Abstract

In the past decade there have been several popular South Korean action genre films that focus on North Korean spies or government agents. In these films, the North Korean protagonist has superhuman physical strength and combat capacity, as well as a kind of purity of ideology and integrity, while his Southern counterpart is older, wiser, and with more human frailties. I call this category of action sub-genre films North Korean action hero films. In this essay I argue that such films reflect the cultural unconscious of South Korea’s Orientalist fantasy about North Korean masculinity (and society), which especially manifests in the films’ plot as an intense focus on the North Korean action hero’s perfect, strong body, combined with a nod towards the ultimate superiority of his Southern counterpart. Further, the paper shows the centrality of biopolitics in the films’ plot, as both regimes subject the protagonists to neoliberal practices in order to intervene and manage their bodies and futures. The two protagonists often bond, in fact, via their anti-neoliberal characteristics. The paper will then conclude by examining the current South Korean action genre cinema in light of its use of female characters and diegetic time.