New Film 'Assassin(s)' Reopens 52-Year-Old Mystery of First Lady's Death
Fifty-two years after the assassination of South Korea's First Lady Yuk Young-soo, a new film by director Hur Jin-ho revisits the unresolved questions surrounding that tragic day. 'Assassin(s)', which opens in Seoul on September 23, explores whether the shooter acted alone or as part of a larger conspiracy.
On August 15, 1974, during a Liberation Day ceremony at the National Theater in Seoul, a young man named Mun Se-gwang rose from the audience and opened fire on President Park Chung-hee. The president escaped unharmed, but First Lady Yuk Young-soo was struck and later died. Mun, a 23-year-old Korean resident of Japan, was arrested and executed that same year.
The authorities at the time claimed Mun had been recruited by Chongryon, the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, and ordered to shoot by a North Korean operative. But doubts about this official narrative persisted for decades.
What is the film 'Assassin(s)' about?
Rather than recreating the known facts, director Hur Jin-ho builds a fictional narrative around the lingering suspicions. The film follows two sets of characters: police detective Cheol-gu, who was responsible for security at the ceremony and now faces dismissal, and a newspaper city desk chief named Jae-hwan, along with rookie reporter Young-il, who continue investigating despite heavy censorship.
The production comes from Hive Media Corp., the same company behind The Man Standing Next (2020) and Seoul Spring (2023), both of which dramatized major events in modern Korean history. Unlike those films, which focused on real political figures, Assassin(s) uses fictional characters to explore the era's atmosphere of repression and state secrecy.
Why does the film focus on the press?
A significant portion of the film is devoted to the journalists of that era who sought to report the truth under a dictatorship that controlled the media. The newsroom scenes depict a time before the internet, when reporters relied on pay phones and telegrams to file breaking stories. The film also weaves in the 1974 Declaration of Free Press Practice, issued by Dong-A Ilbo reporters in opposition to the Park Chung-hee regime's press suppression.
Park Hae-il, who plays the city desk chief Jae-hwan, told reporters he was drawn to the role because