Bong Joon-ho’s movies share a common worldview, so much so that his filmography can easily become a metaphor for today’s struggles.
With the upcoming release of Mickey 17 at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2025, there is no better time to revisit Bon Joon-ho’s movies and the way they can be interpreted as a metaphor for today’s world.
At the beginning of Bong Joon-ho’s The Host (2006), a creature emerges from the Han River, where the American military personnel had dumped chemical waste some years before the events of the movie. Soon, this monster starts terrorizing and infecting the residents of Seoul, and Park Gang-du (Song Kang-ho), a clumsy vendor whose daughter has been abducted by the creature, decides to put an end to this and save his loved ones. Also set in Seoul, Parasite (2019) follows a poor family, the Kims, who infiltrate the lives of a much wealthier family, the Parks, and trick the latter into employing them and letting them into their home.
In Okja, the titular character is a giant pig, the loyal companion of protagonist Mija (Ahn Seo-hyun), who has cared for the animal for years while living in South Korea. But one day, Okja is taken away by the Mirando Corporation, a multinational conglomerate that specifically bred the super pigs for mass consumption, and Mija must embark in a rescue mission to save her best friend. The science-fiction theme in Bong Joon-ho’s filmography continues with Snowpiercer. Taking place almost exclusively aboard a train that travels across the globe during a post-apocalyptic ice age, Snowpiercer follows Curtis Everett (Chris Evans) as he leads a revolution from the very tail end of the train, where lower class passengers reside, to the top where the much wealthier elite lives.
On a surface level, Bong Joon-ho’s films are very different. Spanning more than 10 years of the director’s career, The Host, Snowpiercer , Okja , and Parasite are examples of how Bong Joon-ho excels in different genres – horror, science-fiction, action-adventure, and black comedy mixed with thriller, respectively – working with different levels of budgets, and with different languages, as he worked both with an exclusively Korean cast, like in Parasite, and with an English-speaking one. However, there is still a lot that all these movies have in common in the way they invite a reflection on our current situation today.
The Internationality of Bong Joon-ho’s Films
When it comes to Okja and Snowpiercer, the internationality of Bong Joon-ho’s movies is easy to see. Both predominantly in English, with an English-speaking part, and produced in the United States as well as South Korea, they are the perfect example of how the director is able to express universal themes in an international context while still maintaining his very own cultural specificity. Bong Joon-ho’s movies manage to be, at the same time, foreign and familiar. On the one hand, the director uses well-known Hollywood conventions, but on the other, the social and cultural environment of South Korea may be unfamiliar to most of the international audience.
Most of Bong Joon-ho’s films have the social and cultural context of Korea in common, even if not all of his movies are set in South Korea. Not only are The Host and Parasite set in Seoul, but the capital of South Korea becomes a key element of both plotlines rather than being just a setting. In Parasite, for example, the living crisis in Seoul is depicted in the very small basement apartment the Kims live in. While the family living in it is very much fictional, the entire story reflects on a very real issue that the city of Seoul is still facing. The same happens in The Host where the real-life problem of the pollution of the Han River becomes the driving force behind the movie’s plot.
Both The Host and Parasite are inspired by problems and situations that are very specific to South Korea, where the films are set, but they are extremely relatable to an international audience as well. At their core, the questions that they tackle can easily cross national borders. The living crisis is not a problem that is exclusive to Seoul, but instead something that almost every major city across the world has to deal with. The question of pollution of natural resources also applies to most of the world, not just the Han River in South Korea. This allows the non South-Korean audience to be able to relate to and understand these movies and the message they may want to portray.
Capitalism as A Myth
In many of his films, Bon Joon-ho reflects on the economic system of modern capitalism, often suggesting that its promises of wealth for everyone who works hard for it may be illusory. While capitalism may often be associated with the United States – as the country’s economic system is almost exclusively based on the privatization of goods and services, which is the very foundation of capitalism – this issue is analysed in The Host and Parasite just as much as in Bon Joon-ho’s more American movies, namely Okja and Snowpiercer.
“They are all stories about capitalism,” Bong Joon-ho himself said about his films in an interview with Vulture in October 2019, a few months before his triumph at the 2020 Academy Awards. In The Host, the monster that emerges from the river is a personification fo the damage done by the Americans – representing a richer foreign power that has access to a wide variety of resources – to both the natural resources of Seoul. The creature hurts the inhabitans of the city too and, interestengly, the people affected in the movie often end up being the less wealthy, such as a street vendor or a homeless man. When it came out, The Host was criticised for its anti-American sentiments when, in reality, the movie’s critique is directed towards capitalism as a whole rather than the United States and its government.
Okja also directly criticises the capitalistic mode of consumption which encourages people to consume more and more goods in order to obtain a financial gain from it. This is what happens in the film as the super pigs invented by the Mirando corporation are simply a way for the multinational to earn more money than its competitors. After all, the antagonist in Okja is the CEO of a big corporation headquartered in New York City, which is a clear indication of what the movie seeks to reflect upon.
The entire driving force behind Snowpiercer is about the forbidden movement between social classes. The latter are represented by the different sections of the train with the wealthiest people at the front and the poorest at its tail end with far worse living conditions and forced into labour to keep the train going. The fact that some people are forced to live in much harsher conditions is incredibly unfair, as is the fact that they are not allowed to move at all from their pre-assigned section of the train. Both of these serve as a not so veiled metaphor of capitalism where the few wealthy people have access to more money and resources compared to the poorer majority who has to work and struggle, without much chance of moving from the social class they were born in.
The same happens in Parasite. the Kim family does anything in their power to climb the socio-economic structure, at first by orchestrating a plan to each get a job for the Park’s family and later by literally infiltrating their home and taking advantage of their wealth while they are away. The Kims also dream of one day being able to live like the Parks in a huge house with housekeepers and chauffeurs that will do anything they ask. Their desire to climb upwards in society is represented by the many stairs and physical hills the characters walk up in the film. Just like in Snowpiecer, the ending of Parasite shows us that his social movement is entirely illusory. No matter how hard the Kims – or Curtis and his rebel group in Snowpiercer – they will never break the pre-determined social structure that capitalism imposes.
The Question of Class Struggle in Bong Joon-ho’s Filmography
Most of Bong Joon-ho’s movies seem to deal with the question of class struggle in one way or another: both Snowpiercer and Parasite are centred around a class-based uprising narrative. In Snowpiercer, the focus is on the conflict between different existing social classes. As Curtis makes his way up the train cars, he discovers that the people closer to the front have an entirely different lifestyle compared to the cramped and miserable living conditions he experienced at the tail of the train. The conflict, therefore, is between social classes as they experience an entirely different reality depending on where they live on the Snowpiercer train. In a world where the rich minority holds most of the resources and power, the train is very clearly a successful metaphor for the economic and political system that rings very true to today’s reality.
This is also present in Parasite as the Kims and the Parks belong to two very separate social classes. However, Bong Joon-ho’s latest movie also explores the very real issue of a clash within the same – less privileged and wealthy – social class. Halfway through the film, it is reveled that a man is hiding in the basement of the Parks’ house in order to hide from loan sharks. Clearly, he has a lot in common with the Kims in terms of their respective wealth – or lack thereof – but rather than creating a united front against a common enemy, the lower social classes end up fighting each other instead. Ultimately, they can’t work together because they all want to take the luxuries the Parks enjoy for themselves and not share it with others. Overall, in Parasite, there is no unity within the same social class. On the contrary, this solidarity is present in Snowpiercer as Curtis and all the people who are forced to live at the tail end of the train care and look out for each other.
The Portrayal of State Power and Hierarchical Structures
In The Host, Bong Joon-ho looks at state power in a not-so-favourable way. As the creature emerging from the river causes chaos and terror all over Seoul, both South Korean government representatives and the United States Forces Korea (USFK) don’t particularly care about identifying what caused it or how to keep the inhabitants of the city safe. On one hand, the USFK are indifferent to how their actions may affect the citizens of South Korea. On the other, the South Korean government is portrayed as largely inept and entirely uncaring towards its citizens in the middle of a significant crisis that puts all of their lives at risk.
State power is not explored in the same terms in Okja but the film does portray a hierarchial structure in the Mirando Corporation. The main villain of the movie, Lucy Mirando (Tilda Swinton) is at the very top of this hierarchy as the CEO of Mirando Corporation. It becomes very clear that, just like the state power in The Host, Lucy doesn’t care about the superpigs her corporation created nor about the people she may hurt when she decides to kill one of them. Ultimately, Lucy acts exclusively in her own interest and to preserve her position as CEO and the power and social status that come with it.
At the beginning of Snowpiercer, it is clear that moving from your assigned car in the train is not only considered a crime but it is also deemed impossible by the inhabitants of the train. When Curtis and the others try doing so, many end up dead – or severely hurt – as a punishment for their actions as the armed guards constantly try and stop them from reaching the front of the train. With its strict separation between the different train cars, the train itself suggests the fixed hierarchical structure that we often see in our world. The segregation between social classes and very little possibility of upwards movement between them is ultimately what defines the capitalist system that Bong Joon-ho tends to criticise in his filmography.
Parasite also reflects on the impossibility of social movement within a fixed hierarchical structure.In Bong Joon-ho’s latest movie, those who dare defy it and dream of moving past it seem to be punished for it. For example, Kim Ki-jung (Park So-dam) is the character who mostly embraces a richer and more lavish lifestyle in the movie. While all the Kims dream of such life, Kim Ki-jung almost seems made for it, as the characters themselves remark in the film. Amongst all of them, she seems to be the one who could potentially move upwards, but her attitude for social mobility is eventually punished in the movie. Changing one’s social class is not allowed and so, by the end of the movie, all the characters who try and do so end up either dead or trapped without the change to ever get near wealth and luxuries again.
Environmental Disasters in Bong Joon-ho’s Movies
Environmental disasters are also featured quite heavily in Bon Joon-ho’s cinematography. For example, climate change is the inciting incident in Snowpiercer. The ice age that forces everyone on a train was caused by a catastrophic attempt to stop climate change seventeen years before the opening scene of the film. The fact that life cannot exist outside of the train due to the freezing temperatures is also a consequence of climate change and one of the driving forces behind the plot from its very beginning. Everyone is forced to stay in the train, and accept the living conditions that come with it, because they know that if they step outside they will freeze to death. While the final scene may dispute this – the survival of a polar bear outside of the train would suggest that life is, in fact, possible outside of the train – Snowpiercer remains a chilling exploration of the way climate change and extreme living conditions trigger a war between classes.
The question of environmentalism is very much present in The Host as well. At the very beginning of the movie, over 100 bottles of formaldehyde are dropped in the Han River. This leads to multiple sightings of a strange being inhabiting the river and the waterways around the city in the next few years, the same monster that will end up attacking the citizens of Seoul. Therefore , the amphibious creature that haunts the city of Seoul and the characters in the movie is a direct result of the high levels of pollution in the Han River, or perhaps even a physical embodiment of it.
The Issue of Overconsumption
Environmental issues are very much at the heart of Okja too as the film explores the way mass production and mass consumption of meat can have a negative effect on the environment around us. Therefore, the movie is focused around the issue of overconsumption, another defining feature of modern capitalism, through super pigs. The latter are genetically modified pigs which are seen as the answer to extreme meat consumption. But the superpigs are animals with a sensibility of their own and when one of them has to be killed in order to satisfy the growing demands of meat, it becomes clear how much of an issue overconsumption is. As the movie goes on, the audience can see that there is nothing ethical about a system that is solely focused on efficiently meeting market demands, no matter how demanding they become and with no concern for moral principles or values. Okja is set in a science-fiction world, but its commentary on overconsumption rings true today, even five years after it first came out.
The same can be said for Parasite. While the poorer Kim family struggles to afford the bare necessities – including food, water, and even a roof over their heads – the Parks can have anything they want. From hiring chauffeurs and housekeepers to the extravagant garden party they organise for the youngest son’s birthday. Even in this case, the message is clear: when one side cannot have their needs met, the other clearly has too much but is not willing to share it. This is brilliantly portrayed in the scene where the Kims take advantage of all the luxuries in the house while the Parks are away for the night on a camping trip. But nothing can ever be equal for the two families as even the weather affects them differently based on their economic background. For the Parks, the severe rainstorm that approaches Seoul is merely an inconvenience that forces them to return early from their camping trip, but for the Kims a torrential rain means that they can never return to their apartment, now flooded with sewage water, and have to seek shelter with other displaced people across the city.
The topics of environmentalism, overconsumption, class struggles, and power hierarchy ultimately all refer back to the one consistent theme across Bong Joon-ho’s filmography: capitalism. The various films’ endings may indicate different possibilities for the future. Some are more hopeful, like Okja, with its positive ending where the pig survives or Snowpiercer when the train derails and explores, thus suggesting a dismantling of the system. Others are bleaker and more negative, like Parasite where, despite everything that happened, the social structure remains unchanged with the Parks still living in their luxurious house and the Kims struggling more than ever before. Despite the various conclusions and what they may mean, the one thing that remains clear is that modern capitalism, at least according to the director, is an unjust and flawed system. In this sense, his movies can tell us a lot about today’s world and offer interesting insights that invite reflection and criticism on the economic model we are used to in the West.
Mickey 17 will be released globally in theaters on March 7, 2025.
