A cunning serial killer is on the loose, and police are baffled

Song Kang-ho, 'Memories of Murder' (2003).
Searching for clues and coming up empty.

By Paul Parcellin

‘Memories of Murder’ (2003)

Bodies are popping up with terrifying regularity in a small South Korean city and the local police force has few clues to go on. Young women are being raped and strangled, their bodies abandoned in little traveled spots, and public hysteria is growing. 

It’s the late 1980s and Korea has not yet emerged from authoritarian government control. Small-town crime fighting methods are, shall we say crude? This wave of murders is not the kind of business the local lawmen are used to handling, and it shows. 

A challenging balance

Director-screenwriter Bong Joon Ho, whose film “Parasite” (2019) won four Academy Awards including Best Picture, infuses “Memories of Murder” with social commentary, police procedure and dark comedy, mostly at the expense of the thread-bare, chronically disjointed police force tasked with bringing a killer to justice. 

A terse, reflective take on the policier, Bong’s 2003 masterwork walks a thin line between mystery and black comedy. It’s a murder investigation in a world that seems to be spinning off its axis, and we’re never sure of where exactly things will land. 

Ko Seo-hie, Song Kang-ho, Kim Roi-ha.

Lead detective Park Doo-man (Song Kang-ho, Bong’s frequent collaborator), and fellow investigator Cho Yong-koo’s (Kim Roi-ha) methods mirror the oppressive regime that’s running the country. They beat and torture suspects to make them confess and occasionally plant evidence. 

Police under pressure

Park, an amalgam of cockiness and pent up frustration, is bedeviled by an investigation that can’t seem to move ahead. Lambasted by his superior, Sgt. Shin Dong-chul (Song Jae-ho), he’s saddled with a woefully understaffed, under equipped department — he has to hitch a ride on a farmer’s tractor to visit the site of a murder. His squad can’t even protect the crime scene from news reporters and rubberneckers who trample and destroy evidence.

Shot in color, the film has the look of a black and white print. Murky blue-gray and pea-soup green tones give the police station interior a gloomy, closed-in look. Even expansive fields, industrial areas and wooded groves seem unkissed by sunlight. If you had to choose a grimy color palette that would give the feeling of hopelessness, this is it.

Kim Roe-ha, Song Jae-ho, Song Kang-ho. Another grim discovery.

Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung), a detective from Seoul, is brought in to jump-start the investigation and he’s soon at odds with Park. Seo knows a thing or two about scientific detective work, while Park works on instinct — he’s convinced that he can spot a guilty party simply by staring into his eyes. His stare-downs are often a prelude to beating confessions out of suspects. 

Seo is disturbed by the brutality Park and Cho regularly dish out to unfortunates, adding friction to his tenure at this backwoods constabulary. Even he, as a newly arrived officer, is mistaken for suspect and handed a beatdown. 

A ray of hope

The detective squad is almost exclusively a boys’ club, but the one woman on the force, Officer Kwon Kwi-ok (Ko Seo-hie), comes up with an ingenious theory, which Park ridicules, of course. But guess which one of them proves to be correct. 

Adapted from the 1996 play “Come to See Me” by Kim Kwang-lim and loosely based on South Korea's first confirmed serial killings, “Memories of Murder” is set in Hwaseong, located on the coast of the Yellow Sea. It’s a city with pockets of industry and vast farmland and many places for a serial killer to stash bodies. As the list of victims grows, suspects are apprehended and questioned with no tangible results.

Kim Sang-kyung, an outsider in the department.

In his desperation Park is willing to accept flawed confessions from several suspicious types, to no avail. As the investigation plods on the detectives’ use of intimidation and brutality backfires when a viable lead that could crack the case is suddenly gone. It’s a shocking turn of events, but it’s doubtful that the local lawmen will change their ways anytime soon.

No easy answers

“Memories of Murder” leaves us with a bag of complex questions. Are the Hwaseong lawmen’s unethical tactics and jaw-dropping violence an outgrowth of their frustration with a barely functional system? Undoubtedly, but their cruel methods can’t be blamed entirely on the authoritarian government running the country. Seo, who comes from the big city, is shocked at the sight of abuses that we can presume don’t go on in the Seoul police department.  

But even Seo, the most rational one of this ragtag crew, has his breaking point when faced with a plodding investigation going nowhere and a sly suspect who just might be the perpetrator. And if Seo can be tempted to cross ethical lines, perhaps we might, too.