The bloody brilliance of Park Chan-wook’s JSA

Park Chan-wook is a genius. But more than being a master technician, he is also easily one of the most ballsy artists Korea has ever produced. Throughout a career that’s as bloody as it is beautiful, he’s tackled the "Big No-Nos": incest, religious mania, scorched-earth revenge, lesbianism, colonialism, North Korea, suicide and the soul-crushing weight of capitalism. He doesn’t pander to the masses, and he sure as hell doesn’t bow to the media. While other people are busy making "content" for the lowest common denominator, and we’re told to reflect on the supposed depth of a K-pop performance, Park has been busy expanding the culture. Listen to him speak on his first major movie, “Joint Security Area”: “Even when I make movies that delve into the internal mind of individual characters, I always think about that character’s relationship with the society they belong to and how they interact with others. I believe that is the most important duty of art.” And thus when this movie was released in 2000, it presented us with a psychological treatment of what goes on in the

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