Soft content, strong messages

By Kim Ji-soo

The film “Wandeuk” or "Punch" in English is about high school student Wandeuk, who lives with a hunchback father and a mentally-challenged uncle in Seoul. Nothing about his life shines, and adding to his miserable existence is that his teacher lives right next door to his “oktapbang” or roof-top housing unit that is largely synonymous with poverty in Korea.

The only shining light in the high-schooler’s life is that he knows how to fight. Should anyone ignore him, or his father or uncle ― both of whom make a living dancing in a cabaret or in outdoor markets dressed like clowns ― Wandeuk is ready for action. His overtly nosy teacher sets out to find his long-lost Filipina mother, a reality that Wandeuk has a hard time accepting.

It’s not the exciting drama of a life anyone would wish for, but the film, based on the novel of the same name, is drawing a lot of viewers. Figures in Korea indicated Monday that the movie has drawn 4 million viewers since its release on Oct. 20, topping the most-viewed film list for five consecutive weeks.

The eponymous novel by Kim Ryeo-ryeong, which won the Changbi Prize for Young Adult Fiction in 2008, also rose to the rank of bestseller.

The humane narrative and the honest industriousness of the original story grabbed the readers. And much of that is translated onto the big screen. The protagonist finally discovers an outlet to his desires and angst through kickboxing. He goes for a trial match against another amateur kickboxer from the neighborhood.

Only when he gets knocked down, does he learn to laugh. In that scene, Wandeuk, with his gumshield shaping his mouth into a bittersweet grin, looks so much like his hunchback dancer dad, who wears a sorrowful clown’s makeup.

Above all, the film touches on many aspects of an ever-evolving Korea in the 21st century. It is yet to be seen if the film version of “Wandeuk” will follow in the trajectory of “Dogani,” based on Gong Ji-young’s novel of the same name, which is known as “The Crucible” in English.

The latter movie portrayed the true story about sexual assaults against deaf students by teachers at a school in the southwestern city of Gwangju, belatedly but rightly prompting a pan-national outcry. Gwangju City officially shut down the so-called “Dogani” school for the disabled in late October and the National Assembly passed a revised bill on sexual crimes, the “Dogani Law,” also late October to allow heavier punishments for offenders abusing children under 13 and the disabled.

The strength of such “soft” content in Korean society has been rapidly growing in recent years. It’s like “hallyu” or the Korean wave has validated the power of our own soft content, to which people are responding both in terms of feedback and also in input.

Or maybe it’s the new generation of the populace, or generations that are fed up with the government and politicians that seem caught up in another timeframe while societal and economic factors have turbo-travelled along with the global economy and the new era.

The strength of this soft content, not just in movies, lies invariably in that it illustrates most visibly and in-time the changes that are taking place in Korean society.

So as this year winds down, and many people are wondering just what they have accomplished during the past 11 months and what has happened ― aside from the global economic crisis, the environmental and natural disasters that struck ― why not revisit the notable soft content of the year before 2011 closes? For a new start, yet again.

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