Cinema September 4: 1987: When The Day Comes

South Korea Has a Dark Past Too Guys

South Korea is still an up-and-coming nation on the world stage today, much as its status is skyrocketing ever higher. We have all seen evidence of their soft power; BTS (pause for day dream) conquering Western music markets; Parasite winning at the Oscars; Squid Game becoming the most-watched show on Netflix, the list is impressive. People are starting to realise that South Korean culture is worth paying attention to, and will maybe learn more about the country as time moves on.

But, this journey to the centre of culture is a recent one, in the global sense at least. Up until very recently, South Korea has been known largely for one thing: it has two halves. You’ve probably heard. Because of this famous divide, much of the ignorant world has tended to see it in simple dichotomies: I know I did. North: bad. South: good. North: Communist. South: Capitalist. North: dictatorship. South: democracy. For the most part, these are accurate statements (well, we’ll leave aside the moral judgements of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as directly associated to systems of government- I don’t have the energy), but only very recently.

If you know a lot about South Korea, maybe you’ve lived here, have Korean family, or just love your history, you’ll know that up until the late 80s, this country was most certainly not a democracy. It was actually led by essentially a series of military dictatorships by varyingly worrying individuals (how many non-worrying dictators are there?) right up until 1987. Much as the country is now as democratic as any other developed nation (as far as I know), it is within the memory of pretty much every generation above mine in South Korea that this was not always the case. This former world of South Korea, and how it came to an end, is the subject of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2017 political thriller 1987: When the Day Comes.

I mention the context that some people may not be aware of to open this review, as, if you aren’t aware of it, the film may be pretty shocking. Not in terms of the level of violence or disturbing imagery, but simply in the extent of the torture enacted upon civilians. 1987 tells the story that led up to the June Democratic Uprisings in the country, and, whilst I don’t want this whole thing to be a history lesson, it’s worth reiterating that the Korea we are in here was under the heal of a dictatorship.

The too long didn’t read summary? President Chun Doo-hwan announces who the next president will be, making the need for those pesky elections he promised unnecessary. Students (who had very much been protesting this shit for a while) up their action against this, specifically after the revelation that one of their own, Park Jong-cheol, was tortured to death by police who then tried to cover it up. Given that I know about the cover-up, it clearly didn’t go well (it was actually exposed by some Catholic priests, proving they can occasionally do good for the world) and eventually led to huge protests and an eventual agreement to hold the country’s first fully democratic elections.

OK I’m not good at summaries. But there you go, you know now. This film tells the personal stories that made up these events, showing the cogs that made the machine work, if you will. Beginning literally with the moment Jong-cheol’s heart stops beating, we are introduced to a huge web of characters. From the police who’ve tortured him to death, through to the anti-communist unit overseeing these torturers, the prosecution office dealing with the case to the stifled journalists, all the way out to the prison guards and the protesting students, there are a lot of characters in this movie.

And that is because there is a lot of story to tell. It may seem, with a cast this expansive, that it would be hard to follow, much less connect to any of the characters. However, the structure of the story cleverly stops this from taking place. Director Jang has described it as working like a relay race between characters: we are initially led by Ha Jung-woo’s Prosecutor Choi, later by humble prison guard Han Byung-yong (Yoo Hae-jin), and eventually by his niece Yeon-hee, played by Kim Tae-ri. Every segment of the story has a central figure, and each central figure connects, removing the need for a main character that would not make sense for the narrative.

The beats of this story are structured so well that the film is relatively easy to follow throughout. In many stories dealing with government cover-ups or complex historical moments, the risk seems to be either massive over-simplification, or over-complication. Whilst 1987 is definitely a movie that needs attention, it keeps a hold of a central thread that we can see from beginning to end.

The film is also remarkable in its restraint on the emotional front. Again, it is worth stressing that the events portrayed in the film are ones that happened in the memory of all South Koreans over the age of about 40. It would undoubtedly be easy to push the passion and feeling overboard in a story this charged, and there are moments that do teeter into this territory. The most forced of these moments is in the fictionalised love story between Yeon-hee and the real-life student activist Lee Han-yeol.

This plotline pushes a sense of the sentimental onto the latter, and gives the former an impetus to believe in the cause that she could have just developed from her own family’s situation. But, unnecessary as it was, even this love story is delicate and never overwhelms the film. Scenes show characters filled with grief, rage, and frustration, but these are always framed as their own unique moments. Aside from the beginning and the end, there is little swirling music telling us to ‘feel, god damnit, feeeeeel!’ We simply see the characters’ reactions to the world around them for what they are, and it makes the film sincerer for it.

Now as I said, this is aside from the beginning and the end. Because boy, for every moment that the film held back, more and more emotion was poured into the final moments. I don’t consider this a weakness of the film: it makes sense to have the climactic part of your story be the time when the passion bursts through. In fact, the film’s restraint in lionising its characters who are fighting for democracy is commendable, and it earns the right to give these characters their spotlight and their respect at the end.

While Prosecutor Choi is initially shown as curmudgeonly and begrudging in his help at the film’s opening, and Yeon-hee’s reluctance to be involved with the movement for liberation is extended as far as possible, at the film’s close, we are shown full honour and heroism in the people protesting for democracy. It really goes the whole hog here- slow-motion shots of the cannister fire that killed activist Han-yeol, scenes of gigantic crowds singing patriotic songs, and, of course, footage of the real events that inspired everything. Whilst describing this makes it sound almost cliché, and maybe it is, this ending is effective for what has come before it, and I did even shed a tear. Showing patience and restraint in explaining the story behind these protests means that the film fully earns its turn to patriotic melodrama in the closing moments.

Coming out of watching 1987: When the Day Comes, I was reminded starkly and thrillingly of the world that gave us the South Korea that exists now. I say thrillingly because this is very much a well-paced thriller, but one with control in telling its historical story. I pretty much always head straight to Google after watching any ‘based on true events’ story, and this was no different. I feel like this film will have that effect on any non-Korean who chooses to watch it, and that is its great legacy. Korea’s history has always been important and complex, way before the late-capitalist critiques of Squid Game et al. This film is a great way to uncover that history, and to start a further dive into the place that South Korea was, and how that’s made it what it is now.