Becoming a Gangster
Do you watch Korean gangster movies? If you do, you might catch yourself acting like a Korean gangster. You might start ordering a lot of ja jang myun late at night and eat it like a starving refugee. Maybe you treat women like objects, curse at everyone, and con old ladies. If you watch enough gangster movies, you become a gangster, right?
Well, at least that’s what happened to me when I was a junior in college. I watched a bunch of Korean gangster movies to improve my Korean and my parents were not too happy with the slang I picked up.
One of my favorite gangster movies is a melodrama called “Failan.” I like it for its atypical storyline. Unlike most gangster movies, its main character is a loser.
When the movie opens, you see the protagonist, Kang Jae, still playing arcade games though he’s middle aged. He’s still single, and you can soon see why. He urinates in the sink. He has posters of naked girls all over his apartment. He works at a video store and distributes smut to teenagers. At his age, he should be gaining respect from the younger recruits but he’s too irresponsible, spineless, and unprincipled. He’s a sad excuse for a gangster.
Ironically, the thing that changes Kang Jae’s life is something that he does inadvertently. To make a few bucks, he agrees to get married to an illegal immigrant from China. His wife is sold into indentured servitude through Kang Jae’s gang. They try to employ her at a shady cocktail bar, but it turns out she’s ill with tuberculosis. She ends up working at a laundry shop in a small village.
Some of the most touching scenes in the movie are of her sitting in her tiny room after a hard day’s work, looking longingly at a framed picture of Kang Jae. In the photo, he’s well-groomed, dressed in a nice shirt, looking respectable. The intermediaries in the gang feed her lies, telling her that he’s a sailor and will come visit soon. She buys an extra toothbrush for him, waiting for his return. She learns Korean to write him letters. As she gets sicker and sicker, she continues to write, but he never writes back. She eventually dies in a hospital bed, holding onto the hope that he might get her final letter and come see her at the funeral.
Left to untangle the paperwork for her death, he soon discovers those love letters in broken Korean. As a gangster, he shrugs off the emotions at first. He never knew her. It was just a big farce, that fake marriage. But as he walks the path she trod and meets the people who knew her, he comes face to face with her unrequited love for him. He catches a glimpse of the good she saw in him. It’s something new for him. He’s never seen himself as an honorable person before. On the way to visit her body at the morgue, he spends money on a nice suit. He starts to see his own worth through the eyes of this girl.
In the movie’s climax, he’s holding that final letter she wrote him. He’s sitting on the rocks by the pier of Inchon, and the seagulls are cawing loudly overhead. He carefully opens the letter and as he reads her broken Korean, he can almost hear the desperation in her voice as she tells him goodbye. But she still holds onto her love for him, and it utterly confuses him. He’s a loser! She writes: “I’m sorry that I don’t have anything to give you.” What did he ever give her?
He pushes the letter back into the envelope, as if to stuff his emotions in too. He pulls out a cigarette, fumbling for his matches, trying to dull this realization. But as the tip lights and he lifts it to inhale, he breaks down. This hardened, low-life gangster, face red with shame and body racked with sobs, is completely, utterly broken.
Maybe you’ll cry with him (it’s therapeutic to have a good cry periodically). And then you’ll take a deep breath, dry your eyes, relish that feeling of catharsis, and move on. It’s just a movie, after all.
But that’s a cop-out. This movie is memorable because of how despicable Kang Jae was at the beginning and we’re wowed by the contrast we see at the end, when we see who he becomes. And we need to wow others with our own change…because you are Kang Jae.
You’re the one drinking your life away, while God is writing you love letters. You’re the one doing petty crimes while God is waiting for you to visit. And you’re the one who’s playing arcade games and chasing skirts while God’s coughing his lungs out with tuberculosis, dying all alone, writing you one last blood-stained letter that you won’t even bother to read. 
If you really want to experience the change Kang Jae experienced, you’ll need to see yourself for the gangster Kang Jae was. You, too, need to take a lot at that mirror in your grimy bathroom. Observe all the disgusting girlie magazines that litter your apartment. Check the sink with all the ramen noodles caught in the strainer. You just urinated in there. Your life is disgusting. Who’d love someone like you?
Maybe, like Kang Jae, you won’t discover the love letters until after you’ve broken His heart. But one day in your gangster life, maybe you’ll open those letters. As you read the emotion in His handwriting, you’ll realize: He’s describing the true you. As you retrace his journey, you’ll find that it gives your life true purpose. And one day, you’ll look in the mirror and see the gangster inside of you, slowly dying.
Check your mail. Often. One of these days, you might receive a letter from Someone who’s dying to meet you. And if you dare to read it, you won’t be able to stay the same.
Pastor Chris Choi is the youth pastor of New York Central Korean SDA Church.