Parasitic Capitalism of Bong Joon-ho
After South Korea’s first democratic elections in 1993, film became an important tool for establishing Korean identity, national self-perception and collective dealings with traumas of the past. All this can be found in Bong’s filmography, in which he continuously breaks genre conventions, plays with audiences’ expectations, fiercely criticizes our contemporary social and environmental problems and deals with traumatic Korean history, marked with a series of oppressive authoritarian regimes. Parasite (Gisaengchung, 2019) is thus a logical culmination of Bong’s previous works that seems to be filled with anger and despair over the current state of the world.
The integral version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!