How My Sassy Girl with Jun Ji-hyun left a lasting impact on South Korean cinema 25 years on
Jun Ji-hyun’s role as a brash young woman in the 2001 romcom subverted gender stereotypes, today inspiring actresses like Park Eun-bin
Twenty-five years ago this week, Kwak Jae-young’s game-changing My Sassy Girl exploded into South Korean cinemas. A surprise blockbuster at home and across the region, it resonated with audiences by radically subverting traditional gender stereotypes, driven by star-making performances from Jun Ji-hyun and Cha Tae-hyun.
Adapted from a series of supposedly autobiographical blog posts first published in 1999 by Kim Ho-sik, My Sassy Girl sees a hapless, mollycoddled engineering student, Gyun-woo (Cha), become involved with an aggressive, hard-drinking young woman (Jun) – who remains unnamed – after inadvertently saving her from falling onto the subway tracks.
A far cry from the submissive, demure depictions of idealised femininity prevalent and encouraged throughout South Korean society at the time, “the girl” – as she is known – is bossy, outspoken and violent.
She tells Gyun-woo what to drink, what to wear, and where and when to meet, and embroils him in absurd challenges better suited to an army barracks than a date. She repeatedly slaps and punches him, berates total strangers in public regardless of their age or status, and drinks until she passes out, leaving Gyun-woo to carry her to safety.
Rather than complain, Gyun-woo quietly complies and soon becomes utterly infatuated with this bizarre, bewitching force of nature.