Revenge and Fate in Park Chan-wook's Movies
The Korean film director Park Chan-wook's recent movies focus on tragic aspects of
human fate and revenge. "My themes repeating without my real intention, are violence both as
a criminal act and an evitable act committed by someone who wants to be rescued from the
misfortune." (Park. Interview 61) Like his statement, director Park portraits the
characters who can never escape from their fate. Then how are these distinctive features
represented in his movies? In what points are the movies same or different? "Sympathy for
Mr. Vengeance" (2002), "Old Boy" (2003), and "Three, Monster" (2004) clearly show how
explicitly Park has depicted the tragedy of human desire by using ironical devices and direct
"Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" (2002) is a story about a victim of fate who has lost his
loving daughter. After being fired from Dong-jin's (Song Gang-ho) factory, Ryu (Shin ha-
gyun), who has hearing difficulty, sells his kidneys to save his sister's life. But he gets
swindled by the secret dealers of the internal organs and he kidnaps his ex-boss Dong-jin's
daughter to make money. After a while his sister finds out the fact and commits suicide and to
make things worse, Dong-jin's daughter is drowned by an accident. Dong-jin thus carrys out a
revenge for the people who killed his daughter. therefore, Ryu and his girl friend as well as his
co-worker Young-mi (Bae Doo-na), are excuted by Dong-jin and at last, Dong-jin is also
killed by young-mi's anarchic revolutionist fellows. During his act of revenge as a judgement
on his daughter's death, Dong-jin gradually becomes a freak like other villains in this
movie. This is, above all, an invisible power named 'fate' has worked so importantly to put the
characters into the endless chain of misfortune and violence. If Ryu had not been a deaf
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