Oh Dae-su
Encyclopedia
Oh Dae-su is a fictional character and the protagonist of the 2003 South Korean film Oldboy
, played by Choi Min-sik
. Choi won a number of awards for his portrayal of Oh, including the 2004 Grand Bell Award
and Asia Pacific Film Festival
Award for Best Actor. He also trained for six weeks and lost twenty pounds to get in shape for the role, and did most of his own stunt work.
Oh Dae-su is loosely based on the character Shinichi Gotō from the Japanese manga Old Boy
, on which the film is also based. He has also been compared to Franz Kafka
's Josef K
, from The Trial
, due to the nature of his oblivious imprisonment.
1959 and attended the Catholic
Sangnok High School, from which he graduated in 1978. He then became a businessman in Seoul
and married Kim Ja-Hyun. The couple had a daughter, Yeun-Hee, who was born around 1985. He was also an overweight alcoholic
who often fought with his wife and neighbours. At the beginning of the film, a scene shows him in a police station
after being arrested for being drunk and disorderly. His friend, Joo-Hwan, comes to the station and bails him out. They then go to a near-by phone box and Dae-su calls his wife and daughter. As it was his daughter's third birthday, he had bought her a pair of wings as a present. As he hands the phone over to Joo-Hwan, he disappears into the night and the camera pans over the neon-lit, rain soaked city. He later described meeting a man, who presumably knocked him unconscious and bundled him into a vehicle. This took place somewhere around 1988.
. As he has only television to keep him company, his mental health soon deteriorates and he begins hallucinating. He attempts suicide, but a gas which puts him into a state of unconsciousness is always pumped into the room before he can succeed. Accepting that he will never be able to escape, in life or through death, he begins writing a list of people who he has wronged throughout his life, and who could be responsible for his imprisonment. He also begins a workout routine, and starts shadowboxing
and punching an outline of a person on the wall. This appears to be his training regime, so that he can take revenge on his jailer when, and if, he is released. He marks the years passed since his capture by tattooing himself.
While watching television, Dae-su discovers that his wife has been murdered, his daughter sent to foster parents (the Von Ljungberg family of Stockholm
, Sweden
) and that he himself is the prime murder suspect. He then decides to escape, and begins tunneling through the wall using metal chopsticks
. He eventually digs his way to the outside, but can only make a small hole in the wall before the gas comes flowing into his room. He then covers the hole by pushing his bed in front of it. This is his last memory before being hypnotised by a woman in his room.
, and possibly also tries to rape her or masturbate in front of her. As he leaves the building, the woman calls a policeman over, but the jumper then falls onto a parked car which allows him to escape. As he walks into the centre of town, he comes across a street gang who call him a "dick shit". He notes this as a new word, as TV did not teach him swear words, and then takes the gang on in a brawl. He did this to find out if fifteen years of imaginary training could be put to use: it could. While standing outside a shop, a homeless man approaches him and hands him a wallet and a mobile phone
, but explains that he has no information. Dae-su then enters a nearby restaurant and orders a live octopus
from a chef he had seen on TV, Mi-do, claiming that he needs to eat something live
. He chats with Mi-do, then receives a call from his former captor and soon passes out.
Dae-su awakens in Mi-do's apartment, having been brought home by her. He attempts to have sex with her as she uses the bathroom, but is fought off. He starts to leave, thinking he has done something unforgivable, but Mi-do sympathizes with him, having read his journals. Dae-su resolves to find his former captor and locates the restaurant that provided the fried dumplings during his imprisonment, following the delivery boy to his former prison. Once inside, Dae-su ambushes the warden and tortures him for information, using a claw hammer
to pull his teeth out. The info includes tape recordings of his captor, his only spoken motive being that "Oh Dae-su talks too much". Dae-su then fights his way out of the prison past hordes of guards, suffering several serious wounds before escaping. After Dae-su collapses in the street, a stranger places him in a taxi, only to direct him to Mi-do's address and identify Dae-su by name, showing his face briefly, which Dae-su knows but can't place, before the taxi leaves. The next day, the man, named Lee Woo-jin, reveals himself as Dae-su's kidnapper and offers him the chance to play a game, where he must discover Woo-jin's motives behind Dae-su's kidnapping. Mi-do will die if he fails, but if he succeeds, Woo-jin will kill himself. Later, Dae-su discovers he and Woo-jin briefly attended the same high school. During the investigation, Dae-su and Mi-do grow closer together and become physically and emotionally intimate, culminating in their having sex. Chasing his memories, Dae-su remembers spying on Woo-jin's incestuous relationship with his sister, Soo-ah and, unaware of their genetic relationship, inadvertently spreads the rumor before transferring to another school in Seoul. Eventually, the rumor grew to include a pregnancy, which may or may not have been real, leading to Soo-ah's death, assumed to have been a suicide by jumping from a bridge.
Dae-su confronts Woo-jin with the information and accuses Woo-jin of killing his own sister to cover up the scandal. Woo-jin instead gives Dae-su a final gift, a photo album containing Dae-su's family portrait. As Dae-su flips through the album, he witnesses his daughter grow older in the pictures, until discovering that Mi-do is actually his daughter. Woo-jin reveals that Dae-su's kidnapping, incarceration, the murder of his wife and the upbringing of his daughter were all orchestrated to cause Dae-su and Mi-do to commit incest. It is also revealed that hypnosis and post-hypnotic suggestion were involved with Dae-Su's imprisonment, and had been performed on Mi-Do as well, and that the warden, thought to have betrayed Woo-Jin to Dae-su, was actually still under his payroll. Dae-su is left horrified at the fact that he and his daughter have become romantic lovers. Dae-su begs Woo-jin to conceal the secret from Mi-Do, groveling for forgiveness before slicing out his own tongue and offering it to Woo-jin as a symbol of his silence. Woo-jin agrees to spare Mi-do from the traumatic knowledge and leaves Dae-su in his penthouse with the words "My sister and I loved each other despite everything. Can you two do the same?". As Woo-jin rides alone in the elevator, he is struck by the vivid memory of his sister's death, a suicide in which he was complicit, and shoots himself in the head. In the epilogue, Dae-su sits in a winter landscape, where he makes a deal with the same hypnotist who had hypnotized him while imprisoned, asking for her help to allow him to forget the secret. She reads his pleas from a handwritten letter and, touched by his words, begins the hypnosis process, lulling him into unconsciousness. Hours later, Dae-su wakes up, the hypnotist gone, and stumbles about before finally meeting with Mi-do. They embrace, and the soft spoken Mi-do tells Dae-su that she loves him. His broad smile slowly disappears into an odd expression, neither obviously happy nor unhappy.
writer Peter Bradshaw
described Oh Dae-su as having "a heftily built presence [and] massively ravaged and ruined face which in itself is fiercely expressive of unbearable, unassuageable emotion". Time Out London called the Oh Dae-su of the early scenes "a drunken boor", but the man that he transforms into as "running the gamut from terrifying rage to abject degradation". HMV
s review of the film noted the incredible transformation of the character, stating "we’re with him every step of the way from drunken, obnoxious lout to bewildered, angry prisoner, to vengeful, bloodthirsty warrior".
Oldboy
Oldboy is a 2003 South Korean film directed by Park Chan-wook. It is based on the Japanese manga of the same name written by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya. Oldboy is the second installment of The Vengeance Trilogy, preceded by Sympathy for Mr...
, played by Choi Min-sik
Choi Min-sik
Choi Min-sik is a South Korean actor. He is best known for his critically acclaimed roles in Oldboy and I Saw the Devil.-Movie career:...
. Choi won a number of awards for his portrayal of Oh, including the 2004 Grand Bell Award
Grand Bell Awards
The Grand Bell Awards is an awards ceremony presented annually by The Motion Pictures Association of Korea for excellence in film in South Korea....
and Asia Pacific Film Festival
Asia Pacific Film Festival
The Asia Pacific Film Festival, first held in 1954, is film festival held annually in an Asian country designated by the Board of Directors of the Federation of Motion Picture Producers in Asia-Pacific.Awards are handed out for:*Best Film*Best Director...
Award for Best Actor. He also trained for six weeks and lost twenty pounds to get in shape for the role, and did most of his own stunt work.
Oh Dae-su is loosely based on the character Shinichi Gotō from the Japanese manga Old Boy
Old Boy (manga)
is a manga series written by Garon Tsuchiya and illustrated by Nobuaki Minegishi. The narrative follows the protagonist Shinichi Gotō, a man who, after a decade of incarceration in a private prison, is suddenly freed...
, on which the film is also based. He has also been compared to Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
's Josef K
The Trial
The Trial is a novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1925. One of Kafka's best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor the reader.Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never...
, from The Trial
The Trial
The Trial is a novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1925. One of Kafka's best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor the reader.Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never...
, due to the nature of his oblivious imprisonment.
Pre-imprisonment
Dae-su was born circaCirca
Circa , usually abbreviated c. or ca. , means "approximately" in the English language, usually referring to a date...
1959 and attended the Catholic
Catholic school
Catholic schools are maintained parochial schools or education ministries of the Catholic Church. the Church operates the world's largest non-governmental school system...
Sangnok High School, from which he graduated in 1978. He then became a businessman in Seoul
Seoul
Seoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...
and married Kim Ja-Hyun. The couple had a daughter, Yeun-Hee, who was born around 1985. He was also an overweight alcoholic
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
who often fought with his wife and neighbours. At the beginning of the film, a scene shows him in a police station
Police station
A police station or station house is a building which serves to accommodate police officers and other members of staff. These buildings often contain offices and accommodation for personnel and vehicles, along with locker rooms, temporary holding cells and interview/interrogation rooms.- Facilities...
after being arrested for being drunk and disorderly. His friend, Joo-Hwan, comes to the station and bails him out. They then go to a near-by phone box and Dae-su calls his wife and daughter. As it was his daughter's third birthday, he had bought her a pair of wings as a present. As he hands the phone over to Joo-Hwan, he disappears into the night and the camera pans over the neon-lit, rain soaked city. He later described meeting a man, who presumably knocked him unconscious and bundled him into a vehicle. This took place somewhere around 1988.
Imprisonment
Dae-su then awakes in a window-less cell, which is identical to a hotel room, a number of days later. It is a private jail, run by gangsters who imprison people for pay. He is kept in his room 24/7 and has no contact with the outside world; the only people he sees are the guards who come and put food through a hatch in the door. He is never told why he is there or how long he will be there, and is fed only fried dumplingsMandu (dumpling)
Mandu are dumplings in Korean cuisine. They are similar to pelmeni and pierogi in some Slavic cultures. The name is a cognate to the names of similar types of meat-filled dumplings in Central Asia, such as Turkish manti, Kazakh manty, and Uzbek manti.In Korean cuisine, mandu generally denotes a...
. As he has only television to keep him company, his mental health soon deteriorates and he begins hallucinating. He attempts suicide, but a gas which puts him into a state of unconsciousness is always pumped into the room before he can succeed. Accepting that he will never be able to escape, in life or through death, he begins writing a list of people who he has wronged throughout his life, and who could be responsible for his imprisonment. He also begins a workout routine, and starts shadowboxing
Shadowboxing
Shadowboxing is an exercise used in the training for combat sports, especially, as its name implies, in boxing. It is used mainly to prepare the muscles before the person training engages in stronger physical activity. In shadowboxing, only one person is required to participate; the participant...
and punching an outline of a person on the wall. This appears to be his training regime, so that he can take revenge on his jailer when, and if, he is released. He marks the years passed since his capture by tattooing himself.
While watching television, Dae-su discovers that his wife has been murdered, his daughter sent to foster parents (the Von Ljungberg family of Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
) and that he himself is the prime murder suspect. He then decides to escape, and begins tunneling through the wall using metal chopsticks
Chopsticks
Chopsticks are small, often tapered, sticks used in pairs of equal length as the traditional eating utensils of China and its diaspora, Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Northern provinces of Laos, Thailand and Burma. Generally believed to have originated in ancient China, they can also be found in some...
. He eventually digs his way to the outside, but can only make a small hole in the wall before the gas comes flowing into his room. He then covers the hole by pushing his bed in front of it. This is his last memory before being hypnotised by a woman in his room.
Post-imprisonment
It has been fifteen years since his imprisonment began, and he has been given a new suit and his prison diaries upon his release. On the rooftop, he meets a man who is about to commit suicide by jumping. Dae-su saves him, however, and insists he listens to his story. When the man begins his own story, Dae-su walks off and takes an elevator down to the ground floor. In the elevator, he sees a woman for the first time in fifteen years. He steals her sunglassesSunglasses
Sunglasses or sun glasses are a form of protective eyewear designed primarily to prevent bright sunlight and high-energy visible light from damaging or discomforting the eyes. They can sometimes also function as a visual aid, as variously termed spectacles or glasses exist, featuring lenses that...
, and possibly also tries to rape her or masturbate in front of her. As he leaves the building, the woman calls a policeman over, but the jumper then falls onto a parked car which allows him to escape. As he walks into the centre of town, he comes across a street gang who call him a "dick shit". He notes this as a new word, as TV did not teach him swear words, and then takes the gang on in a brawl. He did this to find out if fifteen years of imaginary training could be put to use: it could. While standing outside a shop, a homeless man approaches him and hands him a wallet and a mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
, but explains that he has no information. Dae-su then enters a nearby restaurant and orders a live octopus
Octopus
The octopus is a cephalopod mollusc of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms, and like other cephalopods they are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms...
from a chef he had seen on TV, Mi-do, claiming that he needs to eat something live
Sannakji
Sannakji or sannakji hoe is a variety of hoe, or raw dish, in Korean cuisine. It consists of live nakji that has been cut into small pieces and served immediately, usually lightly seasoned with sesame and sesame oil. The nakji pieces are usually still squirming on the plate...
. He chats with Mi-do, then receives a call from his former captor and soon passes out.
Dae-su awakens in Mi-do's apartment, having been brought home by her. He attempts to have sex with her as she uses the bathroom, but is fought off. He starts to leave, thinking he has done something unforgivable, but Mi-do sympathizes with him, having read his journals. Dae-su resolves to find his former captor and locates the restaurant that provided the fried dumplings during his imprisonment, following the delivery boy to his former prison. Once inside, Dae-su ambushes the warden and tortures him for information, using a claw hammer
Claw hammer
A claw hammer is a tool primarily used for pounding nails into, or extracting nails from, some other object. Generally, a claw hammer is associated with woodworking but is not limited to use with wood products...
to pull his teeth out. The info includes tape recordings of his captor, his only spoken motive being that "Oh Dae-su talks too much". Dae-su then fights his way out of the prison past hordes of guards, suffering several serious wounds before escaping. After Dae-su collapses in the street, a stranger places him in a taxi, only to direct him to Mi-do's address and identify Dae-su by name, showing his face briefly, which Dae-su knows but can't place, before the taxi leaves. The next day, the man, named Lee Woo-jin, reveals himself as Dae-su's kidnapper and offers him the chance to play a game, where he must discover Woo-jin's motives behind Dae-su's kidnapping. Mi-do will die if he fails, but if he succeeds, Woo-jin will kill himself. Later, Dae-su discovers he and Woo-jin briefly attended the same high school. During the investigation, Dae-su and Mi-do grow closer together and become physically and emotionally intimate, culminating in their having sex. Chasing his memories, Dae-su remembers spying on Woo-jin's incestuous relationship with his sister, Soo-ah and, unaware of their genetic relationship, inadvertently spreads the rumor before transferring to another school in Seoul. Eventually, the rumor grew to include a pregnancy, which may or may not have been real, leading to Soo-ah's death, assumed to have been a suicide by jumping from a bridge.
Dae-su confronts Woo-jin with the information and accuses Woo-jin of killing his own sister to cover up the scandal. Woo-jin instead gives Dae-su a final gift, a photo album containing Dae-su's family portrait. As Dae-su flips through the album, he witnesses his daughter grow older in the pictures, until discovering that Mi-do is actually his daughter. Woo-jin reveals that Dae-su's kidnapping, incarceration, the murder of his wife and the upbringing of his daughter were all orchestrated to cause Dae-su and Mi-do to commit incest. It is also revealed that hypnosis and post-hypnotic suggestion were involved with Dae-Su's imprisonment, and had been performed on Mi-Do as well, and that the warden, thought to have betrayed Woo-Jin to Dae-su, was actually still under his payroll. Dae-su is left horrified at the fact that he and his daughter have become romantic lovers. Dae-su begs Woo-jin to conceal the secret from Mi-Do, groveling for forgiveness before slicing out his own tongue and offering it to Woo-jin as a symbol of his silence. Woo-jin agrees to spare Mi-do from the traumatic knowledge and leaves Dae-su in his penthouse with the words "My sister and I loved each other despite everything. Can you two do the same?". As Woo-jin rides alone in the elevator, he is struck by the vivid memory of his sister's death, a suicide in which he was complicit, and shoots himself in the head. In the epilogue, Dae-su sits in a winter landscape, where he makes a deal with the same hypnotist who had hypnotized him while imprisoned, asking for her help to allow him to forget the secret. She reads his pleas from a handwritten letter and, touched by his words, begins the hypnosis process, lulling him into unconsciousness. Hours later, Dae-su wakes up, the hypnotist gone, and stumbles about before finally meeting with Mi-do. They embrace, and the soft spoken Mi-do tells Dae-su that she loves him. His broad smile slowly disappears into an odd expression, neither obviously happy nor unhappy.
Critical response
The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
writer Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw is a British writer and film critic. He was educated at Cambridge University, where he was President of Footlights.Bradshaw is a film critic for The Guardian...
described Oh Dae-su as having "a heftily built presence [and] massively ravaged and ruined face which in itself is fiercely expressive of unbearable, unassuageable emotion". Time Out London called the Oh Dae-su of the early scenes "a drunken boor", but the man that he transforms into as "running the gamut from terrifying rage to abject degradation". HMV
HMV
His Master's Voice is a trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record label. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper listening to a wind-up gramophone...
s review of the film noted the incredible transformation of the character, stating "we’re with him every step of the way from drunken, obnoxious lout to bewildered, angry prisoner, to vengeful, bloodthirsty warrior".