Waddell 6
Through privileged social and legal status, the Korean characters have the power
to partake in activities that allow them to fulfill their desires, which are nearly always
immoral?sexual, adulterous, jealous, and revengeful. In this way,
The Yellow Sea
is
suggesting that desire within Korean society is predominantly an immoral force enabled
by power. Thus, without this power of legal representation the Joseonjok characters’ are
similar to the peasant class of France of whom Marx claims, “…identity of their interest
fails to produce a feeling of community…
they do not form a class
” (Marx). Gayatri
Spivak posits that because of an inability to form a unified object of interest, they also
have no unified object of desire. Thus, their desires are always subject of the dominant
society, who have the right to represent them. (Spivak, 68). This lack of unity in for
Joseonjok migrant workers in Korean society is apparent in one scene, where Gu-nam is
forced to kill other Joseonjok men, not because of an innate desire, but in self-defense.
Thus, what is the criticism that this equation?desire = immorality?proposes to
the audience about modern-day Korean society? Kim Kyung Hyun would call the
portrayal of modern-day Koreans functioning within their native society in
The Yellow
Sea
, an image of ethnic/cultural Korean identity becoming obsolete: globalizing society
causing the destruction of not only traditional national culture, but of the native identity
itself. The obsolescence of the “native” within a globalizing Korea is signified in the
Yellow Sea
by the Korean men who must import Joseonjok workers and their death is
what Kim ultimately posits is the desire to free themselves from familial responsibilities
and institutional repression, and personal anxieties. (X Introduction)
If Korea has become an immoral wasteland, if the “native” has become obsolete,
then what resolution does the film propose to the “rapidly vanishing” national identity?