'Who would sacrifice a beloved wife for power?' — Lawmaker Lee slams politicization of 'The Assassin(s)'

Lee Jae-jeong, a Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker who chairs the National Assembly's Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee, said the controversy surrounding the film "The Assassin(s)" amounts to "a distortion of the film by the political world."

Lee shared her review of the film on Facebook on Monday, saying she had gone to see it alone after initially trying to stay out of the debate. "My position had been to refrain from political involvement as much as possible, but violent attacks on the cast and creators kept coming one after another, and I felt the political overreach had gone too far," she wrote.

"This film clearly did not place the possibility of President Park's involvement even within the realm of cinematic imagination," Lee said. "Who would dare make a beloved wife a sacrificial victim of power? However critical I may be of President Park Chung-hee, when I think of my memories and feelings about the affection within the Park family and their relationships, it was impossible for me to entertain such an idea while watching the film."

She added that if the filmmakers had intended to leave room for such an interpretation, the director would have needed to build up to it for the audience. "But the scenes featuring Park Chung-hee and first lady Yuk Young-soo amount to no more than a few dozen seconds. Knowing Director Heo Jin-ho's dynamic and tightly constructed filmmaking, there is no way he would have overlooked that," she said.

Lee then challenged critics to be honest about what actually bothered them. "Isn't what you find unpleasant and uncomfortable in this film something else entirely?" she said. "Wasn't it that you disliked seeing things like the long dictatorship symbolized by Park Chung-hee's emergency decrees, the abuses of the Korea Central Intelligence Agency, press suppression, and the hidden sides of the 1965 Korea-Japan normalization treaty being brought back to the surface?"

She said dragging the film into National Assembly audit hearings was itself "a gag on creative work and an act of wanton violence," and vowed to stand firm on principle as committee chair.

Lee also weighed in on reports that the People Power Party plans to send a letter to the Singapore International Film Festival requesting that "The Assassin(s)" be withdrawn as its opening film. "Please, let the international embarrassment stop here," she said. "Film festival officials and the international community who receive that letter will think of the martial law of 2024."

"The Assassin(s)," which opened Sept. 23, is based on the 1974 Liberation Day ceremony shooting in which first lady Yuk Young-soo was killed. The film has drawn fierce criticism from some quarters, who argue it distorts historical fact by depicting former President Park Chung-hee as having been involved in his wife's death.