Oldboy/Characters

Oh Dae Su

Played by Min-sik Choi

The main character of the movie, an alcoholic businessman who's kidnapped in 1988, and goes on a revenge quest against his mysterious captor, Lee Woo-jin, for locking him up for 15 years.

Tropes exhibited by this character include:

• Always Save the Girl
• The Alcoholic: It's implied he regularly gets arrested for being drunk and if it wasn't for his best friend Joo-hwan, he'd be in deeper shit. He even misses his own daughter's birthday because he's an Alcoholic Parent and his drunken state makes it easy for him to get kidnapped. Granted, he did care and get her a present.
• Awful Wedded Life: According to the neighbours during the news broadcast scene, Dae-su and his wife, Kim Ja-hyun, would often argue over Dae-su's alcoholism. It's also implied Dae-su was unfaithful and cheated on her with several women.
• Cannot Keep A Secret: He often runs his mouth without a care int he world, no matter what consequences it may bring in the future. This is partially because he's an alcoholic. However it's shown that as a child, he wasn't good at keeping secrets either and told his best friend what he saw Soo-ah and Woo-jin doing. Even Woo-jin lampshades this, and by the end of the film, Dae-su has cut off his tongue, as if to repent.
• Childhood Friends: With Joo-hwan, as they attended school together. They are so close that even after Dae-su is framed for murdering his wife, Joo-hwan still believes in his innocence.
• Everyone Has Standards: While he's a serial philanderer and an attempted rapist, he's absolutely horrified to find out that the woman he was having sex with is actually his biological daughter, Yeon-hee.
• Foil: To Joo-hwan. They're childhood friends, but during their youth, while Dae-su was fat and irresponsible, Joo-hwan was skinny and believed in listening to the rules. When they re-unite in their 40s, Dae-su has worked out while Joo-hwan has gained weight, and it is Joo-hwan's reckless remarks that lead to his demise.
• To Woo-jin as well: As the book Millenial Cinema: Memory in Global Film states, It is this revenge that connects both characters, both are consumed by the past and are in many ways each other's double. Park underlines their emotional connection by manipulating mise-en-scene and using splitscreen editing techniques to connect their faces or by having them frequently adopt the same body position within the shot. While it is always ambiguous as to what Lee Woo-jin wants, it appears he needs Dae-su to experience the same pain he has so his elaborate plan is to become the architect of Dae-su's life. However, he is much more aware of their predicament than the mercurial Dae su: Lee Woo jin knows that the quest for revenge is ultimately futile, despite claiming that seeking revenge is the best cure for someone who has been hurt," he continues: What comes after?'
• Foreshadowing:
  • As Adam of Your Movie Sucks notes, the film begins with Dae-su in captivity, which foreshadows his struggle with what's to come.
  • Oh Dae-Su holding the suicidal stranger by the tie is foreshadowing and a parallel to Lee Woo-Jin holding onto his suicidal sister in the flashback. With the stranger, Oh Dae-Su also overshares his entire backstory, and oversharing is what contributed to Lee Woo-Jin’s sister’s demise.
  • Woo-Jin's flashback calls back to Dae-Su's beginning on the rooftop. They each hold onto someone who is trying to kill themself and also bare a resemblance to them (the man on the roof is in a suit with wild hair, Woo-Jin is holding his own sister). The pure white puppy represents the unborn child of Woo-Jin, an innocent, sinless life taken absolutely needlesly.
  • In one of the earlier scenes where he is imprisoned, he watches a man buying a tapping device for the first time, which must have helped him think that he might have been tapped after he receives Mr. Park's hand.
  • His emotional breakdown at the end seems to be almost a replication of his breakdown in the beginning where he's sticking his head through the prison slot; first he desperately begs, then he threatens their life, then he apologizes and starts begging again.
• Funny Afro: He sports something resembling one after 15 years of captivity.
• Jerkass: Dae-su is an unapologetic boisterous alcoholic, prone to aggressive behaviour, a loudmouth, a serial cheater and shows a lack of empathy towards others (including a suicidal man). However, after his imprisonment, he has become a shell of his former self.
• Kavorka Man: He's an unattractive, fat ditz but implied to have slept with many women.
• Meaningful Name: "My name, Oh Dae-su, means getting through one day at atime. Tha's what Oh Dae-su means. But...god...why can't I get through today?" Oh Dae-su also sounds close to Oedipus, which foreshadows what happens between him and his daughter.
• Parental Incest: He is deliberately manipulated into having sex with his daughter by Woo-jin. He has a mental breakdown and begs Woo-jin to kill him when he finds out, and even tells Woo-jin he will be his dog and his slave as long as he keeps the truth from Mi-do. Doubles as surprise incest.
• Punch a Wall: He trains himself in martial arts by doing so.
• Stepford Smiler: He is this by the end of the film, as he's either been forced to forget the awful truth, or resolved to keep it from Mi-do. His broken smile at the end really seals it.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer: Sort of a justified trope when you consider South Korea's tight gun laws.

Mi-do

Portrayed by Hye-jeong Kang

A Japanese sushi chef who falls in love with Dae-su. This leads to her being a target of Woo-jin's mooks and she's forced to leave her old life behind after they attack her for being an affiliate of Dae-su.

Tropes exhibited by this character include:

• Composite Character: Of Mi-do and Eri, two characters from the original manga the movie is based on.
• Dude Magnet: Apart from Dae-su, she manages to use her pretty looks to convince a janitor to let her and Dae-su take a peek at the school's old year books.
• Fake Nationality/Fauxreigner: She was born as a Korean woman named Yeon-hee. However, as part of Woo-jin's plan, she's brainwashed into believing she's a Japanese woman named Mi-do.
• Foreshadowing:Mi-do has a poster of King Kong on her wall - a classic story of monster and girl, "it was beauty that killed the beast." In a way, it foreshadows how Oh Dae-Su's downfall is ultimately his love for Mido.
• Irony: Before the final sequence, Mi-do prays that Lee Woo-jin kneels before Oh Dae-su and asks for forgiveness, but in the final sequence, it's reversed.
• Shallow Love Interest: The only things we know of her are her job, how she met Dae-su and that she's head over heels for him. Even she lampshades that she doesn't know why she's madly in love with him. She was deliberately hypnotized into being one by Woo-jin.
• Supreme Chef: She's even appeared on TV and Dae-su recognizes her.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: We're led to believe she's this. It's later revealed she's the The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter.

Joo-hwan

Portrayed by Dae-han Ji

Dae-su's childhood friend and the owner of an internet café. He believes that Dae-su is innocent and aids him and Mi-do into finding out the real identity of the man who framed him for murder.

Tropes exhibited by this character include:

• Childhood Friends: With Dae-su, as they attended school together. They are so close that even after Dae-su is framed for murdering his wife, Joo-hwan still believes in his innocence.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Woo-jin hacks him to death with a CD despite his audible struggling and grunting fpr him to stop. Even worse, he does this during a phone call with his best friend.
• Foil: To Dae-su. They're childhood friends, but during their youth, while Dae-su was fat and irresponsible, Joo-hwan was skinny and believed in listening to the rules. When they re-unite in their 40s, Dae-su has worked out while Joo-hwan has gained weight, and it is Joo-hwan's reckless remarks that lead to his demise.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: When he hears that a girl he went to school with committed suicide, he goes on about how he should have slept with her and calls her a "whore". It doesn't end well for him.
• Recognition Failure: Didn't recognize that Mi-do is Dae-su's long-lost daughter, Yeon-hee, despite meeting her earlier in the movie on her birthday and talking to her on the phone. It's not stated if Joo-hwan was hypnotized to forget her. Then again, the last time he saw her when she was four.
• Sacrificial Lion: Would have lived longer if he could have kept his mouth shut.
• The Smart Guy: Runs an internet café and uses his skills to help Dae-su and Mi-do track Dae-su's captor.

Lee Woojin

Portrayed by Ji-tae Yoo

"Remember this: "Be it a rock or a grain of sand, in water they sink as one and the same." A mysterious man from Dae-su's past, who had him imprisoned because "he talked too much". But despite this, Dae-su doesn't remember him.

Tropes exhibited by this character include:

• Affably Evil: He is a perpetual smiler, often feigns concern and care for Dae-su, and carries a genial personality for most of the movie. The one time he snaps and acts out of character is when he murders Joohwan for calling his sister a slut.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: He's a company CEO and uses his wealth to fund his revenge schemes.
• Armor-Piercing Question:"My sister and I loved each other, despite everything. Can you two do the same?"
• The Bad Guy Wins: He successfully extracts revenge on Dae-su, but afterwards realizes he has nothing to live for, so he shoots himself, making it a Pyrrhic Victory.
• Beauty Is Bad: He's young-looking, attractive and often well-dressed, which is a stark contrast to the film's protagonist. He's also a blatant card carrying villain. Before Ji-tae Yoo was cast, Min-sik Choi recommended the actor Suk-Kyu Han for the role, who's known for acting in rom-coms. Han turned down the role due to the immense violence, but after the movie aired, he regretted it. When the movie was being filmed, the filming was actually delayed because many fangirls noticed Yoo and swarmed around him.
• Berserk Button. Do not call Soo-ah a slut, unless you want him to hack you to pieces with a CD as he ignores your cries and grunts for help. No, he doesn't care that your best friend can hear you do that on the phone too.
• Big Bad Friend: Downplayed, but Mi-do said her and Woo-jin talk about sushi sometimes in online chatrooms, assuming that isn't another of his hypnotisms.
• Big Brother Instinct: At a first glance, we're led to believe that this is what he feels towards Soo-ah when Joo-hwan calls her a whore. It's much worse.
• Brother-Sister Incest: He's been in love with his sister since they were teenagers (and the movie implies that he was the one who pushed her into the relationship), but after he impregnates her, she realizes that the baby could lead to their incestous relationship being discovered. In order to avoid them being found out she commits suicide by drowning in the Habchun Dam. This mentally breaks Woo-jin, and he is unable to move on from her death decades later, instead dedicating his life to get revenge for her.
• Driven to Suicide: After his vengeance has been successfull, Woo-jin realizes that his life has now no purpose and kills himself, showing how tragic and broken the man was from the start.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Deconstructed Example of what happens when the only loved one chooses to die for his sake.
• The Gadfly:A dark example, his idea of messing with Dae-su includes inflicting severe mental damage and reminding him that he's helpless.
• Foreshadowing: Woo-Jin's flashback calls back to Dae-Su's beginning on the rooftop. They each hold onto someone who is trying to kill themself and also bare a resemblance to them (the man on the roof is in a suit with wild hair, Woo-Jin is holding his own sister). The pure white puppy represents the unborn child of Woo-Jin, an innocent, sinless life taken absolutely needlesly.
• Hidden Depths: Like photography and yoga. His actor even learned yoga for the role!
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: In flashbacks, he's seen chasing his sister and taking photographs of her underneath her clothes.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: As if framing Dae-su for murder, imprisoning him for 15 years, killing his wife and best friend and manipulating him into sleeping with his daughter wasn't enough, towards the end Woo-jin offers Dae-su a device that supposedly can kill him....only for it to play loud audio of Dae-su and his daughter having intercourse.
• Lonely Rich Kid: Implied. Joohwan mentions that Soo-ah's family is loaded, and during the yearbook scene Dae-su mentions that he thinks Woo-jin may have studied in America, which is expensive for the average Korean. Given how everyone else in the school seems poor its possible Woo-jin felt alienated from the other kids due to his immense wealth which brought him closer to Soo-ah. Even as an adult he has no close friends and surrounds himself with things that remind him of Soo-ah.
• Motifs: He has two:
• To Apollo from Greek mythos, as he seems to never age, is always able to see what Dae-su is doing, and lives in a high floor of apenthouse, which means he has a high vantage point over the heroes. It also fits with the theme of the tragedy of Oedipus, as Dae-su is meant to be Oedipus.
  • The color purple: His umbrella, envelopes and boxes are all purple. Born to the purple means someone who is born into a life of wealth and privilege. Woo-jin is shown to be wealthy, owns a penthouse, can pay off gangs and mooks to attack Dae-su, and has multiple bodyguards. It's mentioned that he's a company CEO as well.
    • Even one analysis notes "Let’s consider briefly what he needed to do in order to reach the heights of villainy he achieves in the movie:
      • Not allow the trauma of the death of his lover prevent him from material success.
      • Become financially successful and skillful enough that he becomes the head of a multi-million dollar trading conglomerate.
      • Hold on to his yearning for vengeance through several decades without letting it interfere with his normal life or his planning/execution of said revenge.
      • Know how to convert his financial holdings into the formation and maintenance of contacts capable of locating, surveying, and perhaps subtly manipulating any given individual.
    • That’s a lot to ask of a person, to the point that it is almost literally unbelievable. Lee Woo-Jin is an incredible person. He must have had, at highschool age, the dedication necessary to metabolize rage and grief into studying and training in order to have climbed as far up the corporate ladder as fast as he did. Unless his family was already rich, he must’ve also maintained an industriousness that would fund the prestigious schools he’s need to attend and a charisma that’d give him access to the social class he was aspiring towards. Lee could’ve already been aiming to become a corporate success before he started his path for revenge, of course. But his strength of character to keep himself on that path despite the intense trauma he experienced is nonetheless impressive. And however justified you may think his actions are or are not regarding his revenge on Oh Dae-Su, there’s no denying that he was, however indirectly, a cause of the worst thing to ever happen in Lee’s life. He watched his sister, and his lover, kill herself and failed to save her. The weight of that trauma is literally unimaginable. It does ultimately claim him, as we see at the end that his devotion to his sister was so great that once she is avenged he sees no reason to continue living, even after all that he has accomplished. I would expect an average person would be overwhelmed by grief, unable to function in normal society and possibly even ready to resign themselves to death after the passing of a few days, much less decades. But Lee Woo-Jin is not average, he is exceptional."
• Mr. Fanservice: We get a LOT of shots of him naked and in the shower. He's also usually naked (or at least shirtless) when he does yoga.
  • Fun fact: The original script called for Male Frontal Nudity! But Yoo Ji-Tae was uncomfortable with it, and it was edited out.
• Never My Fault: He tries to push the blame on his sister's death on Oh Dae-su, despite the fact that the whole situation happened because he couldn't suppress his lustful urges and decided to court her in public instead of somewhere with an expectation of privacy. Granted, he was a Hormone-Addled Teenager at the time, but anyone could have stumbled upon what they were doing, and to claim that Dae-su is solely responsible is irrational.
• Older Than They Look: Yoo Ji-tae was 26 when he played Woo-jin, who's meant to be in his 40s. According to Park Chan Wook this was deliberate as it was meant to show how Woo-jin was uanble to move on from the past, as well as compare him to the devil.
• Psychopathic Manchild: At a first glance he appears to be a wealthy company CEO who just wants to toy with Dae-su, but as the film progresses, it's shown that he's hung up on his sister's death and mentally stuck in his headspace as a high schooler.
• Sadist: While he is one throughout the whole movie, the penultimate example would be him laughing as Dae-su is crying and begging in front of him and even licking his feet. Right before he revealed to Dae-su that he made him sleep with his daughter, he was smiling and laughing.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: After the shower scene.

Soo-ah

Portrayed by Jin-seo Yoon

Woo-jin's sister. And lover.

Tropes exhibited by this character include:

• Brother-Sister Incest: Deconstructed. After he impregnates her, she realizes that the baby could lead to their incestous relationship being discovered. In order to avoid them being found out she commits suicide by drowning in the Habchun Dam. This mentally breaks Woo-jin, and he is unable to move on from her death decades later, instead dedicating his life to get revenge for her. This is despite her telling Woo-jin she has no regrets and he can let her go.
• Dude Magnet: Several male characters comment on her attractiveness.
• Foreshadowing: The book she's reading is by Ella Wheeler, who also wrote the poem "Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone", which appears again near the album scene.
• I Want My Beloved To Be Happy: She wanted to protect Woo-jin from accusations of him being the father of her child, so much that she willingly took her life just to save him. Though the autopsy revealed she wasn't pregnant.
• The Lost Lenore: To her own brother. Ick.

---

Back to Oldboy