Bong Joon-ho’s film highlights how South Koreans struggle as the gap between rich and poor widensFew would begrudge South Koreans their moment of joy after Parasite’s historic success at the Oscars. Not only was Bong Joon-ho’s film the first non-English language production in the Academy Awards’ 92-year history to win best picture – one of four
Oscars on the night for the director and his crew – it was long-overdue recognition by the global movie industry of the brilliance of South Korean cinema.
But the celebrations, led by the country’s president,
Moon Jae-in, concealed an uncomfortable truth about Bong’s masterpiece. Centring on the tension between the Kims, a basement-dwelling family of “dirt spoons” in Seoul, and the Parks, a family at the opposite end of the social spectrum, Parasite’s plot is predicated on the widening gap between the haves and the have nots in Asia’s fourth-biggest economy.