HOPE Explained: Why Korea Is Divided Over Na Hong-jin's New Film

🏝️ Become a Islander!    / @hanafromkorea   What do we do when we meet something we can't understand? Na Hong-jin's new film HOPE turns that question into a village, a rumor, and a tiger no one ever actually saw. Ten years after The Wailing, Na Hong-jin returns with HOPE, a film set in a fishing village pressed against the DMZ in the 1980s. When a dead bull turns up covered in claw marks, the village decides a tiger has come down from the North. Nobody has seen it. It spreads anyway, because a tiger is a threat the village already had a word for, and the truly unfamiliar thing has no word at all. Using the film as a doorway, this video traces how a society reaches for a familiar name whenever it meets the unnameable. It looks at Korea's long habit of anti-communist labeling, at the word ALIEN that sat on Korea's foreign residence card from 1966 until 2021, and at the choice to give every alien role to a Western face. It draws on the philosopher Byung-Chul Han, who argues that a society able to tolerate only sameness ends up pushing away whatever is genuinely different, and on the critic Shin Hyung-chul, who reminds us that real newness almost always arrives unfinished and uncomfortable. I watched HOPE twice, once at a press screening and once on opening day. Walking out of The Wailing ten years ago, I carried a quiet unease for days. Walking out of HOPE, I felt something closer to relief, like I had finally been let go after being dragged along. This is my attempt to read both faces of the film, the heavy allegory and the light joke, and to sit with the discomfort instead of reaching for the weapon in the closet. 📌 Chapters 00:00 Na Hong-jin's HOPE 02:57 It All Starts With a Tiger 04:10 No One Ever Said ‘Tiger’ 05:23 Anti-Communist Banners, Flying Again 06:32 Merciless Randomness 07:57 Outsider, Foreigner, Alien 09:18 Why Are the Aliens Played by Western Actors? 10:33 Audiences Who Want to Be Served, Audiences Who Surrender 12:59 “Why Can He Ride So Well?” 13:51 Swearing Instead of Periods 15:06 A Camera That Tangos With Its Actors, and a Sound Mix That Falls Short 16:28 Change Your Fate 18:54 Let Go of the Need to Control 21:13 The Uncomfortable New Thing 25:23 Hana's island 🎞️ For more stories    • The Stories Korea Tells Itself   Talking about art and life. An island that reads the world, Hana's Island 📩 [email protected] #HanafromKorea #NaHongjin #HOPEmovie #KoreanCinema #FilmEssay