A Movie That Actually Changed South Korea
Content warning: child abuse, sexual violence and abuse of disabled people
Hello good folk! And welcome to a review of a film with such intense subject matter that it changed Korean law! Yes that’s right, it’s 2011’s Silenced, or, to give it its Korean title, 도가니, literally translating to ‘The Crucible’. But some loser called Arthur Miller already wrote a play with that name (has flashbacks to the adaptation my uni’s drama society put on), and thus the English title is different. It’s definitely apt though, as this is a film that deals with suppression of the truth, and the abuse of deaf children. In every respect, Silenced is extremely appropriate in describing this film.
I know what you’re thinking. Abuse of deaf children and suppression of their stories: so it’s a comedy, right? No, my friend. Sweet Jesus no. I will admit that I chose this movie during my endless scroll of Netflix (no I will NOT watch Tiger King, please leave me alone), because it starred Gong Yoo. And Gong Yoo is a, um, handsome gentleman. To put it mildly. I will watch this man choose his socks in the morning, so of course I can watch this movie. It’s about the uncovering of abuses at a deaf school? Sure, I like a good sturdy drama that deals with social issues, let’s go!
Good God I was not prepared for what this movie delivered. It is undoubtedly a powerful piece of work, as I’ll later discuss in relation to its effect on Korean politics, but a lot of this power comes from its unflinching portrayals of some of the very worst things that people can do. When you look into who created this film, this is less surprising. The film’s director is Hwang Dong-hyuk, a man who created this little-known indie gem called Squid Game that I think is really going to go far. It is based on a novel by Gong Ji-young, itself based on the real-life case of Gwangju’s Inhwa School, where it was revealed in 2005 that various leading staff members had been sexually abusing, and allegedly even murdering, their students.
The case itself gained the level of attention that it did from this author and filmmaker due to the leniency with which the perpetrators were originally treated. Though arrested, various legal technicalities and corrupt practices meant that four of the six charged teachers were reinstated at the school where they abused students. The release of this film was the catalyst that finally prompted outrage about this, and led to further changes. But we’ll get into that later. First, let’s talk about the actual film itself.
Starring the world’s most handsome single dad (see Train to Busan) Gong Yoo, along with zombie train alum Jung Yu-mi and Squid Game competitor Kim Joo-ryoung (the delightfully unhinged lady with that epic bridge ending), Silenced initially positions itself in a very tame way. Gong Yoo is teacher Kang In-ho, who has taken a job in the fictional city of Mujin, hoping to provide for his sick daughter back in Seoul, cared for by his mother after his own wife died. So far, so standard for a dark Korean drama- I hear male characters are actually physically incapable of developing if their female partner hasn’t died horribly.
Anyway, once In-ho arrives at his new school, specifically for deaf students, he immediately realises something is up when his students seem insular and reluctant to interact, one even attending class late with a face full of bruises. This film wastes surprisingly little time in revealing the horrors behind this initial scenario, with the revelation of the abuse three children in particular have suffered essentially forming act one. This in itself is quite shocking to watch, as there are only a handful of scenes of build up before In-ho, and Yu-mi’s fiery human rights lawyer Seo Yoo-jin, are fully aware of the horrors committed by the school’s head of staff.
Initially I was slightly disappointed upon realising this, as it felt like a weakness in storytelling to have so little build up to the main content of the film’s narrative. It felt as though the film had given the story’s aces away too easily, and I was unsure what could come next. But I was too hasty. Also, the content within the first section of the film is so horrifically intense that maintaining this would likely have made the film far too much to bear.
I say this because Silenced gives possibly the most comprehensive portrayal of the act of sexual abuse of a minor that I have ever seen on screen. Granted, I haven’t seen it many times, because, honestly, I can’t think of any topic I want to watch less. Whilst the film does not show any actual moments of abuse themselves- I imagine/hope censorship and child labour laws would prevent this in most parts of the world- it really does show, and describe, everything but.
At various points throughout the film, the children have to give testimonies detailing what had happened to them, where they use as much detail as they can, that being what was asked of them. This is disturbing enough, but we are also given accompanying flashback scenes that truly did shock me in showing pretty much everything up until the moment where the act itself takes place. We see the physical coercion, and we hear the children’s cries. It was enough to make me google the child actors, wondering if they’d managed to find adults that somehow looked 10. They hadn’t, the actors were children. Whilst I have to emphasise that we as the audience don’t literally see any sexual violence (except debatably in one brief moment), the amount that we do see was really and truly horrifying.
Due to simply the level of commitment and intensity required, it is worth applauding the performances of Kim Hyun-soo, Jung In-seo and Baek Seung-hwan as the deaf-mute children subjected to these crimes. They are utterly convincing as the poor victims who fully understand the total horror of what they’re going through, even if they can’t communicate it. And it is their fate that ultimately propels the rest of the film, which surprisingly morphs into a courtroom drama as it continues.
I won’t break down the ins and outs of the remaining story of the film. The important notes to take are that the perpetrators, twin admin heads of the school and one of the teachers, are able to use their multiple connections to law and society in the city to ultimately garner simple probationary sentences. The structure of the film allows this moment to become the climax, as a court room erupts in anger on one side and elation on the other at their lenient verdict. It truly is a gut-wrenching moment, and closing scenes of the film, where the perpetrators celebrate and a protest by the deaf-mute community is broken up with water cannons, make this all the more poignant. There is a sense of total futility at this point, reflected in the eyes and expressions of Gong Yoo and Yu-mi as they watch the system that abused children close ranks to protect itself. Whilst there are distinct notes of hope in the final moments of the film- it ends with Yu-mi and her human rights organisation caring for the kids and giving them purpose- it is ultimately a very bleak story.
Which makes it all the more impressive what happened next. The film was very popular upon release (it spent three weeks atop the box office chart in Korea), and its subject matter prompted such public outrage that the case in Gwangju, upon which it was based, was reopened. The previously lenient sentences that were handed out were hiked up, and the school was closed down only 2 months after the film’s release. Even more impactful than this, a new law was passed by the National Assembly reforming the handling of sexual abuse of minors and the disabled. The maximum sentences for these crimes was increased, and an incredibly fucked-up clause demanding disabled victims prove that they were unable to resist, was removed. Because Jesus fucking Christ it should never have been there. The name of this law? ‘The Dogani Law’, after the film’s Korean title.
This isn’t the only film to have had an effect on a country’s legislation (see this Den of Geek article for more examples), but it is in a small sub-category in having such a direct impact that it was acknowledged by a national government. Films and TV shows can prompt the re-opening of legal cases all the time- it’s half the purpose of the true crime genre. But Silenced became a catalyst to really spotlight some terrible weaknesses in Korea’s justice system. It makes the bitter pill of the film’s ending slightly easier to swallow, knowing that the reality changed a little more than the fiction. But, as the Yu-mi herself points out in the film, the system is so inherently skewed to conserve the status of powerful people that a few legislative changes will definitely not be enough.
There are several moments of looking in this movie that frame this idea especially well. Several scenes frame characters in the border of a window or stairwell, emphasising the restrictions placed on individuals trying to act. But there are also mirrors, most creepily on the principal’s ceiling, reflecting behaviour back to the characters and asking them to really think about what is, quite literally, reflected there. As a film telling a true story, these devices clearly ask us to reflect on ourselves and what we can do, as well as what we aren’t doing. Much as Gong Yoo’s character must reflect on seeing and hearing signs of the abuse early in the film (he witnesses a teacher beating a boy and says nothing, as well as hearing screams without fully investigating whose they are), so to must the audience reflect on what they’re seeing.
The most representative moment of this film comes when Gong Yoo walks into the court, and glances wryly for a moment at the entrance sign reading ‘자유, 평둥, 정의’: Freedom, Equality, Justice. This film, through its utterly stark depictions of sexual abuse of disabled children, pulls no punches in showing Korea, and the world, that these qualities are painfully absent for those who need them in our current legal systems. It’s no wonder that the man who made this movie went on to make the ‘hey guys, so capitalism is literally killing people’ hit of 2021: he clearly has an interest in corrupt power systems. Whilst this film is anything but easy, it was a shocking and important watch, one that will hopefully not lose any of the force of its message as time goes on.