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

Choi Seung-ho, a former MBC president and producer, has spoken out about the film "The Assassin."

In a Facebook post Thursday, Choi said he hoped people would "accept it as a film, criticize what deserves criticism, and leave politics out of it."

"The film is structured so that audiences can infer that President Park Chung-hee was behind the shooting," Choi said. "The narrative consistently steers the conspiracy surrounding the shooting toward the Cheong Wa Dae security service and the Central Intelligence Agency."

Choi, who said he watched the film Wednesday, also described some of its content before asking, "Is this the kind of thing a dramatic film is allowed to do?" He added that he believed it fell "within the range of what films have done." At the same time, he acknowledged that criticism along the lines of "Are you saying President Park Chung-hee ordered the killing of first lady Yuk Young-soo?" was not unreasonable.

In an earlier Facebook post, Choi said, "To suspect that the Park Chung-hee government was responsible for killing the first lady — I think that is a failure of basic human decency."

Choi also said that if people hold Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun in high regard for their contributions to modern Korean history, they should apply the same standard to Park Chung-hee's achievements. "Future generations should be made fully aware of his merits alongside criticism of his faults," he said.

He added, "If 'The Assassin' is stirring controversy, shouldn't the elder figures of the progressive camp step in and draw a line, saying this is going too far?"

Filmmakers: 'The Assassin' was not made for political purposes

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

Meanwhile, the filmmakers behind "The Assassin" — which is based on the shooting of first lady Yuk Young-soo — pushed back against accusations of historical distortion. In a statement Monday, they described the film as "a dramatic work reconstructed with cinematic imagination, drawing on various records related to the 1974 historical incident." They said it was "not a film made to newly establish a specific historical conclusion or to deny or distort existing facts."

"Nowhere in the film do we identify a specific individual as the mastermind behind the incident, nor do we present the hypotheses and dramatic elements in the film as historical fact," the filmmakers said. "As a work based on a historical event and real figures, various interpretations and criticisms are possible. We respect such views."

They added, however, that the film "was not made with any specific political intent beyond its own creative purpose and character," and asked audiences to "view the work solely as a product of artistic creation."

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

The film stars Yoo Hae-jin as a detective, Park Hae-il as a newspaper city desk editor and Lee Min-ho as a rookie reporter. It was directed by Heo Jin-ho, known for "Christmas in August" (1998). Hive MEDIAcorp, which also produced "The Man Standing Next" (2020) and "Seoul Spring" (2023), produced the film.


yul@heraldcorp.com