Hong Kil Dong [DPRK 1986]

홍길동
Director: K. Kim
Cinematographer: H. Jon

A martial arts film in the style of similar films from Hong Kong, this movie tells the story of Hong Kil Dong, a legendary 15th century Korean Robin Hood figure. It is a mildly entertaining action film with an anti-feudal message.

There are two comments on IMDB about this film which are interesting. One is from a Bulgarian user who says that this film was among the most popular movies in Bulgaria during the 1980s, and that it had more psychological depth than other martial arts movies being shown at the time. Another is from a user from the ex-USSR who says that it was also very popular there, and recalls the blood spraying everywhere and so on. These comments are interesting because they show that there were many young people in socialist countries in the 1980s who found this sort of thing captivating, much as young people did in the West. The latter comment is particularly so because it might hint at part of what was called the 'cult of sex and violence' in the late 1980s in the USSR, i.e. the uptake among youth of images of sex and violence that were increasingly available with glasnost. Yet in this case, this is a film with a clearly Communist message, even if it is delivered with more gratuitous blood and violence than one would normally see in a socialist film.

The Communist message comes through the life of the protagonist. He is the son of an aristocrat and a concubine, and learns martial arts in order to protect his mother from bandits. After being shunned by aristocratic society, he becomes a kind of superhero figure, protecting ordinary people from banditry and also forcing landlords to feed starving peasants. Then, when the country is afflicted by Japanese ninja raiders, he rallies together bands of fighters from around the country to defeat the ninjas. But even so, the king refuses to allow him to marry his aristocratic lover. So, he flees the country with his mother and his lover to try to find a land without the same class distinctions.

Thus, while in some Western films one would have expected the protagonist, having saved the country and vanquished the evildoers, to get the girl and everything else. But because of feudalism, Hong Kil Dong cannot be justly rewarded; instead, he gets nothing but injustice in return for his sacrifice. This does not make his role any less heroic. In fact, it makes it clear that he is all the more honourable, because he selflessly saves his country even though the social system of his country is against him. So there is an obvious hero role that is built up here: he has a strong allegiance to his mother, to the people, to his country, but not to feudalism, and must therefore fight against and escape injustice. While it is therefore similar in its anti-feudal heroic theme to Pulgasari, it is different in not suggesting anything directly about capitalism, and in placing more emphasis on the role of the individual.

As Confucius and Taoism get mentioned in this film, one might wonder about how they are intended to come across, in comparison with e.g. Girls in My Hometown, which seem to condone them somewhat, or Chinese movies like Breaking With Old Ideas, which directly malign them. It seems to be a mix here. Hong Kil Dong is imbued with his power by Taoism, which gives him practically superhuman abilities. Boys are praised as wise for quoting Confucius, which could of course just be a historical reference. But certainly the fixed hierarchy of class divisions and the aristocracy which might be respected by a Confucian come under serious fire. Of course, those who claim that the DPRK is a Confucian society often claim that the old structures have been transplanted onto new individuals, so that there would be no contradiction in condemning the old hierarchy while retaining some of the old ethic. But there is certainly an unmistakeable individualist and revolutionary bent to this film, though Hong Kil Dong stops short of being a revolutionary. It may have more of a classical socialist moral than a Confucian one.

Another aspect is the portrayal of women here. We see that even aristocratic women appear rather helpless and under the control of external circumstances; Hong Kil Dong's lover is an aristocrat, who is just as harmed by class distinctions as he is, because she cannot marry him. Thus, there is perhaps a certain amount of the idea which has been repeated widely, from Shostakovich's 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk' to Lucía, that in pre-socialist society female members of the elite were often also oppressed by their position. But the message has to be tempered somewhat when one remembers the rather conservative gender roles espoused in Girls in My Hometown; at least if that movie is to be believed, socialism may have freed women from having to marry within a narrow class, but in the DPRK it has not stopped them following rigid gender roles and asking family permission to marry.

There is not a lot to be said about the style of this film that cannot be said about any other martial arts film. It makes extensive use of highly exaggerated, caricatured and comical shots; fast zooms; highly stylised choreographed fighting, etc. There is a great deal of blood, which seems to be there mainly for the purpose of titillation. Overall it has a kind of cartoon-like feeling and one can see where it might have appealed to young people in the 1980s.