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Living With Uncertainty: Memories of Murder(2003)
- Emrullah Yildiz
- Dec 27, 2025
- 5 min read
Released in 2003, Memories of Murder is directed by Bong Joon-ho, long before his global breakthrough with Parasite. The film is inspired by South Korea’s first known serial murder case, the Hwaseong murders, which took place between 1986 and 1991. At the time of the film’s release, the killer had not been identified, and the case remained unresolved.
The story is set in rural South Korea during the late 1980s, a period marked by political tension, authoritarian policing, and limited investigative technology. This era is not just a backdrop. It defines how characters behave, how power is exercised, and how truth is distorted.
The main cast includes Song Kang-ho as the intuitive local detective, alongside Kim Sang-kyung as the rational outsider from Seoul. Their opposing methods form the emotional and philosophical spine of the film.
The film received major recognition in South Korea, including Best Director at the Grand Bell Awards, and is now consistently ranked among the greatest Korean films ever made. Internationally, its reputation grew slowly, aging into its legacy rather than exploding on release.
Fundamentals: Camera Language, Framing, Colors
At first glance, the cinematography may feel restrained, even static. There are no aggressive camera moves, no visual showmanship. The camera often stays still, observing rather than intervening. When it moves, it usually follows characters quietly, without drama.
This choice is intentional. The frequent use of wide lenses allows Bong Joon-ho to keep characters small within their environments. The space behind them matters. Open fields, empty roads, tunnels, and corridors dominate the frame. Instead of pushing the viewer toward emotion, the film pulls the viewer into depth.
This creates a three-dimensional feeling. The story does not play out on a flat plane. It breathes in space, silence, and distance.
Framing and Perspective
One-point perspective appears subtly throughout the film, especially in hallways, tunnels, and roads. These frames pull the eye toward a vanishing point that never delivers answers. Visually, the film is always leading somewhere that ultimately goes nowhere.
The camera often positions the audience as a silent witness. We are not aligned with justice. We are aligned with observation.
Color and Atmosphere
Color symbolism exists, but it hides behind desaturation. While watching, most viewers do not consciously register it.
Red appears sparingly, often tied to violence or moments of danger.
Green dominates the environment: grass, fields, rooms. It feels stagnant rather than alive.
White briefly suggests innocence, but never permanence.
Only the opening and final scenes break this muted palette with a yellowish tone, but it is also almost monochrome. These moments feel warmer but also unsettling, like faded memories. They bookend the film with a sense of cyclical inevitability.
Humans Inside a Broken System
At its core, Memories of Murder is not about finding a killer. It is about how people behave when certainty is impossible.
The characters are written and staged with remarkable physical intelligence. Where they stand in scenes and how they behave matters and supports the story.
The intuitive detective is always inside the chaos, convinced he can read truth by looking into someone’s eyes.
The outsider detective remains slightly removed, entering scenes only when logic or evidence is required.
The violent detective moves erratically, in and out of frames, driven by impulse rather than thought.
The superior officer stands behind others, managing rather than acting.
The woman detective is precise, punctual, and consistently ignored, reflecting the masculine power structure of the era.
Comedy emerges unexpectedly. The infamous flying kick during an interrogation is funny, shocking, and revealing. Violence is normalized, almost casual, and that normalization becomes part of the film’s critique.
One of the most powerful moments comes during the tunnel interrogation. The detective who always insists that documents never lie reaches a breaking point. Faced with uncertainty, he abandons evidence and chooses emotion. In that moment, the film exposes how fragile logic becomes under pressure.
This is where frustration as a viewer peaks. The investigation collapses not because clues are absent, but because humans are flawed.
The Ending. A Look That Never Leaves
The final scene is one of the most iconic endings in modern cinema. The sudden direct look into the camera breaks the invisible wall between film and audience.
When the film was released, the real killer had not been caught. Knowing today that he was identified decades later, after the statute of limitations expired, adds a chilling layer. The killer could have been watching. The truth could have passed unnoticed.
That stare does not accuse a character. It accuses us.
What the Film Leaves Behind
Memories of Murder does not offer relief. It leaves the viewer with frustration, discomfort, and unresolved tension. And that is precisely its achievement.
The film lingers because it refuses to close the wound. It forces the viewer to sit with uncertainty, to confront how systems fail, and how easily morality bends under pressure.
Its influence can be felt in Bong Joon-ho’s later work, especially Parasite, where local social issues are transformed into universal human experiences. The talent lies not in explaining everything, but in making the audience feel something deeply familiar.
You may not enjoy this film in a conventional way. You may feel annoyed, unsatisfied, even distant. But long after the credits roll, that final look stays with you.
Some stories end.
Some remain unresolved.
And some, like Memories of Murder, quietly follow you home.
Bonus: The Murderer Revealed in 2019
For more than fifteen years after Memories of Murder was released, the real-life case that inspired the film remained unresolved. This unresolved reality was not a narrative choice by the filmmakers. It was the truth at the time.
In 2019, South Korean authorities announced that the Hwaseong serial murders had finally been linked, through advanced DNA analysis, to Lee Choon-jae. He was already serving a life sentence for the murder of his sister-in-law, which meant he could not receive additional punishment for the serial killings. Even more painfully, many of the original murder cases were legally time-barred, preventing formal prosecution.
What makes this revelation especially disturbing is Lee’s reaction. He reportedly stated that he had watched Memories of Murder and felt nothing. He was surprised, he said, that the police had been unable to catch him for so long.
This real-world development retroactively changes how the film’s ending is experienced.
That final stare into the camera, once a metaphor for uncertainty, becomes something heavier. The idea that the killer could have been watching, blending into society, unrecognizable, turns from abstract fear into historical fact. Bong Joon-ho, when asked about the revelation, described it as “horrifying” and admitted that it made the ending of his own film feel even more tragic.
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