If there’s one event in history that seems to drive a massive amount of cinematic Interest and conversation over the last couple of years it is the 1979 assassination of South Korean president Park Chung Hee. The fictional version of President Chun Do-hwan has become more noticeable than Spiderman in Korea with his numerous portrayals in films over the last few years. 

We have seen several movies in just the last couple of years that tackled the assassination of the former South Korean president from multiple different angles.  In 2020,  the film ‘The Man Standing Next’ told the story of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency going to war with the sitting president in an event that was rumored to have led to Park’s assassination that very night. 

A couple of years later the 2022 film entitled ‘The Hunt’ gave us insight into the conflict immediately after the assassination of Park and saw a national struggle between two regimes trying to pull the country in two different directions,  a communist and a capitalist one.

Last year,  the film ‘12.12: The Day’ brought audiences to the very night of Park’s assassination and the absolute chaos under martial law as the government struggled for control of who was going to run the nation of South Korea and the immediate aftermath of The Killing.

This time we are being dropped off in the days of Park’s death with a film called ‘Land of Happiness’ That takes us down the journey of the soldier who fired the shot killing the sitting president and what his faith meant in the eyes of the public and the eyes of the inner circle for the intelligence agencies.

The film stars Jung In-hoo who is known for being a master of legal battles. While In-hoo is great at conquering small-time cases, he takes on one of the most challenging political trials in South Korean history by defending Park Tae-jun, the chief secretary of the intelligence agency implicated in the assassination of President Park.

As the country of South Korea wants answers and accountability for the death of their sitting president,  the chief secretary claims that he was only following a direct order that was given to him by his superior that has a soldier he was not allowed to deny.  However, many within the broken government system want to make an example out of him to progress the country towards healing in a new regime.

Despite the overwhelming odds, In-hoo tries to curb the sentence but the soldier’s fate looks to be predetermined due to his military status. In-hoo fights relentlessly to ensure a fair trial. However, his frustration boils over as he faces an increasingly unjust legal process and the hidden politics preventing his client’s innocence. 

It’s hard to narrow down the truth versus the fiction of this historical event from the perspectives of many writers and directors who have their own beliefs about what happened that night and who was responsible.  In other words, if you watch four different movies about this topic you’re going to get four entirely different vantage points but the truth is somewhere sprinkled in the middle.  As the South Korean president was assassinated due to a military coup in an act to steer the nation in the direction that they wanted,  an innocent man’s life hangs in the balance.

Unlike other films that focus on the central conflict that plays out in the region at that period,  ‘Land of Happiness’ attempts to tell his story using the Avatar of a man stuck in the middle of a power play. What ultimately hurts this film is the fact that the audience is taken on a 2-hour ride of a man fighting for his innocence and gives you a few twists and turns along the way that he may achieve a pardon but the reality is that when the military is looking to clean up loose ends there’s no way they’re going to allow a survivor to tell an unofficial side of the story meaning that the audience is being taken on the ride where they know the result is not going to end well.

Lee Sun-Kyun does a great job in the movie in one of his final performances following his sucide following a drug and sex-related scandal getting exposed to the public. The acting is Stellar as the film turns up the courtroom drama to an 11 but the film has a tough time balancing the story inside and outside of the courtroom that leads to a pitfall of pacing issues.  With that said if you are a history buff and you’re looking to piece together an unintentional Multiverse that the assassination of Park has created.

Land of Happiness creates another solid piece in this cinematic puzzled but would have done better if ‘12.12: The Day’ hadn’t come out a few months earlier. 

3/5

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