Not every movie can remain earnest and heartwarming despite the protagonist strolling around his South Korean hometown in a T-shirt emblazoned with Taiwanese obscenities. It gets more absurd later when we find out he owns different colors of the same shirt, and even his Korean love interest wears one.
However, it’s a fitting juxtaposition in Jang-Gae: The Foreigner as the mixed-heritage Gwang-yong (Ho Yeh-wen, 賀業文) tries to be as Korean as he can, clashing with his parents about giving up his Taiwanese passport for a South Korean one. His strict father insists on speaking to him in Mandarin, constantly reminding him to remember their roots.
Ho delivers the nuances of the extremely introspective Gwang-yong’s personality well, perhaps because he also shares a similar background as a third-generation Chinese-Korean. The movie’s title, transliterated as “sauce dog,” is a derogatory term toward people of such backgrounds, referring to a time when Chinese immigrants in Korea were restricted to working in restaurants that sold black bean sauce noodles. It is Gwang-yong’s least favorite Chinese food: you just can’t cover up the smell, he says not-so-subtly.
Photo courtesy of Joint Entertainment
This identity is often confusing, even to Chinese-Koreans like the Lee family, who do not have roots in Taiwan. His father was born in South Korea to Chinese immigrants fleeing the Chinese Civil War, but over half a century later they’re still seen strictly as “foreigners” and don’t have Korean citizenship. Since they emigrated when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) still ruled China, they ended up with Taiwanese documents after the party retreated to Taipei.
Like many overseas Chinese during those days, Gwang-yong’s father attended university in Taiwan. But since he doesn’t have household registration in Taiwan, he couldn’t enjoy full rights despite his citizenship, making this marginalized group feel stateless. Until 2015, they even had to obtain visas to visit Taiwan, and the movie briefly shows footage of “passport equality” protests in front of the Taipei Mission in Korea.
Gwang-yong’s father grew up in a time when Chinese in South Korea were denied citizenship, restricted from property rights and barred from attending Korean schools. Things have changed for Gwang-yong’s generation, but he still suffers from discrimination and is denied significant opporturnities solely due to his status.
Photo courtesy of Joint Entertainment
“They look Chinese but they’re not Chinese, they have Taiwanese passports but they’re not Taiwanese, they were born in South Korea but they’re not Korean,” Director Chang Chih-wei (張智瑋) told the press after the film premiered at last year’s Tokyo International Film Festival.
This quandary is not explicitly explained in the film, but the never-ending challenges that Gwang-yong faces are enough to pique the viewer’s interest in the oft-forgotten issue. After all, not even all people in the situation are aware of it — not even Gwang-yong, who can’t explain to a classmate why he has Taiwanese citizenship.
Despite this background, the plot is actually quite typical for this sort of coming-of-age film, with too many cliched narrative devices designed for emotional appeal. Perhaps that’s what Gwang-yong would want, however, as a regular teen just longing to fit in.
Photo courtesy of Joint Entertainment
But even the cheesier scenes are made somewhat intriguing with Gwang-yong’s identity constantly looming. For example, after one of those “let’s let loose at the amusement center” scenes that inevitably ends up in a karaoke box, his love interest insists that he sings a Mandarin song. He’s surprisingly good despite his usual reluctance to speak the language.
Gwang-yong’s character development is also strong enough to keep the interest of those who want more than just a teen romcom. Director Chang’s experiences as a half Taiwanese, half Korean who grew up in South Africa definitely contributes to the intricacies of such a character.
Chang explained the T-shirt’s significance during the movie’s premiere last year in Tokyo, noting that besides a swear word, gan (幹) also means “just do it” and “tree trunk.”
Through prominently displaying the offending character throughout the movie, Chang wants to draw the audiences attention to the intense conflict and internal discord felt by young Chinese-Koreans like Gwang-yong.
The terms “Hell Joseon” and “Ghost Island Taiwan” are also brought up in the film, used by cynical youth unhappy with their respective countries. Gwang-yong is aware of both terms, but that still doesn’t help him feel accepted in either place.
Taiwan’s overtaking of South Korea in GDP per capita is not a temporary anomaly, but the result of deeper structural problems in the South Korean economy says Chang Young-chul, the former CEO of Korea Asset Management Corp. Chang says that while it reflects Taiwan’s own gains, it also highlights weakening growth momentum in South Korea. As design and foundry capabilities become more important in the AI era, Seoul risks losing competitiveness if it relies too heavily on memory chips. IMF forecasts showing Taiwan widening its lead over South Korea have fueled debate in Seoul over memory chip dependence, industrial policy and
“China wants to unify with Taiwan at the lowest possible cost, and it currently believes that unification will become easier and less costly as time passes,” wrote Amanda Hsiao (蕭嫣然) and Bonnie Glaser in Foreign Affairs (“Why China Waits”) this month, describing how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is playing the long game in its quest to seize Taiwan. This has been a favorite claim of many writers over the years, easy to argue because it is so trite. Very obviously, if the PRC isn’t attacking Taiwan, it is waiting. But for what? Hsiao and Glaser’s main point is trivial,
And so, in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all the experts on the Strait of Hormuz suddenly became experts on US-China-Taiwan relations. The Internet has certainly expanded human knowledge. Lots of these sudden experts made noise this week about Trump’s words after the meeting with PRC dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平). Trump is going to sell out Taiwan! Longtime Taiwan commentator J. Michael Cole summed the situation up neatly in the Guardian: “We need to keep in mind that he has a tendency to say many things — sometimes contradicting himself within
It took 12 years and months of standing in the same mountain location for director Liang Chieh-te (梁皆得) to capture a few seconds of footage: Taiwan’s largest resident raptor locking talons with its mate and spinning through the air in a courtship ritual. With only about 1,000 left in the wild and very short flight windows, the mountain hawk-eagle remains among Taiwan’s most elusive birds. The species generally produces only one offspring per year. Using forest cameras, the film crew and research teams document the arduous process the monogamous pairs go through for the chick to hatch and grow up, weathering
RSS