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Issue 104 Summer 2008
THE BOMB BLAST
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Lee Young-ae in Lady Vengeance, 2005. All images courtesy of Park Chanwook and Tartan Films.
I was feeling pretty damn fierce. I had just finished filming on the CBS drama N.C.I.S. here in Los Angeles—popping a guy’s kneecap, disarming a bomb and taking down a North Korean terrorist cell—Hollywood style. That evening I came home and watched director Park Chanwook’s new film Lady Vengeance, 12 hours before my flight to Seoul, Korea, and two days before meeting with Park. And, oh my, talk about female ferocity! Bone-chilling, muscle-exhausting, jaw-tightening ferocity like no other. And all from the seemingly sweet, pretty, petite Ms. Kumja (played by breathtaking and unnerving Lee Young-ae). Instead of Lady Vengeance’s dead-giveaway English title, the Korean is deceptive, Sweet Ms. Kumja, one of those titles your parents would mistakenly pick up at the video store.
I had never seen so many Korean women depicted like this—vengeful, humiliated/humiliating, ugly, raw, vulnerable, beautiful, sorrowful, soulful and fierce—all in one film. Lady Vengeance depicts Kumja’s journey of revenge to track down the abusive father of her estranged daughter and to seek resolution with the child, who was adopted by an Australian family. It was an exciting ending to Park’s beautiful, violent and grotesque vengeance trilogy, which also includes Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2001) and Cannes’s Best Critic award winner Oldboy (2003)—Hallryu-wood style. Hallryu translates as “The Korean Wave,” a term first coined in the Chinese media to describe Korea’s enormous recent cultural impact throughout Asia in film, TV dramas, fashion, sports, music and more. At its forefront is director Park Chanwook. I had the privilege of meeting with him in Seoul, where I was this past winter teaching a drama intensive and enjoying the Lunar New Year with my relatives.
