The President's Last Bang (Geuddae geusaramdeul), directed by Im Sangsoo, is a Korean film, with a "based on a true story" initial title, which purports to explain events surrounding the 1979 assassination of President Park Chunghee (Song Jaeho), whose military coup topped a fledging democracy in 1961. The assassin is Kim Jaegyu (played by Baik Yoonshik), the head of Korea's CIA whose physician informs him one day that his days are numbered due to liver cirrhosis acquired while serving as the president's drinking buddy. Although the movie is hyped as a satire, the depiction of characters is certainly irreverent and almost macabre; the men are assholes, the women are fools. That is, there are no protagonists; many use macho profanity as if reading a script from the Nixon tapes, but clearly showing no political sagacity. The explanation for the assassination appears to be that a recent crackdown of student demonstrators in Masan and Pusan is too mild for some of Park's inner circle of generals, who contemplate wholesale massacre of protestors, a deliberate slap at advice given by the American ambassador to show moderation. Meanwhile, President Park seems so out of touch with reality, getting drunk while entertaining young women, that he is not aware that power has slipped from his hands. Kim, appointed only two years earlier, is upset because he is reduced to arranging presidential trysts at the KCIA safehouse and is at odds with army generals. The KCIA, however, is not blameless. In one scene, KCIA interrogation chambers are unveiled: Two men, stripped naked, are told that their private parts are unworthy; two other men are roughed up in separate rooms to extract information; and two women are threatened of dire consequences if they fail to disclose information that they do not possess. In any case, Kim has organized a crude assassination plot "for the sake of democracy." His minions, Ju (played by Han Sukkyu) and Min (played by Kim Eunhsoo), who have been awaiting the order for some time, finally put the plan into effect one evening while the president is drunk. However, Kim shoots the president, who does not die at first, so he has to track down another pistol. And Kim is himself arrested (and eventually executed, though his fate is not revealed in the film). The film ends before the installation of the next president, who soon succumbs to a military coup led by General Chun Doohwan. Later, Chun pursues a crackdown on opposition so severe that progressive forces gradually mobilize to force irreversible democratic changes by 1988. Four minutes from a documentary about student protests as well as film footage of the funeral procession have been excised from the film, presumably at the request of the late President Park's daughter, a current leader of the opposition party, though the unflattering portrayal of her father remains. MH
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