[HanCinema's Film Review] "Moo-hyun, the Story of Two Cities"

Two years before running for President of South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun ran for a legislative district office in Busan. Roh Moo-hyun's national profile at that time was strong - he had previously represented Seoul in the legislature, and eventually took a position in then-President Kim Dae-jung's cabinet. The Busan legislative race was exhausting and demographically hopeless. We can see that in the personal footage director Jeon In-hwan collected, showing Roh Moo-hyun with a chronically hoarse voice from all the heavy campaigning. So why go to the trouble?

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To answer that question, we need to get to the other half of "Moo-hyun, the Story of Two Cities", the one that deals with Baek Moo-hyun, a cartoonist who ran for the legislative seat in Yeosu in 2016. Like Roo Moo-hyun, Baek Moo-hyun was better known and more well-connected in the northwest part of the country, where he had made his livelihood. So why make a start at a political career in his hometown, while suffering from a likely terminal illness to boot?

It's all a matter of political philosophy. Roh Moo-hyun believed that Koreans, all of them, share a common national interest. He is steadfast and passionate, in the footage we see here, about the need for politicians to be accountable to those who elect them. These aren't mere platitudes - we see Roh Moo-hyun making these big speeches to surprisingly small crowds, with a literal soapbox if he needs to. There are frequent distractions. Often we see people explicitly questioning what Roh Moo-hyun is even trying to accomplish.

The answer to that question, is Baek Moo-hyun. Roh Moo-hyun envisioned a future where the main people to run for political office were not the well-connected, or the most ambitious, but the ones who were passionate about doing the most good for the most people whatever way they could. Roh Moo-hyun campaigned to those small little groups because he firmly believed that they mattered, that every last one of them mattered, and by golly, they deserved someone willing to go out there and argue for their vote in person.

It's the sentiment that matters. That's why, out of all the more obviously successful 2016 legislative races to follow, director Jeon In-hwan focused on Baek Moo-hyun. I mean, yeah, there's the obvious thematic coincidence of the name, and how it shows Roh Moo-hyun's spirit living on multiple elections after his leftist coalition was supposed to be gone for good. It really is impossible to understate just how shocking the 2016 legislative results were.

But that's the whole reason they happened. There was no complicated long-game realpolitik - that's why everyone was so convinced the leftists were doomed to failure. But people like Baek Moo-hyun, people with no reason to think the situation could improve, decided to fight on anyway. This was how Roh Moo-hyun inspired an entire generation. And Moon Jae-in has followed that example. His meeting with Baek Moo-hyun is telling- it wasn't the analysts, or the corporations, or the ambitious politicians that made this comeback possible. It was the grassroots activisits. Their struggle must not be forgotten.

Review by William Schwartz

"Moo-hyun, the Story of Two Cities" is directed by Jeon In-hwan and written by Kim Won-myeong.