Opinion | North Korea nuclear deadlock: Minari’s central message of love should inspire negotiators
- The film has melted hearts and won international accolades, evidence of how its message of a ‘grandmother mediator’ resonates with people
- China, the US and others have worked hard to bridge their divide with Pyongyang, but when sanctions and all else have failed, they must give mediation a chance
Korea itself is quite the head-turner nowadays, with its oversexed K-pop, gaudy parade of TV romcoms and award-winning films. Just like the wholly Korean-made Parasite, which won the Golden Globe Best Foreign Film for 2019, Minari won the 2020 award.
It was a strong year for foreign-language entries, but Minari landed at the top of the heap not simply because of the seven-year-old who almost, though not quite, steals the show by showing us the realities of Asian immigration through a child’s eyes; but also because of the grandmother, portrayed by Youn Yuh-jung, who steals your heart and plants minari seeds that sprout into the film’s moral lesson.
Out of Asia as a whole, Japanese, Chinese and Indian artistic and entertainment exports over many decades have had incalculable impact. Many citizens of the world, especially Chinese, have come to respect Japan more because of its Kurosawas than its Koizumis.
Even China’s formidable leader Xi Jinping will struggle to conquer as many people’s minds, no matter how well-crafted his plenary speeches, as the likes of Wong Kar-wai, Ang Lee and John Woo will capture people’s imagination.
Though technically a Korean-American collaboration, Minari draws our attention to the tragic story of the Korean peninsula. South Korea, though a proud practising democracy, does not enjoy a big-nation role on the global stage, and geopolitically remains mired in political mud, in which not even the rugged minari could flourish. And, viewed by the outside world, nuclearised North Korea is something of a joke – and a bad one.