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South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho at the 2020 Academy Awards in Hollywood, where his film “Parasite” won four awards. (Yonhap News)

Is this actually happening? South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s film “Parasite” swept the Academy Awards, winning prizes in four categories. While South Korean films have often been awarded at film festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, and Venice, the Academy Awards have long been the preserve of Hollywood hits. Thus, “Parasite” winning four Oscars is unheard of, even unimaginable.

This was the first time that an Asian director has gotten an Oscar for a film shot in his home country, with a local cast, in his native language. Even Bong seemed taken aback by it all — as can be seen in his remark that “We’ll need to take some time to think about how this happened, but for today, let’s just enjoy it.”

So let’s tackle that question: How this exactly happened. For one thing, the film’s intrinsic value can’t be ignored. There are extrinsic factors, as well: the soaring prestige of South Korean pop culture, and the efforts by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to shake the stigma of being “local.”

A scene from Bong’s film “Parasite”

In terms of its intrinsic features, the film demonstrates an outstanding control of theme and form. It should be obvious to anyone that the film’s theme is economic polarization. South Korea is a society in which the ladder of social mobility has been kicked away by hereditary capitalism, a society in which real estate accounts for the majority of wealth. As such, one’s house is a token of one’s social status. There’s even a Korean term for the phenomenon — “real estatism.”

The film visualizes the issue of class by delineating three spaces: ground level, semi-basement, and basement. This is an extremely overt form of cinematic composition. The film also tackles the context of hatred. When Mr. Park in the movie says, “He doesn’t cross the line, but his smell does,” he’s taking issue not with Gi-taek’s behavior, but with his very existence.

The “basement smell” isn’t merely the smell of a particular place. It’s the smell of the sort of people whose bodies are stained by poverty. That’s the takeaway from the line about “the smell of people who take the subway.” It’s a remarkable technique to express complicated ideas about a class or racial group through a concrete physical sensation.

The film reveals that polarization has become extreme, that class mobility is no longer possible, and that the hatred of poverty takes the guise of racial hatred. South Koreans have long attempted to cover up or patch over such tendencies in the guise of patriotism, but this film makes it abundantly obvious that there’s no longer a unitary Republic of Korea.

To be sure, that’s not a problem faced by South Korean society alone. It’s one that can touch people in any society in which the contradictions of capitalism have reached their extreme, any society in which the issue of class has become entangled with racial hatred. “Parasite” was embraced first at Cannes and then at the Oscars fundamentally because of its incisive handling of the theme of global inequality and because of the clarity with which it develops that theme.

This film was shot so as to be comprehensible even to viewers who don’t speak the language and who don’t know the specific context of the objects therein. There can be no doubt about its symbolism.

Furthermore, the plot is original and developed in a manner distinct from typical Hollywood films. For example, it doesn’t feature any villains. Whether rich or poor, all the characters are trying to follow their own compass, but the hatred, rage, and realization they achieve at crucial moments lead to the film’s unthinkable denouement. That’s the product of Bong’s deft handling of genre and his avoidance of its pitfalls.

A scene from Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite”

The film may not have been made for foreign viewers, but it contains elements that appeal to tourists from the West, and Americans in particular. In fact, the US is a country where the issue of class is wrapped up in racial animus, a country that seethes with resentment of the “welfare class,” those who are “parasites” on the welfare system.

On top of that, the film underlines South Koreans’ envy of American society. For example, Jessica’s mnemonic song — which begins with “Jessica from Illinois” — and the tendency for upper class women to mix English words into their conversation clearly show that South Korean society treats the US as a kind of social and economic benchmark.

The fact that Da-song, Mr. Park’s son, dresses up like a Native American, of all things, is itself symbolic. The boy’s Indian playacting is both an embodiment of the sentiment of white Americans and a veiled allusion to the history of the cruel massacre of the “other.”

Furthermore, Bong himself is no stranger to Americans. Many filmgoers have encountered his critical perspective in such films as “Snowpiercer” and “Okja.” The American press has also taken interest in the fact that Bong was placed on a cultural blacklist under former President Park Geun-hye.

Despite all the film’s intrinsic strengths, it could have never scored at the Oscars if not for the booming prestige of Korean pop culture. A devoted fandom for South Korean cultural exports —BTS among them — is forming in American society.

The South Korean film industry itself is substantial enough for Hollywood studios to market their films to its audiences. South Korea is one of just a handful of countries that have resisted handing over the keys of the film industry to Hollywood, turning out hundreds of domestic films each year. This robust domestic market essentially props up the prestige of South Korean cinema on the international stage.

A collection of social media posts and memes related to “Parasite.”

Nor should we ignore the huge sums spent on marketing and lobbying throughout the Academy Awards. Some took an ironic view of the lengthy acceptance speech delivered by Lee Mi-kyung, vice chairman of the CJ Group, regarding this as running counter to the theme of the film. But that would mean forgetting that a film isn’t made solely by the director’s vision, but also by technology and capital.

But the biggest reason for the remarkable triumph of “Parasite” appears to have been internal to the Oscars themselves. While the Academy hadn’t been moved by continuing criticism of its focus on white males, it seems to have been stung by Bong’s remark that the Oscars are a “very local” event.

Americans have always imagined themselves as being the center of an empire; they’ve assumed that, because America has a little bit of everything, they can be cosmopolitan without leaving its borders. How shocked they must have been to be labeled “local,” criticism they’d never faced before! Then there was Bong’s cutting remark about the barrier of subtitles, which reveals that American filmgoers — despite claiming to support cultural diversity — hardly watch foreign films because of the subtitles.

In effect, Bong poked Americans at a point of cultural pride, eliciting a vigorous response from the Academy in the form of four Oscars. The result was a jubilant ceremony that benefited all involved, both Bong, Lee Mi-kyung from the CJ Group, and the Academy itself.

The most awkward part of this whole affair is that the flag-waving patriots in the Liberty Korea Party are talking about setting up a museum for Bong Joon-ho, even though they haven’t apologized for their party’s blacklisting of him during the Park administration. That’s a level of black comedy that not even this film can achieve.

By Hwang Jin-mi, film critic

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]