Park Chan-wook’s breakthough Joint Security Area, released twenty years ago, was a smash hit that became the highest grossing Korean film ever at that time and shone the international spotlight on Korean cinema for the first time in a long time – a spotlight that remains to this day. JSA is a taut thriller about trust and betrayal, but with a lot more simmering beneath the surface (this is technically a spoiler-free post, but that said, if you haven’t seen this movie yet, it’s probably best to go in completely blind). Park had made a couple of films when he was much younger, but without much success, but after becoming a film critic for a number of years, he returned to filmmaking with this immensely satisfying film.
The story opens with an investigation of a fatal and precarious incident at the DMZ, and we watch through the eyes of the neutral Swiss investigator, Sophie E. Jean (Lee Young-ae), as she interviews those involved and starts putting the pieces together. It is a deadly serious whodunit, shaping up to be a A Few Good Men kind of legal drama, when it takes a sharp left turn to romp around as a comedy for a little while, showing a sense of humor that Park rarely displays in his other films. The tonal shift is deftly navigated as we switch to the perspective of those involved in the shooting, including South Korean Sergeant Lee Soo-hyoek (Lee Byung-hun) and North Korean Sergeant Oh Kyeong-pil (Song Kang-ho).
The investigative intrigue giving way to satire highlights the absurdity of having an arbitrary line at the DMZ, and serves as a commentary on human friendships and brotherhood transcending cultural and political boundaries. The way that these relationships grow is inventive and unqiue, as is the premise itself. Forbidden love is a tale as old as time, but this makes you think that there should be more stories about forbidden friendships. North vs South Korean politics is a tricky subject matter, but Park does a masterful job of humanizing a sticky geopolitical situation.
Although the last act unforgettably shifts yet again into another gear, Joint Security Area is crafted with a restraint that Park doesn’t always show in his later films, but even here we can see how confident Park was. There are shots that are executed with such flair – the vivid flashbacks, the freeze frames, the moments of tension and suspense and action. Park is a filmmaker of wonderful range and boundless creativity, and Joint Security Area shows that he was destined for greatness.
In fact, Joint Security Area was a watershed moment for Korean cinema writ large. It kicked off a number of young actors’ careers, and ushered in the the so-called “New Korean Cinema.” The late 90s and early aughts were a breathlessly exciting time in the cinematic landscape of this small peninsula. Along with Park, a generation of new filmmakers, including Bong Joon-ho, Kim Jee-woon, Lee Chang-dong, Kim Ki-duk, and Hong Sang-soo, led the rise of critically and commercially acclaimed films that were bold, artistic, stylish, emotionally accessible, and garnered international recognition to boot. Oldboy is the most famous one, memorable for its shocking and violent nature, but Joint Security Area is arguably the archetypical South Korean film of the 21st century – mysterious, entertaining, smart, and culturally accessible.
Historical significance aside, JSA is outstanding on its own, even devoid of any context or knowledge of Korea political history. The active camerawork, striking visuals, sharp editing, and vivid characters make it a truly timeless film. It is multi-dimensional, at times heartwarming and dramatic, at others thrilling and suspenseful; at times it is a war movie, at others it is a gritty noir. In these increasingly divisive times we live in, Joint Security Area is a movie that is as rewatchable and important as ever.
Joint Security Area is the perfect first Korean film for anyone to wet their toes in Korean cinema. It has history, drama, and action. It has everything a good film should have. I watched it when I was in Australia on SBS which is a free to air public broadcast network. That was more than a decade ago and I still remember the movie fondly.