
Jagadangchak: shidaejeongshin kwa hyeonshilchamyeo | Self Referential Traverse: Zeitgeist and Engagement by Kim Sun
KOR 2011, Forum

Kim Sun
Jagadangchak: shidaejeongshin kwa hyeonshilchamyeo | Self Referential Traverse: Zeitgeist and Engagement by Kim Sun
KOR 2011, Forum
Seven years after his wonderful satire, "Capitalist Manifesto", Kim Sun is back in the Forum with another brazen attack on Korean politics. Jagadangchak means "self-contradiction," but contradictory seems to be the least harmful adjective for Lee Myung-Bak’s government. The first part of the film takes the president to task in the form of a family sitcom, in which the daughter drives her government-friendly father crazy with her arguments: That, for example, Lee had so much success as the mayor of Seoul with the restoration of the Cheonggye Stream that he is now, against better judgment, pursuing a disastrous project to build a canal across Korea from the Yellow Sea to Busan. However, the main victim of this irreverent film is the Korean police mascot Podori, who would like nothing more than a pair of legs and goes about getting them in a pretty contemptible manner. Although Podori learns quite a bit about love and sex, he remains powerless against his enemies, the Styrofoam-munching rats. As the plot unravels, Kim’s enjoyably anarchistic work becomes more and more like a wild happening. The laugh is always at the loser’s expense.