Han Suk-kyu and the Gendered Cultural
Economy of Stardom and Fandom
Han Suk-kyu and the Gendered Cultural
Economy of Stardom and Fandom
Examining the chronological development of star performance within a body of films, together with concomitant extradiegetic incarnations, provides critical access to the meaning-making work of fandom and star construction within particular cultural moments. Composite constellations of star texts can guide fan behaviors and interpretive processes, and encourage dialogic engagement with societal attitudes and consumer practices. Therefore, grafting the career of a film star such as Han Suk-kyu—until recently, the biggest box-office draw and highest-paid actor in South Korean cinema—onto a grid of national vicissitudes and socioeconomic changes offers a very intriguing cultural case study of contemporary Korean cinema, celebrity, and audiences—and of popular discourses of masculinity. Focusing mainly on Han Suk-kyu’s career on and off the movie screen from 1997 onwards, the narrative of Han’s stardom that we reconstruct and analyze is a story about industry shifts and gendered cultural trends, and, most critically, fan/audience expectations and frustrations: Korea’s top male star decided, at the pinnacle moment of his screen appeal in 1999–2000, to take a prolonged movie-acting hiatus. When he returned to the big screen, cultural tastes of the movie-going public (especially the desired demographic of younger audience members) had shifted enough to radically diminish Han’s star currency. In this chapter, we investigate the understudied Korean star/audience dynamic through the following cultural phenomena: movie-screen absence coupled with media presence, the regulation of affect in Korean male star performances, popular Korean perceptions of ideal masculinity and their relationships to domestic film genres, and the rise of consumer nationalism and cinematic spectacle.
Han Suk-kyu’s filmic career growth corresponds with economic recovery in South Korea. After a start as a voice and TV-drama actor, he became a huge movie star during the period of the Asian financial crisis, bringing box-office magic/industry clout to his leading-man roles. Until recently, his films have likewise been associated with the creative reinvention of genre conventions and the rising surge of commercially viable contemporary Korean cinema. Ultimately, Han’s career trajectory sheds some light on the complexly entangled workings of industry trends and consumer behavior.
Han’s Absent Presence
During the highest point in Han’s stardom, his film texts actively directed fandom. However, Han Suk-kyu’s “comeback” film, Double Agent (2003, dir. Kim Hyeon-jeong), the first movie produced by a company he formed with his brother, Him Pictures, was largely rejected by audiences. The rationale Han had offered for leaving the movie screen at the height of his star currency was to recharge his creative batteries and reemerge a better actor (see Choi 2000; Cine 21 2002).1 However, his entrepreneurial foray into movie making apparently left his fans feeling betrayed, as one aborted “home” production after another led to a much-longer-than-expected delay. Meanwhile Han continued to appear as a fixture in commercial advertisements on television and in print. He and his brother also at that time launched a website and a script-development service.
Instead of providing the necessary Contact with his fans (to quote the title of one of his successful romance films, ironically about a cyber-relationship), this website and the one for Double Agent failed to provide the necessary interactivity (indeed, the whole marketing campaign for Double Agent seems to have been the result of major miscalculation). According to figures from the Korean Film Commission, Double Agent ended up ranking only a very disappointing #19 for the year (2003).2 Other rankings during the time of Han’s hiatus and return to the big screen also showed ominous signs of discontent. The results of a survey of 124 directors and producers published in Daily Hankook actually found Han Suk-kyu in the #1 position—as most overrated actor (Park 2001). The reason given for this choice was Han’s overattachment to money and a lack of diversity in his roles and performances after 1998’s Christmas in August (dir. Hur Jin-ho). Another survey published in the Daily Chosun ranked Han the #13 Korean star in terms of audience appeal (D. Lee 2003)—although he had held the #1 spot just one year before. In the alchemy of Han’s star making (and arguably diminished star currency), timing has been crucial. Questions of temporality have been critical to the cultural timeliness of Han’s film narratives and performances, the strain of extended screen absence (even when the star has remained “present” through other mediations), audience/fan perspectives, and the trends of popular culture’s constructed masculinities.
Han’s stardom as a cultural phenomenon connects to both consumer behaviors and cinematic expressions of gendered representation and nationalism in South Korea. At the peak of his popularity, Han’s often-celebrated “realistic” and “natural” screen acting differentiated him from other male stars’ exaggeratedly comic and hypermasculine styles (S. Lee 2003). The rise of Han Suk-kyu’s stardom actually corresponds with growing audience fatigue with such male stars’ performances, and a preference for Han’s emphasis on ordinary, everyday behaviors and gestures and very subtle (rather than over-the-top) facial and vocal modifications invoking the inner workings of characters’ minds. However, during Han’s off-screen period, industry trends and consumer tastes swung towards sensationalistic genres (horror, thriller, raucous comedy) and favored Han’s male star “competitors” (including Song Kang-ho, Sul Kyung-gu, and Choi Minsik), known for their ability to transform into myriad characters, and avoid typecasting. New, younger male stars also emerged, essentially positioning Han (now in his early forties) as part of an older generation.
Han Suk-kyu’s movie personae in leading roles from 1997 to 1999 were marked by a relative fixity, consistency, and constancy—which potentially made the rupturing effect of his screen absence all the more apparent for a desiring audience. However, his years of self-imposed exile from the big screen were marked by an intense visibility in advertisements via other consumer culture vehicles.
Han Suk-kyu’s endorsements have included television and print ads for products for tele- and cyber-communications, a bank, familiar beverages, a furniture company, an oil company, and men’s professional attire. Han’s hawking is a selling of “capital as a kind of brand loyalty to the advertising company” (Marshall 1997: 195). This had a potentially two-fold result: Han appeared more loyal to the corporate advertisers than to film fans, and he diluted his own brand power. This phenomenon is arguably exacerbated by the fact that Han’s advertising persona is so similar to the ways his movie image is read by Korean audiences, and even the ways the perceived “stability” of his personal life continues the process of star identification. Rather than just being Han Suk-kyu, however, the “star” of the advertisements is clearly a man who’s working for the money—and not a “pure” movie star (see Gallagher 1997). At the same time, as is the case for a number of Asian male stars, Han’s advertisements are profoundly self-reflexive, and his films have become increasingly so (Ciecko 2004). The largest and most important Korean companies, such as Samsung electronics, LG Oil Company, and SK Telecom, selected Han Suk-kyu to be their celebrity spokesman on the basis of his “image.”
A series of Han’s ads for SK Telecom also function as friendly public service announcements about where and when to turn cell phones off, counseling viewers on proper protocols for public use. Another SK Telecom ad appeals to national pride and support for the Korean soccer team, depicting Han leading the victory chant. Costars from his films have appeared with him in television and print ads, adding an intertextual frisson of recognition for Korean audiences, and further blurring his real/reel image. (The TV commercials have even used snippets of music used in Han’s films.) For example, one Maxim coffee ad that aired during the time of Han’s big-screen hiatus featured his female costar Ko So-young from Double Agent, who plays a flower shop worker who receives a romantic surprise from gentleman Han. In one television commercial from the LG Caltex Oil series, Han drives a truck and saves the day by helping push to safety a busload of children stuck on a railroad track. Throughout these advertising images, Han frequently greets his viewers with his trademark benevolent smile.
Further blurring boundaries, the off-screen Han Suk-kyu behind the diegetic personae has been depicted in the Korean media as a model of the “good Korean man”: husband, father, lover—loyal to the woman who had loved him since before he was a star. Qualities of restraint, reticence, moderation, and emotional self-control are consistent traits of Han Suk-kyu’s movie characters—and valued traits in “traditional” Korean society’s construction of masculinity. In an interview, the actor has himself admitted that “many people say they can see me in my performances (my characters) because my performance [style] is to draw a character into myself instead of letting myself assimilate with the character” (Y. Kim 2003). Korean audiences have viewed many of Han’s characters as extensions of his real-life personality. For his devoted female fan base, Han Suk-kyu frequently offered an idealistic version/vision of a sincere man seeking and giving absolute, constant love. However, Han’s characters are continually experiencing a “crisis” of masculinity, resulting from their apparent passivity; and according to a Korean film critic, this contained style of performance limits the diversity of Han’s screen selves and gives the audience a sense of constancy (In 2002). His male heroes are often hostages bound by social structures oriented toward material values and hierarchies dominated by the gangster boss’s order; a national system with conflicting ideologies (North/South Korean relations in the espionage thrillers); and lost, unrequited, or destined love.
The Economy of Emotions
On the movie screen, Han Suk-kyu’s film characters frequently have limited choices and repressed personalities, and do not possess the power to manage their own lives. They are marked by tensions around the restraint of affect, and inability to intervene in the forces of fate—both in their inability to fight and alter societal forces, and in their personal human relationships. For example, as Makdong in Green Fish (1997, dir. Lee Chang-dong), Han is a young, confused man, newly discharged from the army, who returns home and is drawn into the underworld. He is increasingly driven by economic urgency, urban entanglements, and the dissolution of his family. In the delicate melodrama Christmas in August, Han Suk-kyu plays a dying photographer who contains his despair, sadness, and panic in the face of imminent death; but Han deftly—and indirectly—enables his audience to glimpse and recognize the hidden emotions through his reserved performance, an outward cheeriness betrayed by a wan smile. The film that solidified Han’s box-office appeal for female audiences immediately predates the new era of the Korean blockbuster. Christmas in August was released in January 1998, following on the heels of Han’s 1997 surprise hit, The Contact (dir. Chang Yoon-Hyun), which directly targeted contemporary Korean women. In the 1997 annual report on his www.koreanfilm.org website, critic Darcy Paquet (n.p) suggests, quoting the movie’s producer, an even more specific audience of working women or “office ladies”—a term that connotes (mostly) single women between twenty and forty years of age. Like The Contact, Christmas in August successfully appealed to female audiences through a quotidian romantic narrative featuring a repressed thirtysomething male—calmly resigned, vulnerable (although striving to maintain an upbeat façade), and, indeed, terminally ill. The fledgling romance he develops with one of his customers is both tender and decidedly platonic.
Christmas in August was a watershed moment for Han’s career. Like The Contact and to a certain extent the special effects-laden reincarnation fantasy Ginko Bed (1996, dir. Kang Je-gyu) before it, Christmas in August creates a small, intimate space for the female spectator, one that appears to have been shut down in the blockbuster era. We want to qualify this assertion with the reminder that we are not reductively equating the romance genre with female audiences (or suggesting they are by definition excluded from other genres). Such gender codings are evident in the casting, star performances, and marketing of these films—the representational gender politics within and outside narrative cinema. Christmas in August swept the Korean Film Awards with recognition for best film, direction, cinematography, and a best actress award for Shim Eun-Ha for her role as Darim—a slightly impetuous performance that plays off Han’s character, Jung-won’s forced optimism.
However, the gender politics turn ominous in Han’s next film, the spy thriller Shiri (1999, dir. Kang Je-gyu), the film that broke South Korea’s then all-time box-office record and Han’s first full-fledged Korean blockbuster. His character, Yu Jung-won, a South Korean secret agent, finds out that his lover is actually a North Korean terrorist involved with a plot to blow up buildings around Seoul, including a stadium where the “reunification” soccer game is being played. Financed by the chaebol Samsung Group, Shiri employed state-of-the arts special effects, and an unprecedented marketing campaign, contributing to the acceleration of Han’s star “capital” and the fixing of his flawed hero image. Shiri also was a landmark in post-economic crisis, post-IMF bailout terms: it sunk Hollywood’s Titanic (Ciecko 2002). In Shiri, Han’s character discovers the betrayal late in the game and is forced to confront the truth about his lover and the fact that he has inadvertently enabled the deaths of many people. At the end of the film, the tormented Yu Jung-won faces off with his now-exposed sniper/fiancee, and again Han reveals the conflicted emotions on his character’s face. In Shiri, Han is also cast against the charismatic actors Choi Min-sik and Song Kang-ho, who, respectively, play a North Korean terrorist, Park, and his secret agent partner, Lee. Han’s character, Yu, is positioned with each in a relationship that challenges him to reconsider codes of brotherhood, the masculine melodramatic bonds that pervade contemporary Korean blockbusters.
Han’s character is again tricked by a woman in 1999’s graphic murder mystery, Tell Me Something (dir. Chang Yoon-Hyn). Detective Cho is a rather hardened cop with a tarnished reputation, who ends up working on a serial killer case; he gradually warms to the attractions of a faux-innocent woman who turns out to probably be a murderer. Han’s re-pairing with actress Shim Eun-ha (his girlish costar from Christmas in August) serves to underscore his character’s inability to intervene, to “act.” His disempowerment is visually underscored in the very last aerial shot of the film, which has him duped, horrified, and literally crawling on his hand and knees.
Although its spy-thriller genre recalled Han’s biggest screen hit, Shiri, his comeback film, Double Agent, finally released in South Korea in January 2003, did not meet the expectations of audiences or critics—nor, arguably, did it compensate them for the long wait. The Korean film industry since 2000 has been geared towards revamped genre films targeting young audiences—especially fantastic movies like horror films, historical dramas emphasizing spectacle and action and giving expression to new displays of nationalism (including growing anti-American sentiment), Korean teen comedies adapted from Internet fiction, and showcases for exaggerated physical performances (Heo 2002). In addition to a wave of newer, younger stars, the mercurial and volatile screen personalities of male stars (including Han’s peers) have “clicked” with younger audiences—much more than Han Suk-kyu has been able to do. Even the website for Han’s comeback vehicle, Double Agent, lacks the ludic sense of pop culture play that younger audiences have come to demand. Meanwhile Han’s star image appears all the more static.
Double Agent tells the story of a North Korean who deceptively defected from North Korea to the South to work as a spy, but was dumped by both the North and South Korean governments after his engagement in double espionage was exposed. The film also includes a side narrative of a romance (first a sham, then the real thing, a rather tepid relationship) with a fellow female espionage agent. The based-on-a-true-story narrative of Double Agent ostensibly fits into a category that includes political thrillers like Silmido (2003, dir. Kang Woo-suk) and Taegukgi (2004, dir. Kang Je-gyu)—the latter a Korean War film made by the director of Shiri, the most expensive Korean production ever and current box-office record holder. However, Double Agent did not share these films’ savvy marketing blitzes and audience appeal. Lacking also the new “spectacular nationalism”3 of these recent hit films, Double Agent focused instead on the male protagonist Lim Byung-ho’s psychological conflicts, his inner struggle as he cannot choose between the two countries in the divided nation. (In an interview, the actor himself expressed anxiety about his performance style and the restrictions demanded by the role, and appraised the potentially audience-alienating choices he made as a producer [see Y. Kim 2003]).
The Commodification of Gender
Another factor that impacted the reception of Han’s comeback was the Korean audience’s changing perceptions of ideal masculinity. Contemporary young men are increasingly less inclined to identify with the traditional father image of the self-sacrificing, uncomplaining, yet take-charge man who earns for his family, and is hesitant to express feelings, even when experiencing intense pain and sadness.
Recent Korean cinema has witnessed the rise of the male antihero, a representation connected with the state of the Korean economy and unemployment and disaffection among the youth. Additionally, both young women and men in their teens and twenties reportedly covet the “flower boy” (see Nam 2001) image that pervades Korean popular culture: the cute and cuddly (even androgynous) male that women can imagine caring for, like a pet. This boy-toy becomes a kind of commodity for female consumption, sexual objectification, and voyeuristic desire. The prototype is slim, fashion-conscious, and pretty in a way that connotes gender and sexual ambiguity. Further, although largely unrealized in contemporary films that tend to relegate women to minor roles, a potentially greater range of popular cultural representation of the modern Korean woman is present, allowing for a fluidity of gender signifiers—a more masculine feminine. In a modified version of these gendered images, the sensationally popular (and frequently imitated) teen comedy My Sassy Girl (2001, dir. Kwak Jae-young, based on an Internet novel) depicts a submissive and sensitive young man enthralled by a troubled, domineering-yet-charming (and self-described melodrama-hating) young woman. Among older male actors, Han Suk-kyu’s peer, Song Kang-ho, has been particularly adept at conveying comic personae in a variety of film genres, from the raucous amateur wrestler slapstick of Foul King (2000, dir. Kim Ji-woon) to the darkest-of-dark humor of the hit-torn-from-the-headlines thriller Memory of Murder (2003, dir. Bong Joon-ho).
Nevertheless, many contemporary Korean films reinforce, while a few critically challenge, the dominant ideology of gender. For example, in the morally ambiguous and controversial Happy End (1999, dir. Chung Gi-woo), Han Suk-kyu’s peer actor, Choi Min-sik, plays an emasculated unemployed househusband, a TV drama watcher and reader of novels with an adulterous wife. His “feminized” character is presented and portrayed in an increasingly sympathetic manner that almost justifies his explosive final act of violence. In Take Care of My Cat (2001, dir. Jeong Jaeeun), a rare Korean feature focused on female characters and directed (and written) by a woman, a group of five female friends all experience employment frustrations and limited options for career mobility. The most balanced female character in the film (and the best “friend”) is the most nonconformist in her rejection of conventional codes of femininity; indeed, the entire film rejects the narrative necessity for romantic fulfillment. Happy End finished the fifth-grossing Korean film at the domestic box office the year of the blockbuster thriller Shiri. Take Care of My Cat barely made a dent at the box office, while a male gangster drama called Friend (2001, dir. Kwak Kyung-Taek) claimed the top spot for the year and made domestic box-office history, with the story of four young men whose lives are affected by the criminal underworld.
While the blockbusters of the new millennium draw in audiences across gender lines, they do not specifically acknowledge the female spectator. In these films, there has been a mass mobilization of masculinized nationalism; the disturbing result is a demonization and dehumanization of women in the Korean blockbuster, or in another extreme, a removal from the cinematic public sphere (S. Kim 2002).4
Consumer Nationalism and Spectacular Masculinity
Recent English-language scholarship on Korean cinema supports our assertions about the popular cinematic representations of masculinity in contemporary films, displays of nationalism, and national identity formation. In his book on Korean cinema and masculinity, Kim Kyung Hyun (2004) makes the crucial point that tangled cultural discourses have profoundly impacted gendered screen images—from negotiations of Confucianism, democratization, industrialization, militarism, and postcolonialism—and includes a compelling reading of Han Suk-kyu’s role in Green Fish. He suggests that Han’s performance, a powerfully measured characterization in this gangster film/family melodrama, proved his mettle in leading roles and opened up “serious parts in thrillers and blockbuster actions films like Shiri and Tell Me Something” (K. Kim 2004: 50). (However, Kim does not mention Han’s film Christmas in August.)
The coauthors of Korean Film: History, Resistance, and Democratic Imagination distinguish between the realism of 1980s films and the “escapist films” of today (Min, Joo, & Kwak 2003: 183). This movement from a retro-realism toward a new spectacularity is echoed in our Han Suk-kyu case study. The rise of Korean blockbuster culture, we assert, corresponds with the rise of Korean film audiences who display status-minded gender politics of consumption and “consumer nationalism”—the latter referring to the South Korean government’s attempt to regulate (feminine-coded) excessive consumption of imported consumer goods; frugality and “buying Korean” therefore became configured as desirable traits and actions (Nelson 2000). The post-economic crisis creation of the domestic blockbuster is predicated on a sense of supporting Korean movie making, based on increasingly globalized—and masculinized—perceptions of production and entertainment value. However, in this case, the ideal consumer/audience member for current contemporary Korean cinema has been constructed as a “vital” young man, with a thirst for excess. The moment of the idealized female spectator recognized in Han’s romances such as The Contact and Christmas in August seems to have passed. While melodrama remains deeply integral to virtually every Korean popular film, the highest-grossing Korean films overall nationwide for 2003 (the year Double Agent was released) and the first half of 2004 were lavish male-centered war films. While female characters do appear, they are very minor figures; the central focus is on codes of brotherhood and the masculinized mise en scène.
In contrast to the Korean period films of the past focusing on political conflicts and social problems, the current historical movies emphasize action and visual style. Further, they serve as vehicles for new expressions of nationalism, and the spectacularity that marks blockbuster-era Korean cinema. This flexible genre encompasses films like the Korean/Chinese coproduction Musa: The Warrior (2001, dir. Kim Sung-su, at the time the most expensive Korean film ever made), a historical action drama dealing with war and reunification during premodern times with beefy star Jung Woo-sung as a fourteenth-century superhero. Other films attend to more recent Korean history such as the Korean War and the subsequent Cold War era stained by ideological conflict within the divided nation, between South Korea and North Korea. Released in December 2003, Silmido quickly broke domestic box-office records with a story based on the sensitive historical fact that from 1968 to 1971 in South Korea, male criminals were secretly trained on an island for a special mission to infiltrate North Korea and kill Kim Il-Sung. However, when the relationship between South and North Korea changed from acute conflict to a mood of reconciliation, the South Korean government decided to kill the trained hitmen. After Silmido’s smash success, the Korean War drama Taegukgi set a new record for both production cost and box-office receipts. In the film, Korean heartthrobs Jang Dong-Gon and Won Bin play two biological brothers, both forced to become soldiers, whose fate and future is shattered by the Korean War. Each of these relatively young actors (born in 1972 and 1977, respectively) have done commercial endorsements for myriad trendy products and have had roles in hugely popular television drama serials. However, they also are exemplars of Hanryu, or Korean wave stars, who have found huge youth audiences throughout East and Southeast Asia for their TV and film work. They represent a key component of the cultural economy of contemporary Korean cinema—its perceived viability not only through the domestic audience/fan base, but also through the increasing outflow of films and star popularity beyond the borders of the nation.
The phenomenon of the popular war film is a contemporary one in South Korea, compatible with concurrent quests for festivalized expression of national identity, especially among the youth (evident in public expressions of nationalism such as street celebrations after World Cup victory and anti-American demonstrations). Historical events in these films are shown primarily through stylized hyperreal war images achieved through special digital effects. However, films such as Silmido and Taegukgi also rely strongly on sentimentality and discourses of family and loyalty to convey a sense of tragedy, while Double Agent largely contained its drama within the character played by Han Suk-kyu. While the recent South Korean political actioners have orchestrated pyrotechnic gunpowder and flag-waving displays out of the ashes of history, Han’s long-anticipated comeback, Double Agent, although based on a true story, failed to spark with his monochromatic performance and representation of generic elements, as well as gender politics. Double Agent serves as a vehicle for Han’s subtle, psychologically motivated shape shifting, as his character assumes different identities but reveals the same solid core; the movie neglects to deliver some crucial ingredients of the blockbuster formula and the “new” Korean male star. Han’s overextended absence from the movies served as a metaphorical defection from mass audiences, betrayed by his entrepreneurial and extradiegetic marketing of his star brand in a manner that registered an excessive investment in his own image. The prerelease hype around Double Agent was countered by ultimate consumer disappointment in the star’s seeming inability to reinvent and recharge himself. Upon his screen return, Han’s apparently devalued star currency and fan attraction is thus connected to a rigid actorly display of masculinity (not to mention hubris) that is—by current Korean standards—devoid of satisfactory spectacle.
But on an optimistic note, Han’s actorly capital and potential fan/audience appeal are not yet completely depleted. His subsequent films of the new millennium, Scarlet Letter (2004, dir. Byun Hyuk), The President’s Last Bang (2005, dir. Im Sang-soo), Mr. Housewife (2005, dir. Yun Seon-dong), and Umlanseosaeng (2006, dir. Kim Dae-woo) demonstrate some diversified strategies for maintaining screen longevity that does not rest exclusively upon blockbuster box-office receipts: willingness to embody unsympathetic characters, supporting roles and shared leads, and playfully deconstructive gender representations. Such resourcefulness may be ultimately rewarded by fans who are willing to appreciate the generative possibilities of textual versatility.
NOTES
1. All original translations from Korean-language sources in this essay are by Hunju Lee.
2. This box-office ranking data for 2003 is provided by the Korean Film Commission, http://www.kofic.or.kr.
3. The term “spectacular nationalism” as conceptualized by Hunju Lee refers to blockbuster films that deal with historical events through spectacular images.
4. For a study of the evolution of Korean masculinity in relation to militarism and disengaged from feminized domesticity, see Moon (2001).