A criminal complaint against political film 'The Assassins' sparks a fierce culture war, chilling top critics while driving the movie to #1 at the box office.
The Spark: Criminal Lawsuit Targets Director and Producers
South Korea’s cinema industry has been plunged into a volatile ideological storm following the release of "The Assassin(s)" (암살자(들)), an intense historical dramatization revisiting the tragic August 15, 1974 assassination of First Lady Yuk Young-soo. On September 29, 2026, the controversy escalated from political rhetoric to direct legal combat when Lee Jong-bae, a former Seoul City Councilor affiliated with the conservative People Power Party (PPP), formally lodged a criminal defamation complaint with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.
The complaint accuses acclaimed director Hur Jin-ho, the studio CEO, and the film’s screenwriters of defaming historical figures through the intentional dissemination of falsehoods. Central to the legal attack is the movie’s pluralized title. The complainant argues that appending the parenthetical plural—"Assassin(s)"—deliberately insinuates that Mun Se-gwang, the convicted ethnic Korean from Japan who fired the shots, was not working in isolation. More provocatively, critics claim the film invites audiences to speculate whether the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) or even President Park Chung-hee himself could have orchestrated or been complicit in the incident.
Key Dimensions of the Controversy
- Historical Core: The 1974 assassination attempt on President Park Chung-hee, which resulted in the fatal shooting of First Lady Yuk Young-soo.
- Legal Allegation: Criminal defamation by alleging false historical premises (Articles under Korean Criminal Act) filed against Hur Jin-ho and Hive Media Corp.
- Political Pushback: Conservative politicians calling for theater boycotts, parliamentary audit summons, and retroactive distortion-punishment legislation.
- Box Office Paradox: Surpassed 1.69 million admissions, recapturing the #1 ranking despite widespread screening cancellation pressure.
Political Outrage and Demands for Screening Bans
The backlash against the production has quickly mobilized high-ranking conservative politicians and memorial foundations. Ruling party figures have blasted the film as an irresponsible conspiracy vehicle designed to stir animosity toward the former authoritarian administration.
Representative Jeong Jeom-sik condemned the feature as "crude propaganda masquerading as historical cinema," while party leader Jang Dong-hyeok took to social media to rally behind a widespread commercial boycott. Several conservative lawmakers, including Representative Na Kyung-won, have even proposed enacting stringent legislative measures—analogous to laws criminalizing distortions of the Gwangju Uprising—specifically aimed at outlawing misrepresentations of First Lady Yuk’s assassination.
Joining the fray, the Yuk Young-soo Memorial Foundation published an indignant press statement demanding an immediate halt to all theater screenings and a formal apology from the filmmakers. The foundation underlined that official historical trial records conclusively proved Mun was recruited and directed by pro-North Korean elements in Japan, calling any implication of domestic state involvement a severe historical transgression.
The Chilling Effect: Famous Critics and Top Stars Caught in Crossfire
The fallout has breached the confines of cinema discourse, rapidly cascading onto cultural commentators and celebrities. South Korea's most respected film critic, Lee Dong-jin, and the production team of his YouTube channel Piarchia made the unprecedented move of taking their review video private after being inundated with over 7,000 hostile comments accusing the critic of overlooking historical revisionism.
Similarly, Korea’s largest cinema YouTube creator, G-Movie (boasting over 4.18 million subscribers), abruptly pulled down a comprehensive 12-minute feature on the film that had amassed 1.8 million views within days. The sudden retraction by leading critical voices has triggered fierce debates among moviegoers, with some applauding the move as an admission of editorial error and others mourning it as a disheartening surrender to coordinated digital harassment.
Meanwhile, prominent A-list actresses including Kim Go-eun and Lee Young-ae, who had previously offered handwritten endorsements and warm praise after attending private screenings, were subjected to aggressive online shaming. Vitriolic comments flooded their social media accounts, with extremist groups even circulating online "blacklists" of celebrities who publicly backed the production.
Filmmakers Push Back: "Dramatization, Not Historical Revisionism"
Confronted with accusations ranging from historical distortion to groundless conspiracy theories alleging foreign Chinese capital involvement, production house Hive Media Corp issued a comprehensive rejoinder. The studio firmly denied any foreign financial influence, clarifying that the movie was conceived, funded, and shot entirely through domestic independent production frameworks.
The creative team pleaded with audiences and political commentators to respect the boundaries of artistic freedom, reiterating that the film was produced purely as a creative exploration rather than an instrument of partisan political agitation.
The Box Office Paradox: How Outrage Ignited Ticket Sales
Paradoxically, the intense political storm appears to have acted as rocket fuel for the film’s theatrical run. After temporarily dipping to the second spot behind Tazza: The Song of Beelzebub on September 28, The Assassin(s) immediately bounced back to reclaim the #1 position on the South Korean box office the very next day.
According to official metrics from the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), the thriller attracted over 61,000 theatergoers in a single weekday, surging past 1.69 million cumulative admissions (1,695,104). The numbers reflect a classic Streisand effect: the louder political circles clamor for censorship and cancellations, the more intrigued everyday moviegoers become to witness the cinematic lightning rod for themselves.