Additional information
Synopsis
Han-mo is a sole barber in Hyoja-dong, where the President lives. A rigged
election by rounding off brings him a son (He gets married to Kyung-ja by
forcing her that she has to give a birth to a baby over 5 months like rounding
off.) 4.19 revolution restores his belief that a barber was originally the same
with a doctor in the ancient time. After a military government is founded by
5.16 coup d'etat, the hair cut decree is announced and Han-mo's barber
shop is packed with customers.
Review
The heart of "The President's Barber" is a moment when the main character,
Han-mo, visits a fortuneteller's home, and is asked to choose between two
names for his son ― one that would give him power and wealth, or one that
would give him a long life without anxiety.
Puzzled, Han-mo naively asks whether there's a name that could guarantee
his son power, wealth and a happy, long life. The fortuneteller says no.
Hanmo chooses the latter, and names his son Nak-an, which literally means
pleasure and comfort.
This scene is almost a justification for the entire film, a social portrait from
the perspective of an ordinary, working-class Korean citizen who is too timid
and ignorant to defy the social repression of his turbulent age.
The story, set in the late 1960s, deals with a faint-hearted, hard-working
barber who goes to work for President Park Chung Hee. The film focuses on
the lives of ordinary Koreans under the influence of dictatorship ― their fear,
and what it meant for them to challenge authority.
A high point comes when the South's intelligence service cracks down on a
group of North Korean spies dispatched to the South to assassinate
President Park. When the government learns that some of the spies they
caught suffer from a minor stomach virus called Marcus disease, they
decide to arrest every Korean with similar symptoms, using the media to
spread the false news that it's a deadly infection. In this way, the
government tries to link communist spies with the virus in order to
propagandize anti-Communism to Korean minds.
As the president's barber, Han-mo tries to do his part. When he learns Nak-
an has diarrhea, he turns the boy over to the police to prove his loyalty to the
regime. He assumes his son will be released immediately, because it's
obvious he has no connection with the Communists. But that's not what
happens; the boy ends up tortured by electric shock into giving a false
confession.
The episode is depicted as absurdly comic. But the story resonates with
modern Korean history, in the sense that many innocent Koreans were
executed for violating the National Security Law, victims of similar incidents
fabricated by the government.
There is some poignant dialogue, seen through the boy's flashbacks. Nak-
an recalls a stomachache by saying, innocently, "I don't know what caused
my diarrhea at the time, but the thing that mattered the most was the fact I
was having diarrhea."
The portrait of Park Chung Hee on the wall of a barber's shop reminds us
sharply of the days when being a good citizen in Korea really meant being
an obedient one. The way the film's characters unfailingly believe in the
state might trigger a guilty conscience on the part of South Koreans; do we
have any right to laugh at the way North Koreans idolize Kim Jong-il?
Despite biting satire and smooth storytelling, the film relies mostly on a
nostalgia that's getting repetitive in Korean films lately. There are moments,
however, when the film ventures beyond historic melodrama. The torture
scene on Nak-an is an example. It's depicted almost as a fairy tale, making
it even more disturbing to watch, yet demonstrating that life is comedy in the
end.
