A South Korean film about the attempted assassination of former president Park Chung Hee has become the source of a growing dispute over historical accuracy and artistic freedom, with its lead actor under police protection and an international film festival refusing demands to withdraw it.
The Assassin(s), directed by Hur Jin Ho and starring Yoo Hae Jin, Park Hae Il, and Pachinko’s Lee Min Ho, dramatises Mun Se Gwang’s shooting of Park during a Liberation Day ceremony in Seoul in 1974.
Park survived the shooting but his wife, Yuk Young Soo, was fatally wounded and died later that day.
The official investigation concluded that Mun, a Korean resident of Japan with links to North Korea, was part of a plot to assassinate Park. He was convicted and executed in December 1974.
The film takes a different approach to the shooting, however. It follows three fictional characters who begin to question the official account after noticing that six shots were fired at the ceremony but only four bullets were recovered.
Police detective Cheol gu, newspaper editor Jae Hwan, and rookie reporter Young Il investigate the whereabouts of the two missing bullets and raise the possibility that Mun may not have acted alone.
The backlash began within days of the film’s release, led by South Korea’s conservative opposition People Power Party, which argued that it went beyond fictionalising an event and cast doubt on an established account of Park’s death.
Party leader Jang Dong Hyeok called the premise “absurd” and accused the filmmakers of insinuating that Park was behind his wife’s killing. Lawmaker Yoo Young Ha, longtime associate of Park’s daughter and former president Park Geun Hye, described the film as “political propaganda”.
Then, the Park Chung Hee Presidential Memorial Foundation, which promotes the former president’s legacy, demanded the production company apologise and that cinemas stop showing the film. It argued that the theories raised in The Assassin(s) contradicted the investigation and court records from 1974, according to SBS News.
In a statement, the filmmakers said the film combined real events and people with fictional characters and situations. “Nowhere in the film do we identify a specific person as being behind the events, nor do we present the hypotheses and dramatic settings in the film as historical facts,” they said.
Choi Min Hee, a lawmaker for the ruling Democratic Party, defended the film. “Isn’t filmmaking about creating works of fiction based on historical facts?”
As the backlash grew, it reached the actors. Lee’s social media was flooded with criticism and Burger King had to disable comments on adverts featuring Yoo after users called for him to be dropped.
Last week, a conservative civic group named New Freedom Solidarity said it had filed plans for daily protests outside Yoo’s home until the end of the month. Its leader, Kim Sang Jin, told the state news agency Yonhap that they wanted Yoo to “also appear in right-wing movies so that there’s a political balance”.
On 4 October, around 50 members of New Freedom Solidarity and another conservative group gathered outside Yoo’s residence with loudspeakers, leading to the deployment of riot police.
The following day, Seoul police put Yoo under protective measures and increased patrols around his home.
The safety concerns soon affected the film’s presence at the Busan International Film Festival, South Korea’s biggest international film festival. Lee’s scheduled appearance was cancelled, followed by the withdrawal of the film’s entire delegation.
The Assassin(s) production house, Hive Media Corp, said the cast and crew would no longer attend the festival, citing “the safety of audiences and attendees”.
The row even reached the national parliament, where lawmakers argued over “historical distortion” and “restrictions on imagination and creative work”.
All 109 lawmakers from the PPP signed an open letter urging the Singapore International Film Festival to drop The Assassin(s) as its opening film, arguing that “creative freedom doesn’t mean freedom from responsibility regarding historical facts”.
The festival refused, saying the film was chosen through an independent curatorial process for its “artistic merit and contribution to contemporary Asian cinema” and that it “respects the creative vision of the filmmakers”, according to Variety.
The Assassin(s) received strong support from South Korea’s film fraternity. The Directors Guild of Korea said criticism of the film had “crossed the line into personal attacks”, while a coalition of 19 film organisations said that “no one’s daily life and safety should be threatened simply for taking part in a work or voicing an opinion about it”.
Despite the noise around it, The Assassin(s) has been doing very well at the box office, passing 2.4 million admissions by 6 October and topping the Korean box office over the National Foundation Day holiday, when it drew about 590,000 viewers.
It has also had a warmer reception overseas, premiering at Toronto International Film Festival to a standing ovation and finishing as runner-up for the festival’s International People’s Choice Award. It has since been invited to festivals in Rio de Janeiro, Paris, and Hawaii.
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