Shiri

The film, ‘Shiri’ is considered as the first ‘Hollywood-style’ blockbuster in South Korea. Kang Jegyu filmed it in 1999, which contains the story of strong Korean national sentiment to fuel its drama after the Cold War. According to the reading (Kim), he film, ‘Friend’ we screened last class and ‘JSA’ were followed the success of ‘Shri’ in 2000 and 2001, respectively, each of them breaking ‘Shri’’s box office record with more than 2.7 million tickets sold.

According to the Barbara Creed, ‘when woman is represented as monstrous it is almost always in relation to her mothering and reproductive functions’ (pg. 261). In this film, Lee Banghee(Myunghun), who had been responsible for several assassinations of the government officials and the theft of CTX (bomb), had to betray her lover, Yoo Joongwon. At the end of the film, on the day of the North and South Korean’s soccer game, Park Mooyoung placed the CTX at the stands of the soccer field. After a violent struggle with Park Mooyoung, Lee Joonwon was able to stop the CTX bomb. When the light has been turned off, Lee Banghee (Myunghun) went out to explode the CTX by hands. On her way to explode the CTX, Lee Banghee (Myunghun) faced Lee Joongwon and Lee Joongwon shoot his lover, Lee Banghee. This scene was the saddest scene of the film. The scene when Lee Joongwon looks around the objects, which had the memories with Lee Banghee, (Myunghun) and the voice message, that Lee Banghee (Myunghun) left made me tears. Despite the actual ‘love’, they had to ‘betray’ and ‘kill’ each other under the government control, and yes, even though it was the ‘action’ ‘blockbuster’ film, the ‘romance’ scene brought the tears. “Once her life is taken away by Yu Joongwon and the weight of history crushes any hope for romance, which cannot free itself from rigid ideological stratification, so too erased is her fetus that crucially embodied the reconciliatory spirit between North and the South” (pg. 261). Also, the song ‘When I dream’ was played with the scene when Lee Joongwon and Lee Banghee (Myunghun) together.