Introduction

Return to Ode to My Father Film Guide

Ode to My Father is a 2014 South Korean film directed by Yoon Je-Kyoon. It is one of a slew of nostalgic historical films made in the mid aughts that did very well at the box office. Ode follows the life of Yoon Duk-soo from the time his family evacuated the North Korean port city of Hungnam in 1950 to the present day (mid 2000s). Modelled loosely on the 1994 American film Forrest Gump (dir. Robert Zemeckis), Ode uses an unassuming main character to touch on some of the most significant moments of South Korean postwar history. Unlike many historical films that tackle South Korea’s tumultuous history by explicitly exploring political events and protests, Ode only glancingly refers to politics per se, instead focusing on economic history. Like Forrest Gump, Duk-soo finds himself embroiled in the Vietnam War, but unlike the American film’s protagonist, he doesn’t win a medal, meet the president, and unwittingly take part in an anti-war rally in the nation’s capital. He goes to Vietnam to work because his family needs money, and when he returns, he is welcomed back by his neighbors at the Gukje Market in the city of Busan (also styled Pusan) where his family runs a small foreign goods store. 

Because it seemingly elided the political, and leaned into nostalgia, the film was criticized as a conservative retelling of history that romanticized the very violent process of South Korean militaristic and state-driven economic development. Other critics, however, noted that the film’s focus on an everyman who constantly negotiates the labor demands of the developmental state opens space for productive historical dialogue. This film guide combines these approaches by first introducing the “conservative” surface reading of the film, and then showing how the film’s formal choices, including its narrative structure, produce a critique of the conservative history it is accused of reproducing. We can see this tension playing out in the film’s title. In English, Ode to My Father suggests an elegiac tone that focuses on the family (and, by extension, the nation). In Korean, however, Ode is named after the Busan marketplace in which the family settles after they flee the war: Gukje Market. Since the term gukje means “international,” this title points away from home and nation. It suggests that international markets (of labor, capital, and commodities) will play a significant role in the narrative that viewers are about to watch.

Ode to My Father is divided into four half-hour acts, each a flashback into a different decade of the mid 20^th century. The film begins in the present day when Duk-soo is an old man, but viewers are soon pulled into the past as he remembers his travails. Each flashback is framed with sequences in which the old Dok-soo struggles with his memories and sense of responsibility toward his missing father. The four sections of the film are: 

1. The Korean War and the immediate postwar period when the Yoon family are refugees in the southern port city of Busan. During the evacuation at Hungnam, Duk-soo’s parents charged him with taking care of his younger sister Maksoon, but he tragically lost grip of her hand as they were boarding an American ship. Realizing the girl is lost, Duk-soo’s father turns back to find her. Before he gets off the ship, he tells Duk-soo to take care of the family, his mother and two other siblings. The family arrives in Pusan and finds Kkotbun, the father’s sister, running a small foreign goods shop in Gukje Market. They spend the 1950s as poor refugees who have no home to go back to after the war ends.
    
2. In the early 1960s, Dok-soo struggles to support his family and gain an education. He works as a stevedore, but the family still struggles. His best friend, Dal-gu, suggests that the two of them go to Germany, where South Korean are being hired to fill labor shortages and work in mines. Realizing that his younger brother, who had just been accepted to the prestigious Seoul National University, is on the verge of giving up his education to work for the family, Duk-soo decides to go to Germany. Together with Dal-gu and a contingent of South Korean men, he undertakes the arduous and dangerous work for wages that he could not have earned back home. In Germany, Duk-soo also meets Youngja, another South Korean “guest worker,” and the two fall in love. Soon after meeting her, he is injured in an explosion, and soon after that, his work visa expires. Duk-soo returns to Pusan, where his family is already clearly enjoying a higher standard of living. Youngja arrives soon after to announce that she is pregnant. The two get married.
    
3. In the 1970s, the Yoon family is still in Busan and doing relatively well, but they are soon faced with two financial crises. First, Kktobun has died, and her alcoholic husband wants to sell her shop. Duk-soo decides to buy it because he still hopes his missing family members will be able to make their way home by finding the store. Second, Duk-soo’s younger sister needs money to get married. To meet these financial demands, Duk-soo decides to go to Vietnam and work in military supply logistics for the American war effort. Together with Dal-gu, he navigates the dangers of the war and relives the trauma he experienced as a child. He is shot in the leg while helping refugees escape their village. He returns to South Korea injured but alive and walks his sister down the aisle at her wedding.
    
4. In the summer of 1983, Duk-soo is still running the import store at Gukje Market. While at the store, he watches sees the program Finding Dispersed Families on television and decides to go to Seoul to participate in the hopes of finding his father and sister. First broadcast in the summer of 1983, Finding Dispersed Families was a huge television event in South Korea designed to commemorate the 30^th anniversary of the Korean War and help dispersed family members find each other. After Duk-soo is featured on the show, he is called back to the studio because someone thinks they recognized him. Unfortunately, the man he talks to is not his father. A little bit later, however, the television studio alerts him to come back because there is another potential match, a caller from Los Angeles who might be his sister. The woman turns out to be Maksoon. She was found on the beach in Hungnam and rescued by an escaping soldier. Since her family could not be found, she was given up for adoption in the States. The family has a tearful, televisual reunion. Duk-soo is in the studio in Seoul, his sister is in a studio in LA. They talk through a television monitor, and the program is broadcast live on South Korean television. The whole family is shown watching the reunion on TV in their living room in Busan.

After Maksoon is found, the film quickly catches up to the present. The family is gathered to perform a memorial ceremony for Duk-soo’s mother, who died in 1984 shortly after Maskoon was found. After a spat with his children, Duk-soo retires to another room, where he experiences a daydream in which he is reunited with his father, who affirms Duk-soo’s struggles. He is finally able to overcome his traumatic past, stop waiting for his father to return, and sell the family store to developers who are buying up real estate in Gukje Market.

Main Characters:

• Yoon Duk-soo (played by Hwang Jung-Min), the film’s main character
• Youngja (played by Kim Yunjin), Duksoo’s wife
• Dal-gu (played by Oh Dal-su), Duksoo’s best friend
• Duk-soo’s father (played by Jung Jin-Young),
• Duk-soo’s mother (played by Jang Young-Nam),
• Seung-gyu (played by Lee Hyun), Duk-soo’s younger brother
• Kkeutsun (played by Kim Seul-gi), Duk-soo’s younger sister
• Maksoon (played by Stella Choe Kim), Duk-soo’s missing younger sister, separated from the family during the Hungnam Evacuation

Accessibility: Ode to My Father is currently available for free on Tubi with English subtitles, but it’s availability on streaming platforms in the United States varies. It has streamed on Amazon Prime in the past. It is also available on DVD on Amazon and through other retailers.

Note on rating:Ode to My Father is not rated by MPAA. The film includes scenes of war violence and some nudity in the context of medical care and communal bathing.

Note on Korean: in Korean, family names go first while given names go last. Hwang Jung-Min plays the leading role in the film. His family name is Hwang, and his given name is Jung-min. In South Korea, the government standard is Revised Romanization, but proper names are not always rendered by this system. Most Anglophone scholarship uses the McCune-Reischauer Romanization system, which relies on diacritical marks. When referring to historical figures, I will be using the spelling that is most well-known, and I will refer to characters by the spelling adopted in the film’s English subtitles, which are not consistent in their Romanization with either style. This video introduces the sounds of the Korean alphabet.