Living with the Times: "Gaksital" and the Grey Areas of Racism and Imperialism
Every nation needs its heroes; real or fictional, we remember the stories of those who have risen above the odds to achieve the greater good and fight back against evil and oppression.
Given this, it is easy to see why, at the time of its airing on KBS2 in 2012, the South Korean drama Gaksital was an instant hit with the home audience, achieving high ratings and being nominated for a slew of acting and directorial rewards before gaining government recognition as the Drama of the Year.
Based on the 1970s manhwa [comic] of the same name by Heo Young Man, Gaksital is a classic underdog story set in the 1930s, in the thick of the Imperial Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula. Both the manhwa and its television adaptation tell the tale of Lee Kang To, who lives a double life as Sato Hiroshi - a Korean collaborator with the Japanese police force tasked with crushing the burgeoning independence movement - and the titular Gaksital - a masked vigilante and freedom fighter who metes out justice against Imperial Japanese atrocities.
With such a premise, it is no wonder that the drama was fraught with political significance from its inception. Nor did the producers try to make a secret of this fact: over the course of its broadcast, Gaksital addresses such sensitive subjects as comfort women and the forced conscription of Korean men into the Imperial Japanese Army. It even - given its broadcast during the 2012 London Olympics - depicts the way in which the victories of Korean athletes were co-opted by the Japanese authorities as their own.
Tensions extended behind the scenes as well, with rumours emerging of actors refusing to take part out of fears of alienating what a large Japanese market for exported Korean television dramas. Inversely, those who did sign on to the project were lauded as "patriotic actors" and attained significant domestic success.However, despite all of this, the brilliance of a show like Gaksital is that it is, all things considered, a mature and realistic portrayal of the racial, cultural and political tensions prevalent in Japanese-occupied Korea. Although it has no shortage of characters with strong allegiances to a particular side of the conflict, a significant number appear somewhere in the middle: either going against what their ethnicity would dictate of them, or simply trying to live their lives in undisturbed neutrality. Gaksital, after all, is set in the early 1930s, some twenty years after Japan had annexed the Korean peninsula, and many of the main characters are implied to be somewhere in their twenties at the time the drama takes place. What this means is that, for the most part, those we see as viewers are part of the second generation: young Koreans who have no living memory of a time before Japanese rule, and young Japanese who have been born and raised as settlers in a land they never knew not to be theirs.
Thus, in this blog post, I will focus on four such characters who occupy the grey areas that emerged in Gaksital: Lee Kang To, Ueno Rie, Minami Tamao, and Kimura Shunji. From these examples, we can see that although this is a nationalist television drama filled with political and patriotic significance, the cast and crew also worked hard to show the realities of those caught in the middle. Not everyone, after all, is motivated by love of country.
Disclaimer: As I will end up discussing how characters develop over the course of the series, this post will contain spoilers! Please go down to "Resources" to access an online streaming link if you would prefer to watch at least some or all of the show first.
1. Lee Kang To (a.k.a. Sato Hiroshi; a.k.a. Gaksital)
I begin with our protagonist, Lee Kang To (played by Joo Won), because he is a character who inhabits the grey area between the two cultural/political extremes - the Japanese Imperialists and the Korean independence movement - in vastly intricate ways. Granted, by adopting dual identities as a pro-Japanese police officer and a Korean spy/independence fighter, Lee Kang To occupies multiple spaces on the spectrum by default. However, what is most telling here is the ways in which his character develops and his values, priorities and allegiances shift over the course of the drama.
See, in the beginning episodes of Gaksital, Lee Kang To is not a freedom-fighting vigilante disguised as a pro-Japanese cop. Instead, at first, he is firmly on one side as a chinilpa, a term used to refer to those who were ethnically Korean but whose allegiances were directed towards the Imperial Japanese government. If he is a hero in Gaksital, then he has a steep hill to climb, as he begins as the drama's villain, and the first stage of the narrative vividly portrays the atrocities he commits against his own people, and a propensity towards violent fits of rage.
However, even from the first episode, Lee Kang To is shown to have little patience for political ideals; he is a pragmatist and a realist, whose primary goal is to be the breadwinner for his widowed mother and disabled older brother. It is not so much that he believes in the Japanese imperialist cause as that he sees little benefit in resisting what he perceives to be the reality of his world. Fighting and protesting against the Imperial Japanese could lead to arrest, torture, and possibly death; indeed, his older brother's disability was caused by just that. Passive resistance by attempting to maintain neutrality, on the other hand, is physically safer, but leaves one's options limited while caring for elderly or sick family members; without the promise of better wages and job stability that becoming a chinilpa offers, Lee Kang To could just afford to make ends meet, but could not afford things like better housing for his mother, or medical care for his brother. Thus, despite his family's clear disapproval of his actions, he persists, because, having lived in poverty and given up his own chances at higher education for his brother's sake, he sees himself as having few other options.
Yet, despite his lack of interest in patriotism or nationalism, Lee Kang To cannot escape from politics. Although the Imperial Japanese rhetoric in this period
of history is purportedly that both Japanese and Koreans could climb in
society as long as they are loyal to the empire, the reality is much
harsher. The majority of Koreans depicted in Gaksital have no
intentions of joining forces with their colonizers, but even those who
do find their professed allegiance under constant scrutiny. 
And
for Lee Kang To, who is implied to be the sole Korean officer in his precinct, this leads to sadistic tests of loyalty;
he is assigned to cases in which he must arrest, interrogate, and
torture members of the independence movement - and failure to do so, in
his superiors' eyes, suggests that he is actually secretly and
treacherously allied with the resistance. Thus, in order to survive, he
often becomes more cruel, more oppressive, more extreme than the
Japanese imperialists, lashing out violently against those he loves the most and ultimately renouncing his Korean name for a Japanese one: Sato Hiroshi.
Things come to a head when Lee Kang To, on his most recent case, kills his target - a masked resistance fighter known as Gaksital - only to discover belatedly that this was his own brother, who had in fact faked disability in order to escape notice from Japanese authorities. In a tragic twist of fate, his doggedness as a chinilpa, a status he had adopted in order to support his family, led him to destroy the very people he was trying to protect.
It is at this point that, in a personal act of penance, Lee Kang To appropriates his brother's persona as Gaksital, determined to carry on the mission that he himself had cut short. Retaining his position as a chinilpa police officer as a cover identity, he begins to strike out at his former allies, whose oppression of the Korean people are becoming increasingly apparent to him.
The drama most clearly shows this conflict via Lee Kang To's relationship with Oh Mok Dan. They had been childhood friends who lost track of each other years before the events of the drama. However, in the present, as the daughter of a prominent resistance leader, she holds nothing but contempt for him. Yet, ironically, she is deeply in love with Gaksital, who has helped and rescued her on several occasions. Until she puts the pieces together and discovers the truth behind Lee Kang To's various personas - that the man she loved and the man she hated were one of the same, and the former was the real thing - her simultaneous adoration and revulsion serve as a poignant reminder of Lee Kang To's loneliness in his double life.
It is only towards the end of Gaksital that Lee Kang To begins to show signs of believing in the cause for independence and fighting for something greater than his own immediate circle of family and loved ones. As he does, he slowly but surely adopts a broader perspective: one that allows him to survive and endure despite the many setbacks he and his comrades face.
2. Ueno Rie (a.k.a. Lara; a.k.a. Chae Hong Joo)
In many ways, Ueno Rie (played by Han Chae Ah) is similar to Lee Kang To, since she is also a chinilpa. However, whereas Lee Kang To retained his position in between the two extremes, Ueno Rie takes herself a step further. Born to an aristocratic Korean family, by the time she first appears in Gaksital, she has completely reinvented herself as a Japanese woman: the beautiful adopted daughter of the leader of Kishokai, a Japanese secret society that is implied to be the occupation's power behind the scenes.
Ueno Rie's motivation for renouncing her Korean identity stems from a deep resentment and hatred towards her compatriots. As a child, she was orphaned when her parents were killed by bandits working under the guise of resistance fighters, and with few other means for survival, resorted to working as a gisaeng [courtesan] at a very young age.
Thus, having become thoroughly disillusioned at any claims towards political ideals - believing from firsthand experience that these are only excuses people use to abuse one another - Ueno Rie, then Chae Hong Joo, is determined to create her own path in life. It is in this capacity that she later meets the client who would eventually become her patron and her adopted father.
Yet, in reality, Ueno Rie feels insecure about herself. She is, for instance, aware that her adopted father does not fully trust her, and thus deeply fears the consequences any slippages might bring. If her past were to become public, or if her father were to believe that her loyalties were still directed towards Korea, then she would lose everything: wealth, reputation, protection...even her life.
Yet, as with many of the characters in the drama, Ueno Rie changes due to her relationships with others.
Having been rescued once by Lee Kang To during her days as a gisaeng, she finds herself falling in love when she meets him again as her new persona. Although he does not reciprocate her feelings and is facing his own significant shifts in allegiance, they are kindred spirits in a way: both aware of the lengths they had to resort to in order to come this far in a society that made them second-class citizens on account of their ethnicity.
Ueno Rie's loyalties are given their ultimate test when she finally discovers that Lee Kang To is, in fact, Gaksital. As the adopted daughter of Kishokai's leader, she knows that she must report him. After all, her father is notoriously strict towards his followers, allowing no chances for failure - how much more so in regards to a so-called daughter whom he never actually completely trusted?
Given this, it is telling that under such circumstances, Ueno Rie chooses to hide Lee Kang To's secret from the authorities, including the members of Kishokai. Although her efforts are ultimately in vain - her adopted father eventually finds out from another - they reveal how much she has been impacted by her love for Lee Kang To and his sympathy towards her. When push comes to shove, she prioritizes his life above her own.
Fortunately, in the end, Gaksital allows Ueno Rie a redemptive arc. She does not, in fact, die as a result of her betrayal of Kishokai. Instead, after her adopted father is killed by Gaksital, she is given the opportunity to escape - which she does, disappearing down Seoul's busy streets as she now introduces herself with her Korean name, Chae Hong Joo, once again.
3. Minami Tamao (usually just goes by "Tamao"; a.k.a. Lee Hae Suk)
When it comes to the grey areas that emerged during the Japanese occupation, a character like Tamao (played by Choi Dae Hoon) truly gets the short end of the stick. Unlike Lee Kang To and Ueno Rie, who both made the initial decision to join forces with the Japanese voluntarily, Tamao is a second-generation chinilpa: his father pledged allegiance to the Japanese either in Tamao's early childhood, or possibly before he was even born.
Although Tamao is a minor character in the grand scheme of things, he stands out as a person who was innocently caught between the two different camps that become apparent in Gaksital. After all, it is not his fault that he is considered a chinilpa; the choice was never his to make. However, because of his family background, he finds himself ostracized as a race traitor by his fellow Koreans nonetheless. Meanwhile, although his father chose to pledge himself to the Japanese cause in order to provide better opportunities to his son, even being able to send him to study abroad in Japan, Tamao can never fully fit in there as well. He recalls at one point, for instance, that he was bullied by his Japanese schoolmates, who, regardless of his family's efforts, still saw him as an outsider and also reviled him as someone who could turn on his own people in order to get ahead.
Thus, in the show's earlier episodes, it's clear that Tamao is a very lonely person, with few friends and no real sense of purpose in life. As the son of an aristocratic family, he does not want for money and can get by without any stable employment. Instead, he is most frequently seen drinking and womanizing in a local jazz bar that has a significant Japanese clientele, or with his fellow misfit friends: Lee Kang To and Kimura Shunji.
As the series progresses, however, Tamao observes that the people around him, who had initially occupied the same middle ground as he, are now gravitating back towards their own nationalistic camps. Although he fails to realize that his friend Lee Kang To is actually Gaksital, he does discover that the bar's proprietress, Tasha, whom he had a one-sided crush on, is actually a member of the Korean resistance movement and that she had returned his flirtations in order to obtain information on his father's activities. Not only that, but even knowing of his position as a chinilpa, she openly communicated with her comrades in his presence, stating that it was because she felt that Tamao was too cowardly to pose a real threat. Meanwhile, his friendship with Kimura Shunji similarly disintegrates as the latter becomes increasingly drawn towards the imperialist Japanese camp, ultimately openly rejecting Tamao by claiming that he would never have been truly friends with a Korean.
Both of these incidents leave Tamao with an existential crisis, as he begins to question whether he could truly remain an innocent bystander to the events around him. This leads to one of Gaksital's most poignant tragedies. In the show's final episodes, Tamao's father begins to pave the way for him to join Kishokai in hopes that it would secure him greater job opportunities. However, unbeknownst to his family, he himself is becoming drawn to the sense of purpose that fills Tasha and other members of the resistance, full of admiration at their courage in the face of adversity and their ability to live for something other than their own financial gain.
Thus, when Tamao becomes aware of his father's plans to formally present him to the leader of Kishokai, along with a significant cash donation to the imperialist cause, Tamao secretly informs Tasha of his whereabouts, giving Gaksital and fellow resistance fighters the means to ambush the rendezvous and steal the funds. Shortly afterwards, he shoots himself, expressing in a final letter to his father his regret at having been born, singlehandedly taking responsibility as the reason for his family's choices.
4. Kimura Shunji
If someone like Lee Kang To is the black sheep of his family due to his allegiance to the Japanese, then Kimura Shunji (played by Park Ki Woong) is the inverse. Beginning as a Japanese schoolteacher who adores his Korean students, he gradually finds himself trapped in a downward spiral that throws him headlong into the imperialist Japanese cause.
As a teacher, Kimura Shunji is loved by both his students and their families. Although they are Korean and he is Japanese, they accept him as one of the "good" Japanese in their community: one who does not put on airs around them simply because his ethnic background is favoured during the occupation era. Indeed, he encourages his students to retain what parts of their culture they can, even devoting a classroom in the school building towards creating a museum of Korean folk art and everyday objects.
However, these behaviours, as the show progresses, also serve as clues towards a darker side of Kimura Shunji's character. Although his love and sympathy for Korean culture are genuine, the fact that he is still a teacher in a time period in which Korean children were taught an imperialist Japanese curriculum means that he is still inadvertently a part of a broader colonization movement. Thus, it is possible to interpret Kimura Shunji's collection as his attempts to compensate for what he is doing: mourning and attempting to preserve a culture he believes to be dying out, but doing nothing to stop its eradication in the first place.
Meanwhile, when the Korean woman he loves, Oh Mok Dan, is threatened by the authorities due to her suspected connections with Gaksital, he appeals to his father on her behalf, promising to take his deceased brother's place in the police force in exchange for her freedom.
Kimura Shunji's love for Oh Mok Dan and his desire for vengeance against Gaksital, however, prove to be his downfall.
Initially, it is his sense of haste that leads him to make increasingly immoral decisions; his desire is to quickly see Gaksital arrested or killed by any means possible, after which he could resign from the police force and return to his beloved job as a schoolteacher with Oh Mok Dan at his side. However, as it becomes clear to him that Oh Mok Dan is, in fact, in love with Gaksital, he finds it increasingly difficult to hold himself to
his own values and morals. Now that the main subject of his anger is
also his main romantic rival, all of his hatred and resentment become
concentrated towards a single target: Gaksital.
It isn't long before Kimura Shunji's desire for vengeance puts him at direct odds with Lee Kang To. He begins with a nagging suspicion: every time Gaksital appears, Lee Kang To is absent and vice-versa. To his credit, for much of the middle episodes of the drama, he refuses to believe that his suspicions might be real; after all, Lee Kang To has been his friend since adolescence. However, as evidence begins to accumulate until he can no longer deny the truth, Kimura Shunji finds his former liking for Lee Kang To turning into a deep sense of betrayal. He descends into paranoia, which, at its most intense, leads him to feel that all of the Koreans around him are disloyal and treacherous. His goal then shifts from seeking vengeance on Gaksital as an unknown abstract figure - to seeking to destroy Lee Kang To personally.
None of this is to say that Kimura Shunji is unaware of the moral implications of his actions. A good-hearted and well-intentioned person by nature, he is horrified at his own worsening behaviour and the growing list of atrocities nagging at his conscience.
However, instead of turning away from this path, he continues along it, firmly believing that only after he has completed his objective to avenge his brother, and only after he has won Oh Mok Dan's love, could he find redemption. Thus, as with Lee Kang To before him, his cruelty grows alongside with his desperation.
Because Gaksital's viewers remain aware of Kimura Shunji's internal conflict throughout the course of the series, it is likely that many do hope for him to be able to find a road to redemption. Sadly, that is not to be. In the final episode, in his attempts to kill Lee Kang To, he inadvertently shoots Oh Mok Dan instead. Horrified at his own actions, and now finally believing himself to be beyond redemption, he meets with Lee Kang To under the pretense of a final duel to the death - but instead, after bidding his former best friend farewell, he takes his own life as the drama's final victim.
Conclusion
Although it eventually does transition into a nationalist binary, in which the Imperial Japanese government is portrayed as evil and the Korean resistance movement as good, Gaksital successfully tells compelling stories of those people who are helplessly caught in the crossfire. Characters like Lee Kang To, Ueno Rie, Minami Tamao, Kimura Shunji and many others are not patriots in the stereotypical sense. Rather, they are ordinary people, seeking to live their lives as best they can under harsh circumstances.
While these circumstances certainly do not absolve them of their sins, they show vividly to viewers how difficult it was to survive in a world where racism reigns. By painting the Japanese as inherently superior to the Koreans, the occupation-era government created a system in which pledging loyalty to them and fighting for them became a desirable option for many - and not all the chinilpa were motivated by desires for selfish gains. Lee Kang To was trying to make ends meet. Ueno Rie was trying to find a sense of belonging among those she believed accepted her. Tamao was simply trying to live in the only way he has ever known - and his father was trying to give his son a better life. Inversely, a story like Kimura Shunji's shows viewers the horrors of war and racism, as his personal conflicts conflate with a broader set of political issues.This is not to say that the love of people and country that drives the resistance movement is pointless or futile - as already stated, they are the force for good throughout Gaksital. But by showing the stories of those caught in between, those who are simply trying to live with the times they have been given, it also tells us that we all fight for things other than country. We fight for friends, for family, for love. And for many of us, those shape us more than patriotism ever will, because, to us, they matter more.
The above blog post is a crossover between two ongoing series: Memorializing History, which looks at the different ways in which people engage with historical events and issues; and Hallyu for Our World, which examines the broader universal themes that appear in Korean popular culture, including dramas. To access a master list for this and other series, click here.
Resources
For anyone who is interested in watching Gaksital, a version with English subtitles is available for online streaming is available here.
Image Credits
All images (c) KBS2, and are downloaded from Dramabeans.com
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