Freedom of Thought and National Security Law in Recent South Korean Cinema:The Road Taken (Seontaek) and Its Genre

Abstract

These are two visions of the modern prison. For Foucault, the modern penal system is a disciplinary institution like the school, and he traces the transformation from physical torture into the “improvement” of the prisoner in modern confinement (Foucault 1979). This discourse is an image of prison which does not rely on naked force or brutality, though Foucault himself hardly approved of “modern” prisons. For Suh Sung and other former South Korean political prisoners in recent decades, there is little transformation in the tools and methods of the South Korean prison, an experience of violence and inhumanity particularly for political prisoners. This dark image of prisons and law does not surprise the Korean public, for whom prisons and penal codes reflect a traditional authoritarian state in its modern form. In modern South Korea, one particular law—the National Security Law, itself the successor to security laws going back to colonial times—has been particularly powerful in shaping this image of prison and law among the public. The Road Taken (Seontaek), released in 2003, was the first film to directly tackle the National Security Law and national security apparatus in South Korea. It is the central film in a new genre, released in the late 1990s, that deals with Korean reunification, repatriation, and the experience of “unconverted” political prisoners in South Korea. These films—Shiri (dir. Gang Je-Gyu, 1999), JSA