'Even sci-fi can't match this': Bong Joon-ho on Korea's brush with martial law

Even for auteur Bong Joon-ho, whose films have imagined everything from mutant river monsters to genetically engineered superpigs, South Korea's brush with martial law felt like science fiction run amok.

When now-impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol declared emergency powers on the night of Dec. 3, the Oscar-winning director found reality outpacing his wildest scenarios.

"The whole thing was more surreal than any sci-fi film," Bong told local broadcaster JTBC's news program on Sunday.

The director described a surreal night of text messages from concerned colleagues abroad. "I was at home when friends started sending updates. At first, it didn't feel real," he recalled.

"One minute we're talking about BTS and Rose's 'Apartment' and next thing you know it's martial law."

While this marked Bong's first public comments on the event, Bong had already made his position clear when he joined more than 2,500 film industry figures in signing a petition demanding Yoon's impeachment on Dec. 7.

The petition statement did not mince words: "Even with a filmmaker's imagination, this would be considered delusional — yet it happened in our reality."

For Bong, politics has been a steady current throughout his work, one that informs rather than dominates his storytelling.

His political consciousness took shape when he attended Yonsei University in the late 1980s, where student protests were the order of the day. The demonstrations swept through campus as activists rallied for democratic freedoms and rights, labor unions and reunification with North Korea.

"Every day was the same: Protest during the day, drink at night," he told Vulture in 2019. "Sometimes I still smell tear gas in my dreams," he said. Though he describes himself as "a bad activist" who would often slip away from protests to watch movies, that spirit of resistance never left his work.

His activist leanings found more formal expression in the early 2000s, when Bong, alongside the likes of fellow director Park Chan-wook, joined the progressive Democratic Labor Party. His involvement with progressive politics continued through 2012, when he publicly supported the New Progressive Party in that year's general elections, though his direct political activities have since receded from public view.

The director's last notable political action came in 2014, when he joined other artists in a one-day fast in support of families of the Sewol ferry disaster victims.

Yet Bong's oeuvre has never lost its political edge, as the director continues to take his signature blend of genre thrills and biting social commentary to new heights.

His breakout hit "Memories of Murder" (2003) used a serial-killer investigation to probe authoritarian trauma, while "The Host" (2006) wrapped criticism of American military presence in monster-movie clothing. "Snowpiercer" (2013) and "Parasite" (2019) expanded this critique into broader interrogations of capitalism and class.

Such pointed themes drew the ire of South Korea's conservative establishment, who viewed his work as dangerously subversive. During the Lee Myung-bak administration, Bong found himself on a government blacklist restricting artists and cultural figures from access to state funding. The list would later expand under President Park Geun-hye to include thousands of actors, writers and filmmakers the administration deemed ideologically suspect.

The blacklist, later ruled illegal by the court, cited his films' tendency to "highlight government incompetence" and "incite social resistance" -- charges that, ironically, only seemed to confirm their global relevance.

At a recent press event for his upcoming film "Mickey 17," which continues his examination of exploitative power structures through the story of a cloned space explorer, Bong discussed crafting "a new form of dictator" in Mark Ruffalo's colonial administrator.

Examining power and politics through the lens of his latest villain, he noted how the science fiction genre offers a potent vehicle for political commentary.

"Mark plays a new kind of dictator with this unprecedented, cute charm -- but then, every dictator has that charisma," Bong said.

"That's what makes sci-fi so powerful for political satire. You can approach the real world, real politics, with both serious contemplation and humor."