Small Film Review: Gukje Market, Released December 17, 2014

Release date: January 20, 2015

Directed by Yoon Je-kyun

Release date: December 17, 2014

Contains spoilers

Deok-su, played by Hwang Jung-min, is a tough, irritable, and candid old man who sells imported goods in a small shop at Busan’s Gukje Market. Film is memory: the first memories of the Korean War in the 1950s, the events that took place during the retreat to the South and North during the war, and the events he experienced as a miner sent to Vietnam and the events he became involved in that helped spark the Vietnam War. Various plot lines converge into one large current.

This is the story of our grandparents’ generation, who had to sort everything out, from children to the people around them, and were told to do everything without filtering what they said.

Deok-su, who had to sacrifice himself in the name of being the head of the family or the eldest son of a poor household, feels relieved that our children do not have to go through this kind of pain.

Because he is someone’s father.

I think it is a possible idea.

If it had not been for my father and mother, how could I still be thinking like this?

Through him, who lived through the era of industrialization and gave his whole heart to living through a turbulent time, this film ultimately tells a story about family love and fathers. The driving force that lets you endure and keep going through any era is, in the end, family. It seems nothing has changed. I understand why I did not sell so enthusiastically.

Deok-su, who misses his father, waits even as he grows older, and realizes that his father and grandfather are also someone’s sons.

Chairman Zheng Zhouying, designer Andre Kim, and singer Nanzhen Zhan, who participated in Vietnam, appeared among the true youths of the same era and provided great fun.

Thanks to veteran actor Oh Da-su, who played a supporting role, the film may have been lighter and less heavy.