The Korean drama that "dares to shoot" cannot change the real school violence, which is really embarrassing.
Reporter | Zhou Jie
On March 10, the second season of "Dark Glory" starring Song Huiqiao returned, which once again set off a heated discussion on the Internet, and won a high score of 9.4 points on Douban as soon as it was broadcast. In this drama, Qiao Mei changed the gentle and cute screen image of the past, and created Wen Dongen, the nemesis who was carefully planned and step-by-step after school bullying, and the whole story is tight and suspenseful.
School bullying movies have long become an important subgenre of Korean movies. Korean dramas that have been popular such as "The Heirs" and "The Penthouse" have portrayed many typical school bullying behaviors, such as isolation and exclusion, and beatings. Among the many works with the theme of "bullying" in South Korea, "Dark Glory" sets the story timeline on the revenge plot of the protagonist as an adult, which is undoubtedly new.
However, from another point of view, although Korean film and television works take social themes as the starting point and have made many excellent works, "school violence" in real society is endless, and these works do not seem to change the stubborn diseases of this society. The Korean drama that "dares to shoot" cannot change the real school violence, which is really embarrassing.
Open hanging Wen Dongen
No longer the love of the soft girl in "Blue Life and Death Love", Song Hye Kyo changed into a cold black dress, determined to take revenge on Park Yeon-jin's group that bullied her in high school.
At the end of 2022, Song Huiqiao returned with her new Netflix drama "Dark Glory", and the reputation after the first season was broadcast was quite good, and the current Douban score reached 8.9. Netizens joked comments: Double Song showdown, Song Huiqiao is slightly better this year. It turns out that Song Huiqiao's ex-husband's new drama "The Little Son of the Chaebol Family" was also broadcast in the same schedule, and it is also a revenge drama, but in terms of the depth of the theme, it is slightly inferior.
In "Dark Glory", the protagonist Wen Dongen played by Song Hye Kyo was bullied in high school and dropped out of school, and after years of dormancy, she embarked on a carefully planned revenge to make the bully perpetrator pay for the evil deeds.
The burns on the body of the heroine of "Dark Glory" Wen Dongen are shocking.
The leader of the bullying group is the chaebol Kim Park Yeon-jin, and among the five are rich second-generation, there are church families, children of ordinary families and gangsters. And Wen Dongen was born into a single-parent family, poor and beautiful, which is an important reason why she was chosen by bullying groups to be the target of violence. The bullying in the play is not simply a fight or fight. Wen Dongen was burned all over his body by the curling iron, and the hideous scars on his skin not only did not receive the mercy of the bullies, but became their daily pastime; Wen Dongen had to wear tank top shorts on a cold winter day, burying his scorching limbs in the snow for a moment of peace... The accumulated bullying behavior has brought serious psychological trauma to the heroine, so that when she saw this group of abusers again many years later, the scarred wound was still faintly itchy.
You may wonder why Wen Dongen didn't seek help from his teacher. Because of the deep family ties behind the bullying team, Wen Dongen, who was already on the weak side, could not be protected by anyone - her homeroom teacher and principal shielded the abuser and gave her a slap in the face; The police also act as umbrellas; Even her mother took the settlement money and chose not to pursue it. And the only infirmary teacher who gave her warmth and wanted justice for her was transferred by the dark forces. Wen Dongen himself eventually had to drop out of school.
But that's not the end. Wen Dongen, who dropped out of school, listened to the dreams of five bullying groups on the indoor basketball court: a good wife and mother, a golf course owner, a painter, a flight attendant, and a millionaire. And when Park Yeon-jin, the first perpetrator of the bullying, asked Moon Dong-eun's dreams, Moon Dong-eun, who had dreamed of becoming an architect, replied: My dream is you, Yeon-jin.
Yes, her dream has become revenge on Park Yeon-jin.
How easy is it for a poor orphan girl to start a revenge? This is also a very important part of the logic of the script, otherwise, the whole story cannot be established.
Wen Dongen first worked in a restaurant to solve the problem of food and clothing and accommodation; Then she went to work in a dyeing factory, studied during the rest of others, completed the content of the adult college entrance examination, was admitted to university, fought for the establishment of teachers, and part-time tutoring also gave her a small treasury and was able to implement her revenge plan.
Wen Dongen, who "easily" solved the head teacher, opened the first step of revenge. For more than a decade, Wen Dongen has been following the bullies' "Facebook" all the time, recording the life trajectory of each of them. The rest of the bullying group, Wen Dongen chose to break them one by one, and the way down was very smooth. The highlight came to Park Yeon-jin, the first culprit of the bullying group, the eldest sister who did whatever she wanted in school, and now not only a weather anchor on a TV station, but also married into a wealthy family, has a promising husband, and lives the life of "good wife and good mother" of her dreams. What does Moon Dong-eun have to do to take down Park Yeon-jin, who has a powerful power?
Moon Dong-eun rummaged through the school principal's trash can every day, finally got the principal's handle, and became the homeroom teacher of Park Yeon-jin's daughter Ha Ye-wan by threatening, which is her first step in revenge; "Hunting" Park Yeon-jin's husband is the second step of her revenge; Subsequently, she discovered the true identity of Ha Yeon-jin - it turned out that Ha Yeon-jin was not the daughter of Park Yeon-jin and her husband, but the illegitimate daughter of her and another person from the bullying group, and just like that, Park Yeon-jin's solid defense layer seemed to have been torn open.
The first season came to an abrupt end here, and how Park Yeon-jin will fight back is the focus of the second season. However, the villain of this drama has not been reversed, and everyone in the bullying group has got the ending they deserve, which can be said to be a-for-tat revenge drama. Many viewers joked that in order to see Yeonjin's end, they stayed up late to watch the finale.
"Dare to shoot" Korean film and television
As mentioned earlier, "Dark Glory" is the latest work among many Korean "bullying" themes, and there is no end. Another school violence theme "Weak Heroes" is also a classic work that returns a tooth for a tooth and fights violence with violence, but the end of this drama is not as beautiful as "Dark Glory", and I can only sigh after watching it.
The protagonist of "Weak Little Heroes" is a seventeen or eighteen-year-old teenager, and the main scene is a high school campus, telling the story of a boy with a weak physique and superior brain power, who uses psychological, tools and other auxiliary means to resist the violent person. In this play, students commonly use items: pens, tables and chairs, wrenches, dumbbells, fire extinguishers, shoelaces, belts... can be used as a weapon to join the battle, the picture is full of flesh and blood, and it is terrifying to watch.
Yan Shi'en is weak in size, excellent in grades, a loner, and constantly provokes the bullies in the same class, ignoring it, and angers the bully Quan Yongbin. Quan Yongbin instigated Wu Beanshi, who had just transferred to another school, to stick the contraband fentanyl to Shi En's neck during the exam, causing him to fail the exam, and angrily, he launched his first resistance. Yan Shi'en calmly analyzed the advantages of the enemy and ourselves, adapted measures to local conditions, attacked them unprepared, poked the back of his hand, covered his face with curtains, slammed into the point, and fought Quan Yongbin without any power, which also became Yan Shien's "battle of fame".
Until Ahn so-ho, who was born a combat athlete, came forward to stop it, Jeon Yongbin would not be disfigured. It's not because he is Jeon Yongbin's accomplice, in fact, An Xiuhao is the most chivalrous character in this play, and pulling a knife to help is his criterion when he sees the unevenness, and Yan Shi'en was initially provoked, and it was also An Xiuhao who came forward to teach Shi En a lesson for this group of bullies. However, his family was poor, and he had to deliver takeaway food at night to earn living expenses, and slept directly at school in the second half of the night.
With justice in mind but no background, it also paved the way for An Xiuhao's tragic ending.
Although Wu Beomshi, who transferred to school, came from a powerful family, as an adopted son, he was often scolded and angry by the adoptive father of the congressman, and he was just a tool for his adoptive father to create his own people-friendly and kind persona. Lacking family love, he formed a natural dependence on Ahn so-ho, and the three became a small group against bullies.
However, the relationship between the three people is not actually equal, and when outsiders join the group, the paranoid Wu Beanshi feels that the balance of the trio is broken. He actually changed from a protected object to an abuser, and bought a lot of money to hurt An Xiuhao, making An Xiuhao a bedridden vegetative person. When Yan Shi'en learned of this, he retaliated against every participant in the incident with blood for blood, but he also had to transfer to a school full of gangsters under the influence of Wu Fanshi's adoptive father. Wu Fanshi was sent abroad to study, and his adoptive father left him to fend for himself and threatened to send someone to kill him.
The volume of 8 episodes makes "Weak Heroes" look short and concise, but its aftermath is long. In this drama, the audience can hardly see the figures of parents and teachers, and even if they appear, they are all negative images, although the process of fighting violence with violence is refreshing, but in the end it cannot end the violence, and the absence of adults makes the ending irreparable.
This sense of powerlessness against school violence seems to pervade Korean film and television productions.
Why can't the sun shine into reality
The story "Dark Glory" is based on the 2006 violence of female high school students in Cheongju, South Korea. A 14-year-old female student was bullied by her classmates for "untrustworthy" and "lying" reasons. In addition to beating the victim with pins in the chest and with books and ball bats, the perpetrator also burned the victim's arm with an electric baton roll in the classroom, and if the wound scabs, the perpetrator would tear open it again and burn the same area. In the end, the female student suffered severe burns, herniated tail vertebrae, and scarred arms, legs, and chest, and the main perpetrator was sentenced to detention, while the school and teachers who failed to respond properly to school violence were administratively punished.
"The Crucible", based on real events, has caused a major sensation in South Korea.
In 2005, South Korea exposed that in a school for the deaf and mute in Gwangju, from the principal, the director of general affairs to most ordinary teachers, had directly participated in violence or sexual assault of hearing-impaired students in the school, and the victims ranged from 7 to 20 years old. After the film was released, millions of people signed the old case to revisit, and then the investigation was reopened, and after a new verdict, the culprit in this case was sentenced to 12 years in prison and the school was closed. In the same year that it was released, 208 members of South Korea's National Assembly passed the "Partial Amendment Act to the Special Law on the Punishment of Crimes of Sexual Violence", also known as the "Melting Pot Law", with 207 votes in favor and 1 abstention.
"Dare to shoot" has always been the impression of Korean film and television, but even if the campus darkness is exposed, "school violence" in Korean society is still endless, and the sun seems to be difficult to shine into reality.
"Juvenile Court", adapted from the 2017 Incheon elementary school girl corpse case, tells the story of a 13-year-old boy who strangles a boy with a wire, dismemberes the body, throws the organs into the kitchen waste bucket, and the chopped body is thrown into the water tower on the top floor. The plot is already bloody and cruel, but the real case is even more appalling, two girls in the real case lure the girl home, the modus operandi is the same as in the play, and one of the girls even gave the girl's finger as a gift to netizens.
The court subsequently sentenced the principal offender and the accessory to 20 and 13 years' imprisonment respectively under the Psychiatric Act and the Juvenile Code. South Korean society reacted strongly to this, and the public even called for the revision of the juvenile law, but the law has not yet been amended.
Yonhap News Agency reported on March 3 that 90.8 percent of students who experienced violence in schools last year reported it to schools, parents, or counseling agencies. The proportion of students reporting increased with age, reaching 89.9 per cent of elementary, 93 per cent and 95 per cent of high school students, respectively. But only 41.1 percent of respondents said the problem was resolved after reporting it to an adult or school. More than 10,000 students who have suffered verbal violence say they receive no help when trying to solve the problem.
Even high-profile public figures have been frequently exposed to school bullying. According to incomplete statistics, since the beginning of February 2021, more than 10 idols and actors in the Korean entertainment industry have fallen into the storm of "school violence". For example, Kim Jialan of the girl group LESSERAFIM, and Kim Hyunjae, a draft artist, and so on.
The most ironic thing is that after the broadcast of "Dark Glory", the director of the play, An Jiho, was also involved in the storm of school violence, and a netizen who claimed to be Angie Ho's junior broke the news, because he and other classmates made fun of Angel Ho's girlfriend at the time, and An Ji Ho was emotional and called more than a dozen people to beat and threaten them, and the atrocity lasted for more than 2 hours. Before the second season aired, Angie Ho had been denying this, but on the day of the second season, Angie Ho publicly admitted that he had abused others on campus and expressed his apologies: "I deeply ask for forgiveness from those who were injured by this incident, and if I have the opportunity, I will meet in person or convey my gratitude by phone." ”
Why is "school violence" repeatedly banned in Korean society? In fact, whether it is from "Dark Glory", "Weak Heroes" or "The Furnace", we can get a glimpse of the leopard. The class system of superiority and inferiority has long been a tradition of default in Korean society, and seniors establish internal social rules that juniors must obey unconditionally.
In 2010, a female college student in South Korea died of an overdose, and the cause of death was a drinking game with her predecessors. If you can't remember the name of the specific senior, you must be fined alcohol, and the deceased was poured more than 3 bottles of shochu within half an hour.
In other words, Korean society has acquiesced to this class-driven violence, which is a characteristic social atmosphere in Korea, and no one thinks that bullying and violence are wrong. When the perpetrator feels that harming others without any consequences, and can level the victim through money and privilege, it also creates a hotbed of school violence.
Although South Korea has also made many efforts to do so, starting in 2020, the Ministry of Education established the "School Violence Response Committee" under the Education Support Agency under the National Education Agency, and abolished the school-based "School Violence Committee". However, as long as this hierarchical social order has not changed, it is obviously impossible to put an end to the phenomenon of school bullying by relying on a few TV series.