[Shiri] Why the female spy?

From what I recall, Shiri is the first action movie that I have watched. Although I have not seen the full movie, I remember few scenes that were shown in TV (during Korean national holidays). I have always wanted to watch the whole thing, so this screening was quite exciting for me. It turns out that Shiri has a typical Hollywood-style action movie (so nothing too exciting about the movie itself) but I was quite impressed by the fact that such blockbuster movie was produced in 1999 (still during the time of financial crisis in South Korea). While I was watching the movie, I was especially interested in the female character(s) Pang-hui Yi/ Myong-hyon Yi.

As Freud writes, “…we are accustomed to say that every human being displays both male and female instinctual impulses, needs, and attributes […]” (Freud, in Kim 275). This can be seen through the depiction of Pang-hui Yi/ Myong-hyon Yi. She is a highly trained sniper that can shoot at any distance, without ever missing a shot. At the beginning of the movie, the brutality, cruelty of the North Korean female spy is shown through her assassinations of key persons in the South Korean society. Despite her gender, she surpasses her male comrades (North Korean spies) and is able to hide herself from the eyes of Korean agents/ O.P. without getting caught for few years. The fact that Yi is a female does not seem to give her any harm in performing as a North Korean spy.

           However, it turns out that Yi is not a male-like, “strong figure”. She plays the role of the “victimized female”, by becoming the object of the “thing” that each man has to kill, even if he loves it (Kim, 269). Even though she is an excellent sniper who comes from the North, she is unable to kill her lover. Yi is also pregnant with Yu’s child, but does not get rid of the baby, even if it is the child of her “enemy” (South Korean). Towards the end, in the voicemail that Yi leaves for Yu, she confesses her identity, and the North Korean spies’ plan to attack South Koreans with the CTX (liquid bomb). No matter how brutal she was, Yi chooses love over her country.

Perhaps because “…we [people] far too readily identify activity with maleness and passivity with femaleness, a view which is by no means universally confirmed” (Freud, in Kim 275), there was no way that Yi could have survived and remained as the cold-blooded spy. Female’s role as being submissive, mother-figure, emotional (e.g. choosing love over orders etc.) is what most would agree with, and expect to happen.

If the spy were a male instead of the female, I believe that there would have been more possibility for agent Yu to get killed by Yi. Maybe that is why most North vs. Korean related films/ dramas chose their male protagonists to be males while female protagonists are females?