'Bargain' writers surprised by international reactions

The creators behind the series "Bargain" (2022) met with reporters for the first time on Thursday after returning home from France, where the series became the first-ever Korean show to win an award at the Cannes International Series Festival...

From left, screenwriter Choi Byeong-yun, showrunner Jeon Woo-sung and screenwriter Kwak Jae-min pose for a photo with the Canneseries Best Screenplay Award during a group interview with press at a café in central Seoul on Thursday. [TVING]

The creators behind the series "Bargain" (2022) met with reporters for the first time on Thursday after returning home from France, where the series became the first-ever Korean show to win an award at the Cannes International Series Festival, or Canneseries, last month.

"Bargain" took home the award for Best Screenplay.

“I did not think that we would win, so this award is all the more rewarding," showrunner Jeon Woo-sung said. “I am grateful especially that our work has been recognized overseas.”

“I received the most congratulations I have ever got in my lifetime,” Choi Byeong-yun, who joined fellow scriptwriter Kwak Jae-min to write the screenplay with Jeon.

Tving original series “Bargain” (2022) is a dystopian tale revolving around a man, portrayed by Jin Seon-kyu, who is tricked into a human trafficking organization and is about to have his body parts auctioned off - when a sudden earthquake saves his life. [TVING]

According to the writers, they believe “Bargain” won the award because the Cannes judges highly regarded the way the plot and storyline shifted drastically.

“Our story has many twists and turns, and I think the unpredictability of the screenplay must have been noticed,” Jeon said. “There are upsets and surprises throughout the screenplay.”

“Bargain” is about a group of people who are illegally bargaining for human organs in a motel when an earthquake strikes. Buried under the ruins of the earthquake, the characters get involved in a series of unpredictable incidents.

Actors Jeon Jong-seo and Jin Seon-kyu in "Bargain" (2022) [TVING]

The drama series was based on a 14-minute short film produced in 2015. The idea for the expanded series came from the CEO of Climax Studio, a Seoul-based production company, but the trio took individual roles in writing the screenplay.

“Kwak is very talented in drawing a big picture for a story,” Jeon said. “So, he took on that role of drawing out the bigger plotline. Then Choi, who is also an actor and so is very astute with dialogue and how words should play out, took on the role of writing out the details of the script.”

To expand the original story of the 14-minute short film, there needed to be something as drastic as an earthquake, Kwak said.

“The original short film itself had a completeness, so we needed something completely game-changing to turn the story into an expanded series,” Kwak added. “The idea of the earthquake came from Climax Studio, but we had a lot to figure out on how to untangle the plot.”

Jeon Jong-seo's character Park Joo-young, left, confronts Jin Seon-kyu's character No Hyung-Soo in "Bargain" (2022). [TVING]

All the characters in “Bargain” are villains, and the writers and the showrunner intended it to be that way specifically.

“The earthquake is like a higher power’s punishment in a way,” Choi said.

“We thought, everyone we are depicting has a moral deficiency — no one inside that motel is a good person,” Jeon said. “It was an interesting premise, to have everyone in a story be that evil. And the earthquake is metaphorically a punishment and also a simile for the pitfalls of modern capitalism. We wanted to show the dark sides of Korean society through this story.”

Although the writers and the showrunner intended for “Bargain” to be about Korean society, they still found it noticeably surprising that some foreign viewers and reviewers pinpointed aspects of the story that Korean audiences did not.

“Foreign audiences would ask things like, ‘Do Koreans really obsess and care so much about money?’ after seeing ‘Bargain,’” Jeon said. “They would also ask about the scenes with cruelty and violence and imply whether those aspects are distinctly Korean. I wondered, just from my personal perspective, whether there was a kind of Orientalism embedded in these questions. There is still a lot of fascination with the exotic, with the different, and I felt that that was expressed in the reactions to ‘Bargain.’”

The allegedly Orientalist reactions come in part due to the heightened interest and attention given to Korean content, the writers said.

Chang's character is one of the buyers on the scene who is in a desperate need of a kidney to save his bedridden father. [TVING]

“Korean content — films, dramas and other fiction — is receiving never-seen-before levels of interest and attention and that comes with certain side effects,” Jeon said. “It also has to do with how after the pandemic, the streaming market landscape changed, and Korean content has become more approachable. The more people watch Korean content, the more different perspectives will appear.”

But that does not mean that creators should limit themselves to making content that has a kind of “Koreanness,” the trio said.

“Like director Bong Joon-ho said, the most personal is the most universal,” Kwak said. “We as creators all start with our own personal stories and create stories from that. That then becomes a universal story that can speak to others.”

“Bargain” is available for streaming on Tving in Korea and Paramount+ overseas.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]