Courtesy of Netflix

Korea is a country of revenge. A country of scars. Resentment. Hatred. Love. Resilience. Triumph and tragedy in equal measure. Never more has this idea been more evident to me than today: March 1st. One hundred and six years ago, the people of this land voiced their desire to be free from the oppressive rule of a foreign colonial force. They raised their flags. Shouted in unison. And demanded what was rightfully theirs. It was the voice of the oppressed. That history is still alive today, breathing, in the politics, the media, the art, and the soju-soaked conversations of dive bars from Cheongnyangni to Changwon. It’s a voice that should resonate with many around the world, from Gaza to Donetsk .

Perhaps one of the best ways to understand Korea’s attitude towards revenge is through the stories it has told itself. How it has best tried to communicate this most destructive of human emotions. The West had Hamlet and all that befell the Shakespearean prince in his quest for retribution. It had the Bible and the command that vengeance was the Lord’s and not right for humans of this earth. Later, Hollywood would create a series of Revengeamatics: "The Searchers" starring John Wayne, Charles Bronson’s "Death Wish," "Taxi Driver," "Rolling Thunder," "Hardcore" and basically much of Tarantino’s recent output, from Jews killing Hitler in "Inglorious Basterds" to slaves killing their masters in "Django Unchained." In Korea, there’s the early work Park Chan-wook.

Here vengeance runs through the lives of the downtrodden, mixed with Confucian ideals of duty, retribution, and familial honor. "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" (2002), the first film in Park’s revenge trilogy, is a tragedy in the purest sense — one that unfolds like a Shakespearean bloodbath, but stripped of soliloquies and instead told through cinematography, cathartic violence, and an unrelenting sense of moral ambiguity.

The silence of the unheard

Ryu, the deaf protagonist, is the film’s mute Cassandra, doomed from the start. The moral conscience who predicts ill to come and warns that punishment will follow and grief........

© The Korea Times