Film critic Lee Dong-jin says he won't retract or apologize for 'The Assassin' review

A poster for "The Assassin" on display at a movie theater in Seoul. [Yonhap]

Film critic Lee Dong-jin said he has no intention of retracting his review of "The Assassin" or apologizing for it.

In a blog post Wednesday, Lee said the production team of "B tv Lee Dong-jin's Paiakia" had contacted him to say they would make his Sept. 25 review video private because controversy surrounding the film was continuing. "The video was subsequently set to private," he wrote.

Lee said that in the video he had expressed a range of views on the film's quality, strengths and weaknesses. He added, however, that one particular line — in which he said the film "cannot simply be dismissed as a conspiracy theory" — had been quoted in isolation, sparking a dispute over what he had meant by it.

"I made that remark in the course of explaining how the film handles certain unresolved questions — including questions surrounding the whereabouts and trajectory of the bullets fired at the National Theater on Aug. 15, 1974 — that are not easily answered by the official account alone," he wrote. "It was not meant to suggest that every hypothesis the film raises is true. And it had absolutely nothing to do with any claim that President Park Chung-hee was behind the shooting of first lady Yuk Young-soo."

Lee added that he understood different viewers might read different implications into certain scenes or plot elements. "But I do not believe that film contains — whether in its dialogue or its scenes — such an outrageous and absurd claim," he wrote. "It is my judgment that audiences watching this film would find it difficult to arrive at the interpretation that President Park Chung-hee was behind the assassination of first lady Yuk Young-soo."

He went on to say that criticism demanding to know how anyone could raise such a conspiracy theory while the family members are still alive was attacking an argument that does not exist. "That kind of criticism assumes a claim that was never made, and I find it impossible to accept," he wrote.

Lee said "The Assassin" is a dramatic feature in which actors perform, and audiences watch it knowing it is a fictionalized story, so the same standards applied to a documentary cannot be used. "Of course, there is plenty of room to debate where a dramatic film based on historical events should draw the line between fact and fiction," he wrote. "The Assassin can be criticized from that perspective, and I think that kind of discussion is necessary."

He said he hoped any debate about the film would take place after people had watched it in its entirety, and that criticism of his review would likewise be grounded in the full context of what he had said.

"Over the past 30 years of reviewing films, I have alternately drawn criticism from people on opposite sides of the political spectrum depending on the work," he added. "The views I expressed about this film in that video have nothing to do with my personal views as a citizen regarding the current political situation in South Korea."

"The Assassin," which opened Sept. 23, is based on the real-life events of Aug. 15, 1974, when Mun Se-gwang, a second-generation Korean Japanese, fired a gun in an attempt to assassinate President Park Chung-hee, resulting in the death of first lady Yuk Young-soo.

While the film does not explicitly identify who was behind the attack, it includes scenes in which some characters raise the hypothesis that figures close to President Park or the Central Intelligence Agency may have planned the incident. The People Power Party and others have criticized the film for distorting history.

The Park Chung-hee Presidential Memorial Foundation also issued a statement expressing "deep regret and strong condemnation" over what it called a distortion of a historical tragedy that had caused irreparable pain to the late president and his family.

yul@heraldcorp.com