Baek Byung-yeul is a journalist at The Korea Times focused on cultural content, including films and cultural events in South Korea. You can contact him at baekby@koreatimes.co.kr to share your insights.
Decade later, Koreans still can't let go of Cheung
Leslie Cheung in “Days Of Being Wild” (1990)
By Baek Byung-yeul
By Baek Byung-yeul
Ten years have passed since Hong Kong actor and singer Leslie Cheung leaped to his death from the city’s Mandarin Oriental hotel. To his legion of Korean fans, the pain from the loss still seems to be pretty much fresh.
April 1 will mark the tenth anniversary of Lee’s suicide and his fans around the world are readying various events to commemorate it. And aside of Hong Kong, it’s hard to find any nation that cares as much as Korea, where the memories of Cheung continue to have a profound emotional influence.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, before Korea became the international cultural force that it is now, Korean youngsters sought definition from the culture of foreign countries they saw as a cooler version of their own. Korea’s import ban on Japanese cultural products, which wasn’t fully lifted until the early 2000s, allowed Hong Kong to dominate as a cultural invader, particularly in movies and music.
No Hong Kong entertainer was more popular among Koreans than Cheung. His movies were automatic box office hits, his songs were overused in commercials and his face was ubiquitous in magazines and stationery items for school kids.
Cheung’s breakthrough came as the macho hero of John Woo’s 1986 action flick, "A Better Tomorrow,” which also starred Chow Yun-fat. But unlike the Chow, who was all brawn in his younger days, Cheung displayed a broader range much earlier, evidenced by his brilliant performance as the romantic leading man in Stanley Kwan's "Rouge’’ (1987).
Cheung continued to develop as a serious actor in the 1990s, playing a transvestite actor who falls hopelessly in love with a male colleague in Chen Kaige’s ``Farewell My Concubine’’ (1993) and one of the gay lovers in Wong Kar-wai’s ``Happy Together’’ (1997).
It was after his role in Wong's film that Cheung came out as gay, then a rare action for an Asian entertainer to take. However, the move didn’t diminish his followings and it could be argued it only increased it.
To Koreans, the death of Cheung had dual meaning: One was that the nation had lost one of its most influential cultural figures. The other was that his death marked the point where Koreans’ love for Hong Kong’s movies and other cultural products started to irrevocably decline.
"Cheung was one of the stars who graced the screen in 1980s and 1990s, when Hong Kong films were at the height of their popularity. Though other actors as Chow Yun-fat and Andy Lau also enjoyed much fame, no one could command a scene like Cheung, who had the ability to instantly add emotional depth to any scene," said Ju Sung-chul, a journalist of film magazine, Cine 21, and author of the recently released, "Memories of Leslie Cheung.”
"Of course, Cheung’s boyish looks were a big part of his popularity. However, what Koreans remember now are the complex and sad characters he played in movies like Happy Together and Ashes of Time (1994). The fact that he died on April Fool’s Day was a cruel irony for Koreans.’’
The Korea Film Archive will hold a screening of Cheung’s “Days of Being Wild” (1990) and “The Bride with White Hair” (1993) at Cinematheque KOFA, Sangam-dong, Seoul, on April 6. Admission will be free. For more information, visit www.koreafilm.or.kr. Busan Cinema Center will also show 10 of Cheung’s movies, and display posters for them in May.
Cheung’s Korean fan club on the website Daum (
) held a special online screening of Happy Together last Sunday. The online community has around 14,500 members, larger than the Internet fan clubs of any other foreign celebrities, Daum said.
In Hong Kong, a commemoration concert will be held on April 1. Prominent movie stars Jacky Cheung, Karen Mok, Carina Lau and Tony Leung are expected to attend.