Making my way down the list of highly-rated Korean films, I stumbled upon this one, and was left shocked and disturbed. Initially after viewing, I was angry with the film makers because the shock value alone felt like a form of exploitation of the actors (especially the child actors!) A movie like this should NOT be made for the profit motive.

However, I've since found that the film was the filmmakers' quest for justice based on a real-life example, known as the Gwangju Inhwa School. This whole sordid episode had been written up as a novel of the same title and the film took on the role of loudspeaker to the public. Indeed, the impact of the film on Korean society was like an invisible hand that pushed through reform for regulations that gave rise to ugly events and people showcased in the film.

But the film's also like a mercury needle probing under the skin of society for saturated poison, and behold! found a dark, disgusting wound. The easy answer would be to punish the most apparent perpetrators, then live and forget, live and forget as if something alas has been done -- although truth be told, the real story was more staggering, involving more faculty and administrators, with the history of the school connecting to the crème de la crème of the community, over the span of countless more years.

At the core of it, this film is testimony to the sheer abundance of poverty and its effects on a nameless town or community. If our general mentality is the NIMBY ("not in my backyard") approach, and there is present a sizable class of those unwanted, neglected, and absolutely vulnerable, who ultimately pays the price? Let the question be better phrased - do you care where the garbage goes after it's been picked up?

The film is a mirror on society, offering us a pitiful look at the grotesqueries of our nature. It's not the first, and will not be the last, since recently I found another novel - in the US - that seemed to have been cut from the same cloth: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead.