Director Hur Jin-ho’s film ‘Assassin(s)’ is inspired by the 1974 August 15 shooting of the First Lady.
Rather than pinning down the people behind the incident with a single answer, the film unfolds by tracing the questions surrounding the scene at the time.
The parentheses and plural ‘s’ in the title are also a choice intended to leave those questions open.
3-Line Summary
1. ‘Assassin(s)’ does not presume who was behind the incident.
2. It adds fictional characters to the 1974 incident.
3. The ‘s’ in parentheses is a notation that leaves questions open.
The Incident That Took Place at the National Theater of Korea on August 15, 1974
According to a Hankook Ilbo report, during the Liberation Day ceremony held at the National Theater of Korea in Jangchung-dong, Jung-gu, Seoul, on August 15, 1974, Mun Se-gwang, a Korean resident of Japan, fired a gun toward the stage. President Park Chung-hee was not injured, but First Lady Yuk Young-soo, who was beside him, was hit by a bullet and died.
The investigation headquarters at the time concluded that Mun Se-gwang had attempted to assassinate the president after receiving instructions from a North Korean agent through the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, and Mun Se-gwang was executed later that year. However, the report said that suspicions surrounding who was behind the incident continued for a long time.
‘Assassin(s)’ uses historical facts—including this incident and Mun Se-gwang’s subsequent execution and the dismissal of dozens of police officers—as its framework, while making the characters who pursue the incident fictional. Rather than merely reproducing the historical event as it happened, it is a period drama that adds the perspectives of characters looking at the investigation and reporting of the time.
The Questions Pursued by the Detective and Reporters in the Film
Cheol-gu, the detective played by Yoo Hae-jin, was responsible for security at the ceremony. Feeling that the scene he witnessed did not match the investigation headquarters’ announcement, he digs into the incident.
Park Hae-il plays Jae-hwan, the head of a newspaper’s social affairs desk, while Lee Min-ho plays Young-il, a rookie reporter covering the scene. The two reporters are also portrayed as becoming involved in the coverage after developing doubts about the government’s investigation results. The film is a mystery pursuit drama that follows the people behind the assassination, while also capturing 1970s media control and the tense social atmosphere of the era.
Director Hur Jin-ho said that he used many hypothetical lines in this work so as not to hastily conclude why the facts related to the assassination came into existence under certain circumstances. Accordingly, the pursuits and dialogue of the characters in the film are better understood not as a confirmed answer to the incident, but as questions posed by the director.
What the ‘s’ in the Title Points To
The film’s title places ‘s’ in parentheses after ‘assassin.’ Director Hur explained that he chose this notation because he did not want to establish whether there was one assassin or several.
This choice condenses the work’s attitude. What the film presents is not a conclusion about a specific person or group behind the incident, but the gaps and questions surrounding a single historical event. Viewers follow the clues pursued by the detective and reporters, but at the end, the film does not offer a definitive answer in their place.
Director Hur said that he remembered the incident when he was in the 5th grade of elementary school and felt, after reading a related screenplay about 10 years ago, that it could be made into a film. The film also connects the atmosphere of censors residing at newspaper offices at the time with the Dong-A Ilbo reporters’ Declaration of Free Press Practice in 1974. He explained that he wanted to portray not only the incident itself, but also the people who tried to speak the truth in an oppressive era.
References
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