Shiri - Who's there to blame for this tragic situation?

While a lot of film directors have already dealt with political issues of South Korea, the director named Kang Je-Gyu demonstrated the idea of reunification through his action film, Shiri. The film title Shiri refers to a fish, indigenous to Korea that swims upstream to spawn, which Kang has made a symbol of the Korean longing for reunification. He not only showed us the familiar view of South Korea but also the North Korean view of the separation of the two countries. The film begins with North Korean soldiers brutally fighting and killing each other for a training purpose. Emphasizing the cruel reality of North Korea, the director depicted North Korean characters as desperate animals rather than human beings. In the movie, the agents who survived to the last are sent to South Korea, and they start to kill so many South Koreans in an attempt to have a bomb exploded in the right place at the right time. The ultimate goal that the North Korean agents including the commander, Park My-young, had was to assassinate all the North and South Korean Politicians. According to Park, they wanted to end the 50 years of deception by their government that had forced their people to sell their children into slavery or even feed on their flesh to survive. They know that the presidents don’t actually want renification, so they think, by killing both of them, they can start a war that will lead to the reunification of the two countries. Thus, this movie focuses on the current situation in Korea and how North Korea is viewed at the period. Furthermore, Yu’s comment about Hydra of Greek myth also tells us the tragic reality aroused by the separation of Korea. The ace of the North Korean agents is a female sniper, Lee Bang-hee, who has disguised herself as Hyun, an innocent-looking woman. Although she approached Yu on purpose, she actually falls in love with him. Unable to resist the order from North Korea, she is eventually shot dead in the end. In the scene where Yu revisits Hyun’s fish store, he listens to a voicemail he received from Hyun. She professes to Yu that the year she had with him was the best thing in her entire life. This message clearly sends us Kang’s argument that the two countries are one body divided by governments. Like the six-headed Hydra of Greek myth, Bang-hee and Hyun are one hydra with multiple personalities, and she is the victim of the split between the South and the North , unable to become one full person, This is neither her fault nor Park's but the governments' who deceive their people with fake attempts of reunification.