Abstract

This is a paper that approaches Na Hong-Jin's The Chaser, The Yellow Sea, and The Wailing as drama series of chase and escape among boys. A boy is a person who dreams of becoming a father but fails to achieve this status. For a boy to become a father, he must murder the existence of the father who has been at the authority of his life and make room for himself to stand on his own. The boys who could not kill their fathers themselves imitated similar adults and held on to the values of the nation and the head of household. However, the IMF crisis and the introduction of neo-liberalism create fissures in the boys’ fragile identities. The governmental power loses its authority. The boys dream of restoring strong and private masculinity. They also have women in their lives and use violence against women who refuse them in order to build their own identities. The Chaser, The Yellow Sea, and The Wailing explore the family structure of the mom-daughter relationship. The boys seek to occupy the absent place of their fathers. Eom Joong-Ho of The Chaser is the procurer and he chases Ji Young-Min to recover his belongings, Mi-Jin. The audience agrees with the chase of the procurer because of Eun-Ji, the daughter of Mi-Jin. His compassion for Eun-Ji conceals and delays his desire as the procure. Kim Gu-Nam from the The Yellow Sea sneaks into Korea to take his wife back. His doubts and desire to win back the unfaithful woman are purified and denied by his young daughter. The daughters in The Chaser and The Yellow Sea were placed on the safe side of a fight of males. But Hyo-Jin, the daughter of Jong-Gu in The Wailing, is targeted as a woman and involved in a competition of boys. In the three works, the collapse of values sustained by boys is shown symbolically through the portrayal of governmental power as being weak. The weak masculinity of the policemen is now replaced by the monstrous masculinity of fighting alone and chasing women. It is shown in the figures of Eom Joong-Ho, Kim Gu-Nam, and Jong-Gu who takes off the police uniform. There are visible signs of denial and inner longing for father in this figures. But the boys who lose their women feel disoriented once again as if they have lost their destinations in life. You can observe this by watching the midday sprint scene of Eom Joong-Ho in The Chaser, the bullet wounds and crying scene of Kim Gu-Nam in The Yellow Sea, and the final monologue of Jong-Gu in The Wailing. Through speedy editing and genre directing of Na Hong-Jin, the boys’ violence and running have become more realistic and urgent. But in the boys’ pursuits that are packed neatly to fit the genre and the women's figures that are displayed as objects, the violent desire of the boys are set back and get across to the audience only faintly.