This film is composed of seven life segments of Kim Yong-ho. The opening scene is the scene where the protagonist shouts "I want to go back" and commits suicide in front of the speeding train. This is probably the most well-known scene in Korean film history.
Why did Kim Yong Ho commit suicide? Judging from the timing of his life, in 1979 he was still innocent, dreaming of "taking a camera and taking pictures of all the little nameless flowers", a young man working in a factory. In May of the following year, when he was on a military service mission to suppress the people, he accidentally killed an innocent female student (the background is the Gwangju incident in May 1980). Retired from the army, he chose to engage in police work that was very inconsistent with his original personality, and gradually went astray. From the beginning, he had no experience in interrogating prisoners, and later he tried his best to punish pro-democracy activists (the background was Chun Doo-hwan's dictatorship from 1981-1988, the "Constitution Declaration" in 1987, and the student riots). After democratization, he left the police and became rich by running his own business (the background was South Korea's economic growth in the 1990s). However, Kim Yong-ho's experience in the military, police and shopping malls has made his character gradually become violent and indifferent, causing the family to fall apart. In the end, he decided to end his life due to business failure, stock holdings and divorce (the background was the Asian financial crisis of 1997).
The protagonist's life went to a dead end, on the one hand, because of his many wrong choices, but at the same time, it was also inseparable from the shape of his environment and the changes of the times. The reason why this film is recommended is precisely because the director not only clearly outlines the development of Korea since 1979, but also brilliantly demonstrates the sociological imagination "connecting personal troubles and public issues, biography and history".
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