Whether it’s K-Pop or K-Drama, South Korea has forced itself onto the world stage as one of the most beloved and respected countries in the entertainment industry. In 2019, South Korea blew up the film industry by releasing a new movie titled “Parasite”. The motion picture quickly climbed up the “Top 100 Movies” ladder and hit the box office at a staggering number of $260 million U.S dollars. When I first watched the movie, I was intrigued by how such a simple film was able to capture the attention of international movie lovers. Recently, I rewatched “Parasite” and was able to decode its secret meanings and discern why it is so popular still to this day.
The Poor vs. the Rich
This theme is very apparent from the beginning of the movie. The Kim family lives in a poor area of town. They can barely afford wifi and clean clothes. Luckily, the son of the Kim family, Ki Woo, lands a job working for a rich family, the Parks, who live a few blocks away. The family creates false identities and lives off of the Parks’ affluence, just like a parasite lives off its host. The Kim’s will do whatever it takes to latch on to the Parks, even if it means to kill those who get in their way.
The ‘Lucky’ Rock
At the beginning of the movie, Ki Woo is given a rock by his friend as a symbol of good luck and prosperity. Unsurprisingly, luck hits the Kim family just in time. The Parks hire the Kim’s (not knowing they were a family) and assigned each of them a job to act as a butler, maid, or tutor. Later in the movie, the Kims’ house unfortunately flooded with water. Shockingly, the stone that was gifted by Ki Woo’s friends began to float. This indicates that the stone is hollow, foreshadowing that the Kims’ good fortune wasn’t really luck, but just something temporary to financially keep the family’s heads above water.
The Hidden Monster
After the Park family meets its gruesome fate in the end of the movie, Ki Woo’s father escapes from the crime scene and hides in isolation in the mansion’s basement. Ki Woo promised that he will earn enough money to buy the mansion so his father can safely escape without anyone knowing. With hope starting to build in the ‘Kim family reunion’, the end credits start to roll. Ki Woo begins singing a song, originally titled “564 Years”, to describe his fate of folding pizza boxes for a living. The director titled the song “564 Years” because it would realistically take Ki Woo that long to earn enough money to buy the Parks’ mansion. The film tells us that Time is the biggest monster for everyone in the world. We will never have enough time to reach our ultimate dreams, but it is how we use the time that we have that determines our future.
