Man” is considered a prototype for the homegrown genre, which stress the importance of loyalty and justice as the main quality of a gangster.

These retro Korean films can be viewed online until June 30. The nine movies are: “Assassin” (1969, directed by Lee Man-hee), “Gallant Man” (1969, Kim Hyo-cheon), “Five Fighters” (1971, Goh Young-nam), “The Graduation from Myeongdong” (1971, Goh Young-nam), “Time on Myungdong (Myeong-dong)” (1971, Kim Hyo-cheon), “Cruel History of Myeongdong” (1972, Byun Jang-ho, Choi In-hyeon, Im Kwon-taek), “A True Story of Kim Du-han” (1974, Kim Hyo-cheon), “The General’s Son” (1990, Im Kwon-taek) and “Terrorists” (1995, Kim Young-bin).

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