Anti-American Attitude in “The Host”

The article written by Lee suggests that the Americans are a new type of invading power, spreading their influence in popular media.  The USA doesn’t physically (or militarily) invade Korea, but they exert a huge influence in all the popular media. This might be one of the reasons why there is such a negative attitude towards Americans in “The Host.” As Lee mentions, the competition between Hollywood and South Korean movies is like a virtual battle between the two cultures, and this could explain why the Korean movie portrays the Americans as having such a negative influence.

 In the movie “The Host” we can observe from the first scene that the American scientists are actually the reason why all the series of events takes place. Moreover, during the movie the director emphasize on how much the American characters don’t care about the Korean people. I think they are presented as some inhumane individuals who don’t take into account how they could help others, but they only want to eliminate all the threats. Not surprisingly, in every situation where the Americans make an inhumane choice we can see the more humanistic alternative presented by a Korean character. This shows that those under the American dominance don’t really have a choice in what they do, even if they have a better solution. For example, we see at the beginning that the Korean scientist doesn’t want to throw the chemicals in the sewers, but he doesn’t really have a choice.  In another situation, the American official asks Park Kang-Doo why he didn’t tell about his situation to someone, but before he could explain himself, the American already moves on with his work not really listening to the answer. Besides this, the American official shows how immoral they are by revealing that they know there is no virus but they still prefer to use this situation to further their research. At the same time, this scene is also presented as a satire, because the American is made to look like a fool not only physically but by the way he behaves too. I found this interesting, because in the end I didn’t know if this ambivalent scene was meant to be comical or some serious comment on the relationship between USA and other countries.