Gender Roles in Shiri

Shiri is one of the most popular Korean films that appeared shortly after the 1997 financial crisis in Korea and it proved that Korean blockbusters can be just as successful as Hollywood blockbusters, thus regaining confidence in Korean national cinema. Despite its resemblance to Hollywood films, Shiri contains a few key differences that are particular to Korean history, culture and identity. The film uses gender roles and symbols of masculinity and femininity to portray the internal differences between North and South Korea. These differences are depicted in Hee/Hyun’s inner conflict between the innocent wife of the South Korean secret agent and the dangerous lover of the top agent of the North Korean Special Forces. In this case, North and South Korea are both embodied in the feminine (Hee/Hyun), and any possibility of reunification is symbolized by Hee/Hyun’s unborn child, which is the product of a North Korean spy and a South Korean agent. The film, however, does not revolve around femininity; in fact, it acts to restore the masculine identity of South Korea through the success of the Korean blockbuster, which has finally reached the level of success of Hollywood blockbusters, and through the destruction of the feminine. According to Kyung-hyun Kim in “Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves”, Hee represents the “monstrous-feminine”—both terrifying and desirable—who is constructed under a patriarchal system and forced into her role as femme fatale until she is killed. Kim thus argues that masculine power can only be reclaimed through the destruction of the North Korean Other and the historically repressed—both of which are embodied by Hee. Agent Ryu can therefore only represent the restored masculinity of South Korea once he has killed his fiancé; until he has killed Hee and has overcome the 50 years of war that stand between the two Koreas, Ryu’s masculinity remains threatened by the North Korean spy. By embodying the history of war and power struggles between North and South Korea, Hee/Hyun therefore also serves as a symbol for the broken Korean masculine identity which threatens the Korean national identity that has been negatively affected by Korea’s colonial past, the experience of the IMF crisis, and the Korean War.