Her feminine passive boy, His masuline sassy girl

In my opinion, My Sassy Girl, directed by Gwak Jae Yong, is one of the best comedy films ever made in Korea. It effectively depicts the reversal of gender roles as well as the coexistence of Confucian traditional values and modernizing ideologies regarding social and gender roles.

Traditional Korea was based on teachings of Confucian principles with the cosmological duality of yin and yang, where men and women had different social roles. Everything was to revolve around men, and women were to obey men throughout her whole life: her father as daughter, her husband as wife, and her son as mother. Thus, these social limitations and segregation of the sexes confined women within the home and valued women who were submissive and passive enough to solely take care of the household. Also, as Cho mentions in her article, the daughter generation’s mother’s intensely achievement-motivated with unlimited aspirations who want them to become successful career women as well as be suitable brides for upper middle class families, left them only to be confused(Cho, 170). With the fact that women were forced to give up a career because there was no support system for child care, women were only becoming opposite of what their mothers want them to be.They now seem to think that it is wiser to adapt to the existing system than to resist it. Thus, women are becoming extremely obsessed with external appearance, with the hope that they will be able to get married and live a comfortable life. So Cho mentions that Korea is filled with girlish women, looking fragile and calling for protection.However, in this film, these images of women the gender roles are completely reversed.  She beats up men, demands gy to do almost anything, beats him in every single sports they play together. She always yell and hit him constantly. She is always the one who save him out of dangerous situations.  and is nowhere near of being lady-like. Perhaps the reason why this movie was such a big hit in East Asia was because the movie allowed East Asian women to let out their anger and be expressive in stating that anyon can do whatever you want and whomever you want to be despite your gender.

I don’t think anyone can argue with the fact that the girl is gorgeous. But this fact makes me question, whether Gyeonwoo would have been forgiving for her aggressive behaviours, if the Girl was not so gorgeous, since Contemporary Korea puts so much importance on external appearance. Also, what if Gyenwoo was raised more masculinely and thus Gyenwoo and the girl were both very aggressive and masculine? What would have happened?

One interesting fact i realized while watching the movie was, in the scene where GY and the girl is ready to say goodbye and GY gets on the train, they keep repeating that they will see each other in two years. At first I did not understand why they kept repeating how many years they are going to see each other in, but realized that two years in Korean sounds similar to relationship, and connection. This "two years" emphasizes the prevailing theme of desnity and fate in terms of relationship, in the film. With these details that I was able to catch, I once again realized how good of a film this movie was, and how meticulously this film was directed.