[History through films] ‘The Spy Gone North’: Real-life espionage story rises above cliches

Hwang Jung-min plays Park Seok-young in “The Spy Gone North” (CJ ENM)

When it comes to spy flicks, one might think of cat-and-mouse pursuits, action scenes and shootouts.

But director Yoon Jong-bin, using very little action, sidesteps the spy formula in his 2018 “The Spy Gone North,” a movie that revolves around a loyal South Korean spy who is caught in a political vortex.

“I made it (without a lot of action) because the film is based on a true story,” director Yoon Jong-bin told reporters when the movie came out in 2018. “As a filmmaker, I felt a lot of pressure to make a spy film without action. Directors resort to action scenes to immerse audiences in their films.”

Set in the mid-1990s, the movie is based on a real-life character South Korean spy Park Seok-young (played by Hwang Jung-min) whose codename was Black Venus.

With Park Seok-young, director Yoon breaks the cliche. Most Korean spy flicks until then had dealt with South and North spies who strike an unlikely friendship at the end or portray those from the North as villains. “The Spy Gone North” focuses on the perilous missions that Park Seok-young or Black Venus is given, disguising himself and deceiving the high-level officer in the North.

The early part of the movie shows how Seok-young makes his way through the enemy’s territory and builds trust among North Korean officials, while Ri Myong-un (played by Lee Sung-min) and Jong Mu-taek (Ju Ji-hoon) cannot stop doubting the presence of Black Venus.

Director Yoon decided to not stick to the typical Hollywood-style spy flick and the result is a new, tense and even darkly comical spy film.

A scene from “The Spy Gone North” (CJ ENM)

Without a single shot fired, the audience can feel the tension in director Yoon’s detailed depiction of the psychological development of characters, as well as the densely crafted background, which is based on the 1997 espionage operation by the South’s intelligence agency to sabotage the campaign of then-presidential candidate Kim Dae-jung.

Scenes that show the luxurious Hilton Hotel where Black Venus has meetings with the North’s high-ranking officers and a historic encounter with the North’s Kim Jong-il (played by Gi Joo-bong) at his vacation home are a work of director Yoon’s specialty in raising the audience’s pulse.

“The Spy Gone North” was invited to the Midnight section of the 71st Cannes Film Festival in 2018.

The article is the seventh installment of the eight-part series that looks into Korea’s modern and contemporary history through films released between 2000 and 2020. -- Ed.

By Kim Da-sol(ddd@heraldcorp.com)