'Mal-Mo-E': an analog film that captivates digital generation

A scene from “Mal-Mo-E: The Secret Mission” / Courtesy of Lotte Entertainment

The film depicts the same old story but in a fashionable manner

By Kang Hyun-kyung

“Mal-Mo-E: The Secret Mission” is not hilarious. It's not an action film and there are no life-threatening stunts. It's not a computer-animated film, either.

Despite a lack of these prerequisites for a box-office hit in the digital age, Mal-Mo-E directed by Eom Yu-na has seen smooth sailing since it opened Jan. 9. The film has topped the box office with average daily ticket sales of nearly 322,000, four times that of “Aquaman” which came in fourth.

Eom made her directorial debut with Mal-Mo-E, an old Korean dialect word referring to “collecting vocabularies.”

The Mal-Mo-E phenomenon came as a surprise partly because it was released just after the struggles of several big-budget, much-anticipated Korean films that premiered in December.

The movie tells the story of a group of literary freedom fighters ― members of the Korean Language Society ― who were on a secret mission to publish a Korean language dictionary in the early 1940s when Korea was a colonial state of Japan. It was the toughest time for freedom fighters because imperial Japan had ratcheted up its effort to annihilate any Korean cultural identity, including the Korean language, as it prepared for World War II, and implemented a brutal crackdown on any attempts related to Korea's independence movement.

Mal-Mo-E is a bland film. The plot is all too familiar with viewers as it has no striking differences from previous historical movies dealing with freedom fighters during Korea's pre-modern history.

The movie tells the same old story of these historical figures ― their suffering and sacrifices for Korea's independence despite the Japanese authorities' brutal crackdown ― but in a fashionable way.

Viewers don't feel bored at all during the 135 minute running time. There are no thrills and no suspense. There are no dramatic turns or twists, either. But viewers are drawn into the film. Director Eom faithfully follows the story of the freedom fighters in their endeavor to collect dialectic phrases from across the country and organize a closed-door hearing with representatives from local provinces to select a standard Korean vocabulary for the dictionary project.

The Japanese authorities were suspicious and kept a watchful eye on their activities. But the repression and the terrifying atmosphere didn't stop the group and the Korean dictionary project was eventually completed in 1942 against all odds.

Director Eom pays her respect to two groups of people ― one is led by Mr. Cho played by Kim Hong-pa and the other is postmen. Cho's hand-written copy of the vocabulary he and his colleagues collected just in case their secret mission was discovered and ruined by the Japanese authorities was critical in making the dictionary project bear fruit.

In the film, unnamed postmen are portrayed as unsung heroes.

Finding it impossible to collect all dialects from across the country, the freedom fighters decided to run an ad in the final edition of their Korean language magazine they published. They encouraged subscribers to join hands in publishing the dictionary by sending dialectic and local phrases and words.

Being aware of the ad and trying to thwart the dictionary project, the Japanese authorities directed postmen to deliver all the responding mails to them, not to the Korean Language Society. Postmen handed over some of those letters to the Japanese but sent lots of them to a secret warehouse they set aside in the capital, so the freedom fighters could continue to work on the dictionary.

Before releasing the film, Eom said some of her friends voiced worries about the title as few Koreans would understand what it meant. “But I chose to stick with it because I felt its meaning of collecting words was special to me,” she said. “I wanted to understand how the countless people who took part in the dictionary project would have felt while they were cooperating in this secret mission.”