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Ko-pick: Catching Criminals in Korean Detective Films
The much-anticipated Veteran (2014) sequel I, The Executioner by Ryoo Seung-wan has gone on release in time for the Chuseok (Thanksgiving) holidays in Korea, one of the biggest holiday seasons of the year with families across the country coming together. It is poised to do well with the original selling 13 million tickets in 2014. Presales are illustrating it will open to impressive numbers this weekend with over 280,000 tickets prebooked ahead of its release today, September 13. There are also few other films being released given the expectation for it to dominate during the holiday.
Much will depend on word-of-mouth but with the film having screened in both Cannes and Toronto garnering strong reviews, it is expected to give the industry a further boost in what is a complex post-Covid landscape. Chuseok last year saw several titles underperform including Kim Jee-woon’s COBWEB (2023).
I, the Executioner sees Hwang Jung-min’s character track down a serial killer with the help of rookie played by Jung Hae-in. It also stars Oh Dal-su, Jang Yoon-ju and Kim Shi-hoo, which also featured in the original.
This week owing to the release of the Veteran sequel we will take a deep dive into Korean detective films beginning with Kang Woo-suk’s Two Cops released in the 1990s before moving onto the contemporary era with Tell me Something (1999), Public Enemy (2002), Wild Card (2003), Running Turtle (2009), A Hard Day (2013), Confidential Assignment (2017) and Miss and Mrs. Cops (2019).
One of the most significant and popular titles of 1993 was Two Cops, an early example of an action-comedy, which is a sub-genre that has consistently drawn in a crowd at the box office in Korea – both Veteran and The Outlaws (2017) lean quite heavily on humor to drive the stories.
Starring the duo Ahn Sung-ki and Park Joong-hoon who featured in several Korean films together including Park Kwang-su’s Chilsu and Mansu (1988), the pair – as the title suggests - play two detectives. Ahn’s cop is more unorthodox in his approach to his work, while Park’s detective is more principled but this changes as the narrative progresses after a woman comes into the police station.
It's directed by Kang Woo-suk who would become one of the leading figures in the Korean film industry in the 1990s and 2000s after he founded the powerful studio Cinema Service in 1993. Two Cops as one of the first successful films centering on detectives was a turning point in Kang’s career as director and producer and, also for the wider industry given how prominent his production would be. The success of Two Cops would also lead to two sequels: Two Cops 2 (1996) (also directed by Kang) and Two Cops 3 (1998) helmed by Kim Sang-jin in what was the first Korean detective series. It came twenty years before The Outlaws and The Roundup, which is now the most successful franchise in Korean cinema history centering on Don Lee’s muscular detective.
A darker and more cerebral detective feature, Chang Yoon-hyun’s Tell Me Something (1999) captures the sinister and violent themes that would come to dominate many of the Korean films that would end up travelling overseas like Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) and Public Enemy (2002).
Tell Me Something is not the conventional procedural thriller. Set in the summer of 1999 in Seoul, it focuses on a detective (Han Suk-kyu) who is assigned to a case of gruesome homicides. They are linked to a curator at a Natural Museum (Shim Eun-ha) and he befriends her looking for clues, which becomes the focal part of the feature.
With a new generation of directors and producers entering the industry in the mid-to-late 1990s, there was a noticeable shift towards more daring imagery and storytelling as directors sought to challenge conventions, leaving audiences sometimes with more questions than answers. The challenging nature of Tell Me Something might be frustrating to some viewers but made at a time when directors were keen to experiment, it’s also very much reflective of the era in which it was made.
Kang Woo-suk’s second series to focus on a detective was his Public Enemy films in the 2000s that begin with Public Enemy released two weeks before the Lunar New Year holiday in 2002 accruing 3 million admissions despite its 18-rating – this was no family-friendly police thriller.
Starring Sol Kyung-gu as a tenacious hard-boiled cop who hunts down a nefarious serial killer (Lee Sung-jae), it’s a simple premise but is executed very effectively with two stellar performances as the increasingly desperate detective and psychotic murderer collide.
Sol’s character is also interesting for its portrayal as an anti-hero cop facing internal investigations over bribery. While police in Korean films are sometimes portrayed as weak, incompetent and corrupt, this was taken further. Sol’s role as the detective was undoubtedly one of the central reasons for its success.
The popularity of the film led to two successful sequels directed by Kang: Another Public Enemy (2005) and Public Enemy Returns (2008) with Sol returning as the protagonist as he comes up against two other psychopaths.
Less intense than Public Enemy and more lighthearted – though not without its violent moments – Wild Card released in 2003 directed by Kim Yoo-jin centers on a pair of detectives and their team who are tracking down a gang of young killers.
While it doesn’t enter new territory and generally sticks to the formula of Good vs. Evil that been an effective form of storytelling in procedural thrillers illustrated in films like Veteran, it does deliver in terms of execution and is well-paced.
Featuring Jung Jin-young and Yang Dong-geun as the detectives racing against time before the gang preys on their next victim, it also stars Han Chae-young as one of their police colleagues.
One of the breakout debuts in the late 2000s was Na Hong-jin’s The Chaser (2008), which starred Kim Yoon-seok as a former detective hunting down a sadistic serial killer. His next role in Running Turtle (2009) as a rural detective – also as a disheveled man – in pursuit of a fugitive is reflective of some of the detectives in Korean films in the 2000s and 2010s with problems both at the precinct and at home.
Suspended from office, betting his wife’s savings on a bullfight, he finds himself in a real bind. Tracking down the notorious criminal on the run will help him salvage his reputation with his family and colleagues.
Directed and written by Lee Yeon-woo, the film’s engaging narrative and committed performance by Kim Yoon-seok who by the late 2000s was a bankable star enabled the film to succeed at the box office selling 3 million tickets in the early summer of 2009.
By the 2010s, some of the films featuring detectives were becoming even grittier with films such as The Unjust (2010) and Asura: The City of Madness (2016) depicting law enforcement and the justice system as amoral and corrupt. Kim Seong-hun’s A Hard Day (2013) also features a corrupt detective digging a hole for himself after a hit-and-run while intoxicated and is caught in the act by an unscrupulous Lieutenant. Tonally though it’s quite different.
Full of dark humor finding amusement in the most unlikely of places that includes a scene in mortuary where the detective attempts to get the body of the man he hit using a toy soldier action figure into the same coffin as his late mother.
After the passing, however, of the film’s leading actor Lee Sun-kyun in 2023, the film’s tone perhaps lands a bit differently. It is being screened at the Busan International Film Festival in October as part of program dedicated to the late actor.
A Hard Day premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014 to strong reviews and accrued 3.4 million admissions locally. It also stars Cho Jin-woong as the villain who recently starred in the Disney Series No Way Out: The Roulette (2024). Interestingly, in the drama he is the one who plays a detective who is caught breaking the law.
More mainstream is Kim Sung-hoon’s (Not to be confused with A Hard Day director) Confidential Assignment (2016), which features Korean A-list star Hyun Bin as a North Korean officer who collaborates with the police in Seoul led by Yoo Hae-jin’s detective Kang as they search for a dangerous North Korean fugitive (Kim Joo-hyuk).
Produced by hit-maker Yoon Je-kyoon and his production company JK Films it was a box office hit during the lunar new year season in 2017 accumulating 7.8 million admissions. It led to a successful sequel Confidential Assignment 2: International (2021) released in 2022 featuring much of the same cast that also includes Im Yoon-ah.
Like many action films or thrillers dealing with inter-Korean relations like JSA (2000), Secret Reunion (2010), Steel Rain (2017) and Ashfall (2019), it sees the protagonists from both sides of the border develop a friendship. Hyun Bin’s mastering of the North Korean accent would also be evident in the hit show, Crash Landing on You (2019).
Hitting screens in 2019, Miss & Mrs. Cops (2018) is notable for being a female-driven film. The crime genre in particular has centered on male protagonists with female roles tending to be supporting parts.
Directed by Jung Da-won, it stars Ra Mi-ran as a police officer who is having to sit behind a desk dealing with civil complaints after she has a baby, while her unemployed husband is at home. Together with a passionate colleague (Lee Sung-kyung) who is also her sister-in-law, they investigate ‘spy-cam porn’ case after a woman who comes in to file a report is later run over in front of them.
With those higher up in the chain of command refusing to assist it deals with some of the troubling issues facing women in Korean society as they attempt to track down those involved in this digital sex crime. It was also released as the “Me Too” movement in Korea was gaining momentum in the late 2010s.
Editted by Shim Eunha
Written by Jason Bechervaise