Peppermint Candy - Analysis

Analysis

The events of Yong-ho's life shown in the movie can be seen as representing some of the major events of Korea's recent history. The student demonstrations of the early 1980s leading to the Gwangju massacre is shown as Yong-ho becoming traumatized in the shooting incident. The tightening grip on the country by the military government during the 1980s is mirrored by Yong-ho losing his innocence and becoming more and more cynical during his stint as a brutal policeman. Similarly, Yong-ho losing his job during the late 1990s mirrors the Asian financial crisis.

Yong-ho's life depicted the struggle between historiography and psychoanalysis. Despite his desperate desire to move on from his past, mnemic traces overpowered the psychoanalytical aspects of his life. These mnemic traces include the train, camera, and peppermint candy as well as Sun-im and her various surrogates throughout the different vignettes, which led the psychoanalysis of his life to triumph over historiography. The relationship between historiography and psychoanalysis can be seen in historicism and progressivism where Yong-ho chooses to look back on his past instead of looking solely on his future to move forward. The major and traumatic events that were historically imposed on him were so embedded in his life that he could not just simply move on. However, finally reflecting back on his past allowed him to accept what happened and finally advance into the future. Unfortunately, this was just moments before he committed suicide when he turned to face the train. The train was the symbol that guided the film in reverse chronology and his cry to return to the past signifies his tragically late recognition of the past's significance on his life.

Issues of masculinity in the South Korean culture also arise in the film. Yong-Ho's masculinity is broken during the Gwangju Massacre scene in which the militarized masculinity enforced by the Korean government; a required 26 month duty in the military, an order to kill innocent civilians, and a need to conform to the standards of the other soldiers around him; ultimately forces Yong-Ho to compensate later in life through interrogating the student protesters who inevitably were the reason he was put in that situation. This continues on with the way he treats women later on in his life, objectifying and mistreating his wife Hong-ja and ultimately losing his one link back to his innocence, Sun-im. What results in the beginning of the film, what would be the end of Yong-Ho's life, is an ultimate humiliation and lamentation for a lost innocence where personal history is connected with the history of South Korea.