SHIRI

dir. Kang Je-gyu

   Released in 1999, just after one of the most important economic crisis, Shiri was the first Korean blockbuster. The film with its roots in a Hollywood style got a great economic profit in the box office; it was a boom in the Korean film industry with 6.5 million of audience.

   This movie marked the start of the commercial Korean cinema, the reactivation of the industry that now is one of the biggest one in the world.

   Shiri, with a very occidental action film style, depicts the division of the country and the permanent situation of tension through a crime thriller in which two South Korean agents, Yu Jong-won and Lee Jong-gil, are searching for Bang-hee, a spy from a elite group of North Korean soldiers. Yu Jong-won and his partner Lee Jong-gil have to investigate several assassinations that leads them to the robbery of CTX a liquid explosive that South Korea has recently develop and everything seems to be connected with Bang-hee.

This elite group of soldiers was subjected to a violent and bloody training, showing that just the faster will survive, and this one is Bang-hee; probably, one of the first films in Korea that gives such strong and representative role to a woman.

   This story line is mixed with the romance story between the agent Yu Jong-won, and Myung-hyun, the owner of a fish store. Later, on the film, both Yu Jong-won get to know that the identity of Bang-hee and Myung-hyun are the same.

   This one will be the most complex character, on one side, in love with Yu Jong-won, won’t be able to confront him and on the other side, she will feel the duty she was trained for.

   Kang Je-gyu seeks to appeal the feeling of reconciliation and unification of Koreans. Under the expression “for the unification”, North Korean soldiers, acting outside of the government, try to provoke a war to reunify the country.

   This film, example of the resurgence of Korean cinema base on a very deep nationalistic feeling, leads to a new genre about reunification that later on will produce other films, also with a great success such as JSA or Taegukgi.