In this romantic comedy, two middle-aged Korean men (played by Jung Jae-young and Yoo Jun-sang) travel to Uzbekistan in order to find wives from the local ethnic Korean population. Korean title: 나의 결혼 원정기 | Released: 2005 | Sub-Genre: Romantic Comedy | Starring: Jung Jae-young, Soo Ae, Yoo Jun-sangĭid you know that there are many Koreans in Uzbekistan? I didn’t know until I saw Wedding Campaign. It’s a useful way to gauge everyday South Korean attitudes towards North Koreans as “wayward brothers” that ultimately still belong to the same metaphorical Korean family. There are other instances (like 2003’s North Korean Guys), but Secret Greatly offers the most modern and mainstream take on the format.
Secretly Greatly is not the only South Korean comedy movie that talks about North Korea. After Kim Jong-un’s death, Dong-gu and two other undercover spies (a rock musician and a student) get caught up in a power struggle with violent consequences. Though the film’s initial humor is more lighthearted than raucous, it has a rather hilarious premise: North Korea sends an elite spy to live undercover in South Korea as a village idiot named Dong-gu, who poops on the street and falls down stairs. Without giving too much away, that’s an apt way to describe Secret, Greatly. There’s a trend to Korean comedies: they start off funny, but they end on a more tragic note. Korean title: 은밀하게 위대하게 | Released: 2013 | Sub-Genre: Action Comedy-Drama | Starring: Kim Soo-hyun, Park Ki-woong, Lee Hyun-woo