12.12: The Day
This 1970s-set South Korean military thriller, based on real events, provides a conspiratorial, personalised, and masculinised vision of the workings of high politics.
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This post is part of the ‘One Take’ weekly series analysing the politics of a film currently showing at the cinemas.
Note: Given that, at time of writing, 12.12: The Day is still showing in UK cinemas, this analysis only lays out as much of the film’s scenario as is necessary so as to avoid spoilers. It is therefore suitable to be read either before or after watching the film, while hopefully still enriching the viewer’s appreciation of it either way.
Based on real events (albeit with characters given pseudonyms very similar to the names of the actual people involved), 12.12: The Day is a South Korean historical drama set in the wake of the assassination of the country’s dictator, President Park, in the autumn of 1979. General Jeong Sang-ho (Lee Sung-min), the Army’s Chief of Staff is deeply mistrustful of Major General Chun Doo-gwang (Hwang Jung-min), who is overseeing the military investigation into the murder, and belongs to the shadowy Hanahoe private group of officers.
Jeong appoints the stubbornly scrupulous Major General Lee Tae-shin (Jung Woo-sung) as head of Capital Garrison Command, and plans a military reorganisation that will marginalise Chun and his close confidant Major General Noh Tae-geon (Park Hae-joon). Chun persuades Noh and his other Hanahoe allies to join him in a plot to frame Jeong as having been involved in Park’s murder, as a prelude to a coup d’état. Lee, however, realises the nature of Chun’s ambitions, and tries to alert others within the military and government of the conspiracy afoot, before it is too late.
Politics and personality
Chun, whom Hwang plays with relish and menace, is the film’s villain and irresistible centre. He routinely abuses opportunities provided to him by his position as head of military counterintelligence agency the Defence Security Command, using methods such as bribery and torture to advance his aims. Convinced of the importance of a strong leader, he manipulates the clique around him by playing on their nostalgia, disgruntlements, and personal loyalty. He also recognises that the veracity of one’s truth claims are established post-facto based upon the position of authority from which one makes them.
Lee, by contrast, is motivated principally by duty and patriotism, rather than personal ambition. He believes that, for soldiers, the realm of politics ought to be beyond their purview. He is also fiercely distrustful of dual loyalties and private organisation within the military. The early encounter between Lee and Chun marks them as polar opposites, the former as dour as the latter is charismatic. Yet a parallel exists in their leadership qualities: like Chun, he can motivate men to suspend their instinctive judgements and follow him.
Within this personalisation of politics, and 12.12’s tight timeframe, we get scant indication of the broader ideological stakes at play. The ‘Seoul Spring’, the brief window of liberalisation that followed Park’s assassination, is mentioned, but we have little sense of the long period of dictatorship that preceded the film’s events; that heroes and villains alike in this film have previously been in service of an authoritarian regime, even if some are now pitted against the establishment of a new one. Likewise, North Korea, this regime’s ideological opponent and constitutive other, is conspicuous only as the dog that did not bark, while the US is also marginal.
Conspiracy and contingency
12.12 offers instead a conspiratorial vision of how politics functions, through pre-emptive organisation, careful timing and coordination of actions, and split-second decision-making in the face of new opportunities or challenges. Equally integral, and epitomising Chun’s worldview, is the need to control the narrative as events unfold: to pretend nothing is amiss until after it is over; to claim authority one does not yet possess; to motivate one’s allies in the face of obstacles; to exaggerate one’s advantage as a means of deterring potential opponents; or appeal to principles one does not actually hold.
Lee, and other morally driven characters such as Park’s successor, President Choi Han-gyu (Jung Dong-hwan), are by contrast sticklers for due process. Yet as the film makes clear, this is only sufficient defence as long as men see with moral clarity in moments of ambiguity when the hierarchy of authority is unclear, and and act bravely and decisively when faced with potential threats. It takes merely for one or two men in positions of power, including crucially Minister of Defence Oh Guk-sang (Kim Eui-sung), to do otherwise to render due process ineffective, and enable a determined minority to subvert the system.
Incidentally, 12.12’s ending somehow surprised me, despite my already knowing how the machinations of late 1970s South Korean politics worked out. I think that probably reflects upon how my genre expectations have been shaped by American political, military, and corporate thrillers. I found myself musing afterwards about what a hypothetical Hollywood version of this story would look like. Perhaps one in which Lee’s doughty professionalism is enough to uphold an entire political system. Or a heist-style film – like an adaptation of a Michael Lewis book – centred on Chun and his associates, as a bunch of eccentrics with the vision to pull off success against the odds.
A man’s world
The qualities that matter in 12.12 – for better or worse – are overtly coded as masculine: bravery; loyalty; assertiveness; willingness, when necessary, to resort to violence. The world of late 1970s South Korean politics presented here is very much a male one. The only female character of any real note is Lee’s wife (Jeon Su-ji) whose occasional appearances serve primarily to humanise Lee. Her complete detachment from the situation her husband is embroiled in provides some levity as the tension mounts.
This very much echoes the heavily gendered impact of the Cold War on South Korea. Militarisation served as a tool of modernisation and nation-building, with men conscripted into industrial as well as defence roles, while female citizenship was officially defined through their domestic world.1 In its selection choices, focusing on the high politics of the national security apparatus as almost wholly detached from civilian affairs and wider societal trends, 12.12 serves to reify a heavily masculinised vision of Korean history, though it does not uncritically celebrate it.
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See Seungsook Moon, Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2005).
I knew nothing of this film but thank you for writing about it. Fascinating!