LOVE IN THE BIG CITY
Directed by Jin-ho Hur, Ji-young Hong, Tae-gyum Son, and Se-in Kim
Sang Young Park is a peculiar figure in Korea’s literary scene. In a country where homosexuality is still very much taboo and gay literature practically non-existent, he has successfully created a niche for himself, summoning a world of a lively gay community in his works in a style reminiscent of The Violet Quill. While he does not indulge in straightforward narratives of alienation, like Gore Vidal does in The City and the Pillar (1948)— he has remained attentive to the challenges that gay men face day to day in modern Korean society.
The new online series Love in the Big City brings Park’s vision to the screen. An adaptation of the novel of the same name, which was long-listed for the International Booker Prize, the show will interest anyone curious about learning more about the gay scene in Korea, not merely as a piece of entertainment, but also as a sociological documentary.
Over eight episodes, we are invited to follow the young protagonist Go Young’s troubled journey to find success in the Korean capital, both as a gay man and a writer. Unsurprisingly, he can never stay put. When he is not working shifts in the Hyewha district packed with small independent theaters, he’s out partying in the debaucherous “Homo Hill” in Itaewon, one of Seoul’s renowned gay neighborhoods, goes on dates in Namsan in the nightfall, or has a romantic dinner by the Han River.
The variety of scenery would satisfy even the most voyeuristic people. The camera switches back and forth between various public spaces, like university classrooms and a gynecologist’s office, and more intimate ones, from cheap studio apartments called “one-rooms” to a luxury high-rise in the middle of the city. Every nook and cranny of Seoul is shown with care, a city with a population of nine and a half million—bigger than that of New York City.
Written by Park himself, the show faithfully replicates the characteristic style of the original, delicately hovering between the comic and the tragic. The camp behavior of Young’s “gaggle” drolly mismatches their “straight” surroundings, especially on dramatic occasions like the funeral; Young’s best friend Mi Ae runs off with a model of a uterus when a conservative gynecologist reprimands her for being promiscuous (perhaps an homage to Will and Grace, where Grace does the same—albeit in a more sitcom-y context: “You make me wait, I take something.”); and when Young, shocked by his HIV diagnosis in the military, decides to give it the flippant nickname “Kylie.”
Both in terms of the setting and the plot, one cannot help but think of Darren Star’s similarly-titled Sex and the City which, especially in its earlier seasons, also demonstrated pseudo-anthropological interest in cataloging the men that thirty-something women in New York would encounter, in the likes of “twenty-something guys,” “modelizers,” and “the turtle,” a successful man with poor style.
If Seoul in Love in the Big City is more somber than New York, it is because the problems that Young faces, unlike those of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex & the City, are never merely personal. It’s not that he picks “the wrong men” or that his dates have an irrational fear of commitment, or more realistically, an insurmountable fetish. Rather, what severs Young from others is the fundamental absence of trust that rules his life and those of others.
At every critical juncture where one must decide between personal loyalty and social stability, Young’s friends, families, and lovers invariably choose the latter. Mi Ae outs Young to her boyfriend when the latter suspects that she is cheating on him with Young; his mother, a Church elder, commits him to a mental institution; his ethnonationalist leftist boyfriend gives up on the relationship due to his allegiance to political ideology. By the time one reaches the sixth episode, one wonders whether a more apt title for the series would be No Love in the Big City.
What moderates the show’s bleak outlook is its irony; we see that Young is no better than others. When he dates a photographer named Namsu, Young becomes repulsed by the excessive affection that Namsu shows for him and decides to part ways with him. It is also Young who abandons the faint possibility of happiness with Gyu-ho, a tender-hearted bartender and nurse from Jeju Island, when Young’s HIV status becomes an obstacle to their career plans.
Such resignation, reminiscent of 19th-century European realism, poses an interesting question about the acceptance of homosexuality in a conservative country like Korea. Young’s “gay” problem, his inability to find love and acceptance, is portrayed not as an isolated incident but as concomitant with the larger paranoia that Korean society suffers from, which is rooted in its obsession with material success and desire for uniformity.
The true feat of Park’s work, however, lies in its refusal to frame the situation as a choice between assimilating into the mainstream or transgressing social norms.
Like Manhattan, which, despite all, constitutes an indispensable part of Carrie’s life, Seoul in Park’s universe remains something that cannot be either straightforwardly affirmed or rejected. It is a place where Young experiences the cruelty of people first-hand but also where he builds hopes for a better future (and, in fact, achieves it. Pushing autofiction to its limit, Park makes Young receive an international literary award). What stands out at the end is the will to live in pursuit of the possibility of being together with others without ideological alibis.
In his most recent novel About Faith (2022), Park has sharpened his social criticism by examining the lack of trust in Korean society through pressing issues like workplace harassment, COVID politics, and lover’s infidelity. Along with the change of themes came the shift in the overall tone, which has grown more serious and pessimistic—signaling a new phase in Park’s trajectory. Until a translation becomes available, however, the American public can savor the moment and linger on the humor in Love in the Big City.
Love in the Big City is available for streaming on viki.com.
Tae Ho Kim is an independent scholar. His research focuses on modern German literature and postmodern philosophy.
