Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Monsters hide in plain sight, marking the arrival of sudden death. From the largest to the smallest, monsters always find a way to mess up the natural order of the world. In The beast (1975), or the French La Betethe sexual urges possessed by humans and animals are explored through the mythological story of the Beast of Gévaudan. The Iron Giant (1999) shares how humanity can become the architect of their own destruction or future. Colossal (2016) is about how addiction and abuse turn us and others into monsters; how both can be used as a coping mechanism for justified and unwarranted survival and self-defense.
They serve as an outer metaphor for the manifestations – malice, greed, and others – that condemn and corrupt our better nature. Ever since Godzilla warned us about the dangers of nuclear warfare, monsters have been both useful warning stories and entertaining monster mush. A monster mush began with malice to impregnate a despot, but ended in ironic justice. A Kaiju movie called Pulgasaria (1985).
Lost Film, Found Director
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North Korea had isolated itself after the Korean War with South Korea, which lasted from 1950 to 1953. Both Koreans carried out mass killings and destruction throughout major cities in Korea. However, North Korea’s “military first” socialist country tortured and starved their POWs. A truce was reached creating the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and separating North and South Korea.
The frozen conflict over the legitimacy of the government left the Koreans in a loss to a country. South Korea prospered economically after the war and became one of the world’s leading developed countries. North Korea remained an underdeveloped country under the dictatorship of Kim Il-sung. His son, Kim Jong-il, would replace him as the second supreme leader, but not before he proved his loyalty and spread loyalty to the country by making movies.
id=”firstHeading”>Shin Sang-ok was a South Korean director, affectionately known as “The Prince of South Korean Cinema”, who was married to South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee. Both were known for their films in South Korea in the 1960s. In 1978, North Korean intelligence kidnapped Shin and Choi and forced them into a restrictive creative contract led by Kim Jong-il. They were tasked with shooting South Korea’s first Kaiju science fiction film and lost film. Bulgarian (1962) in a North Korean anti-capitalist propaganda film.
Attack of the propaganda
That same year, Kim Jong-il became the Cultural Arts Director of the Motion Picture and Arts Department for the Propaganda and Agitation Department. He kidnapped two of South Korean stars, including employees of Toho Studios, the team responsible for creating Godzilla, to build the North Korean film industry. Choi was promised a directorial role and also an instructor at a drama academy in Hong Kong, where she had lived. Under the guise of these proposals, Choi was taken on a tour of North Korea, learning about the Kim dynasty and attending performing arts with Kim Jong-il, who stuck to every word Choi would tell about movies.
Six months later, Shin was imprisoned after learning of Choi’s disappearance and searching for her in Hong Kong. At the time, he divorced Choi and his film license for his production company, Shin Films or Shin Studios, was revoked, so he was unable to make films while traveling the world. The film couple were imprisoned for five years until their 1983 reunion at a party hosted by Kim Jong-il. In doing so, the director and actress remarried and were forced to make North Korean films for nearly a decade.
Liberty’s Bell goes true
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Bulgasari (meaning “impossible to kill”) is a Korean mythological monster that feeds on metal and attacks the oppressors of its suppressed summoners. Shin used the beast surreptitiously, unintentionally and wisely as a twofold metaphor. The beast represents the hidden rebellious nature of a disenfranchised people who take back their land from their enemy. The beast also represents the voracious North Korean rulers and the people who continue to yield to his commands and satisfy his hunger. Man’s duality is evident in this photo, despite its jingoistic tone and inclination.
Sacrifice for a cause, or self-sacrifice for your country, is a common theme in the film’s bittersweet ending. After the evil king is defeated, his daughter, having summoned the monster with her own blood, decides to hide in a bell that devours Pulgasari. The bloodline came from a paradoxical place: part oppressor (the king) and part oppressed (the rebellious daughter). In doing so, Pulgasari turns to stone and once again liberates the people from tyranny.
Shin and Choi found their own bell and applied for political asylum at the United States embassy in 1986. They were on a film festival tour in Vienna, Austria, where Kim Jong-il was seeking funding for a film about Genghis Khan. Shin found work in Hollywood before returning to South Korea; before his death in 2004 he had plans for a Genghis Khan musical! Pulgasaria was banned in North Korea until 2000, when it was released in South Korea and box office bombed.
Pulgasari is both a story about a violation of human rights and human nature, the manipulation along the road that turns people into monsters, and Pulgasaria is both a violation of human rights and a story of the collected and compromised human nature. Unfortunately and effectively, Pulgasaria shows the manipulation that turns men into monsters, in addition to the modesty and mortality that turns monsters into men.