In The Aimless Bullet, women seem less helpless than men.

I found Eunsun Cho’s argument about the crisis of Korean masculinity in The Stray Bullet to be extremely persuasive. The objectification of the wounded veteran’s bodies and the loss of the voyeuristic gaze to the American G.I.’s were both made very clear in the film.

But I thought it was interesting that in light of this crisis of masculinity, the article did not spend more time looking at the women in the film. Because while almost all of the men are depicted as overburdened and powerless (Chor-Ho), despairing (Kyong-Sik), frustrated (Yong Ho), or crazy (the poet), the young women, with the exception of Chor Ho’s wife who dies in childbirth, seem to be somewhat self-sufficient. Sor-Hui, one of Yong-Ho’s two love interests, is able to keep herself in school and pay the rent on a room because she has a job, while Yong-Ho, who was released from the army two years ago, is unable to find work. She also seems capable of wielding a gun, which is traditionally thought of as a man’s job. Myong-Suk’s prostitution, though motivated by nothing short of financial crisis, is nevertheless an independent source of income, and even without the respect of the Korean men and a marriage to her fiancé, she is, in the end, the only adult member of the family who is not dead, arrested, crazy, or passed out, bleeding, in the back of a taxi cab, which does suggest a certain strength of character and self-reliance. And Miri, Yong-Ho’s other love interest, not only has a successful career for herself, but even goes so far as to try and get Yong-Ho a job.

I wonder how this feminine self-reliance plays into the larger theme of Korean crisis of identity and occupation, and if it further affects the symbolic emasculation of the men in the film.