Mister Green
Parasite is the first South Korean film to ever win an Oscar — not only in the “Best International Feature” category, but also in the main category: “Best Picture.” It also holds the distinction of being the first Korean film to receive any Oscar at all.
This raises the question: why did Parasite resonate so deeply across the world? Without a doubt, its success is rooted in director Bong Joon-ho’s exploration of the growing socioeconomic gap between the rich and the poor — a topic painfully relevant to most countries. But for many Western viewers unfamiliar with the nuances of South Korean culture and social hierarchy, the film leaves them asking:
“What the hell did I just watch?”
The film is rich with symbols, metaphors, and cinematic devices designed to instill a specific mood or message in the viewer’s subconscious. Yet because many of these elements are subtle, they often go unnoticed. The goal of this analysis is to fill in those gaps in perception.
Class inequality in South Korea is very different from what it looks like in the West. Take, for example, the relationship between a boss and an employee. In the West, an employee follows the boss’s instructions during working hours, but outside of work it’s common to see them sitting together at a party or even playing football as equals.
In Korea, such situations are almost unimaginable due to a rigid hierarchy that permeates all layers of society — between managers and subordinates, the older and younger generations, the rich and the poor. And the boundary separating these groups is never crossed. The very idea of social mobility is largely absent.
This is why, when Ki-woo — the son of the poor Kim family — talks about asking for the hand of the rich Park family’s daughter, no one takes him seriously.
Bong Joon-ho visually represents this invisible divide in the way he frames shots — placing physical or spatial boundaries between characters from different classes, which they almost never cross. This visual technique echoes Mr. Park’s monologue, where he tells his wife about the new driver, Ki-taek. He notes that Ki-taek often gets close to “crossing the line,” but never actually does.“And that’s a good thing,” concludes Mr. Park — words that deeply wound Ki-taek, who is eavesdropping at that moment.
And the method the Kim family chooses to try and cross that line is imitation.
In its original draft, Bong Joon-ho’s screenplay was titled Decalcomania — a word meaning “duplicate” or “imitation.” And if you take a closer look at the characters in the film, you’ll notice that almost every one of them engages in some form of imitation or role-playing.
For example, the members of the Kim family pretend to be professionals in various fields; the young son of the Park family plays cowboys and Indians with his father; the housekeeper Moon-gwang mimics the tone of North Korean news broadcasters; and Mr. Park works for a company that develops VR devices — which, essentially, imitate real life.
The filmmakers used distinct sound design to highlight the contrast between the haves and the have-nots. In the semi-basement apartment where the Kim family lives, there’s constant environmental noise — traffic, barking dogs, loud neighbors, street vendors. These sounds invade the interior scenes, never letting the viewer forget the family’s poverty. In contrast, the Parks’ home is silent — the only sound being birds chirping faintly in the background.
But unlike others, the Kim family doesn’t imitate for fun. Their mimicry is a means of survival — a way to break through that invisible class barrier. In doing so, they disrupt the accepted order of things — and that, in the logic of the film’s universe, makes them audacious.
This audacity is fully revealed in the scene where the Kims are left alone in the Park house. They get drunk, celebrate, and declare themselves the new owners. What follows is highly symbolic: nature itself seems to retaliate against the Kims’ boldness, unleashing a downpour that literally drives them back into their “hole” — the place South Korean society believes they belong.
The most striking contrast between rich and poor is shown in the flooding scenes — the “lower city” submerged in water. From the Park family’s high-end house, the rain seems like a gentle drizzle. But from the Kims’ home, it’s a flood of biblical proportions. It’s the law of nature: water flows from top to bottom. The reverse sewage flow in the Kims’ toilet is a blunt metaphor for their social status — they live below the waterline.
At the same time, Bong Joon-ho doesn’t see evil in individuals, but in the system itself — a system that turns anyone with an intense desire to climb the social ladder into a parasite. That’s why he gave both families the most common surnames in South Korea — Kim and Park — to emphasize the universal nature of the problem.
But there’s also a third family in the film — one without a name — that represents the traditionalist core of the same system. The housekeeper’s husband, Geun-sae, who secretly lives in the basement, literally worships his “master,” Mr. Park, who gives him shelter and food. This exaggerated devotion is a callback to feudal Korea — where the roots of today’s rigid hierarchy were planted.
If the nameless family symbolizes traditionalism, then the Parks represent the opposite: progressivism. Their love of all things foreign — languages, culture — shows their Westernized mindset and explains their material success.
Their individualism and lifestyle resemble that of Western families, and this becomes key to understanding why the elder Kims fail in their imitation. No matter how well-trained they are by their children — the transitional generation — Ki-taek and his wife Chung-sook simply can’t become as independent and modern as the Parks. In their minds, the master-servant dynamic remains deeply rooted. Just recall the toast Ki-taek offers during a family dinner:
“Let us all pray for Mr. Park’s health.”
It is the younger generation of Kims who pull off the imitation best. Ki-woo notes that his sister Ki-jung fits perfectly into the wealthy lifestyle — and so does he, as seen in the way his student responds to him.
Thus, Mr. and Mrs. Kim become the embodiment of the confused masses in modern South Korea — a country straddling democracy and capitalism. Their confusion is expressed in the recurring theme of having no plan — something Ki-woo and Ki-taek discuss more than once.
The “plan” is just one of many key symbols Bong Joon-ho uses in the film to embed certain ideas in the viewer’s subconscious. To understand how these symbols function, let’s start with the rock — the first symbol introduced in the film, when we meet the Kim family.
Watching their lives, we see just how poor they are. But Ki-woo believes his family can still find a way out of poverty. When a wealthy friend visits and brings a gift — a scholar’s stone said to bring prosperity — it becomes a symbol of Ki-woo’s hope for a better future.
The next symbolic element arises after the entire Kim family has infiltrated the Park household: smell. At this point, the distance between rich and poor has narrowed so much that their odors can be sensed. Smell becomes a representation of poverty — something the Kims can’t wash off or hide, no matter how hard they try.
These symbols aren’t used just once — they return again and again, embedding themselves in the viewer’s mind and creating narrative motifs tied to the characters who carry them.
In the case of the rock, the motif is as follows: ever since Ki-woo receives it, he begins pursuing wealth and status, eventually landing a job in the Park home through deceit — at which point we see the rock again. The next time it appears is when Ki-woo’s dreams are on the brink of collapse: the Park family nearly discovers the truth, and a rainstorm floods the Kims’ home.
The way Ki-woo clings to the rock as water fills their house symbolizes his desperate attempt to hold onto his slipping dream. The motif of the rock returns once more in the scene where the Kims violently confront the housekeeper and her husband, locked in the basement. These two know the Kims’ secret and threaten their ambition — the rock becomes a symbol of what they’re willing to fight for.
The motif of smell also reappears repeatedly, reminding Ki-taek of his lower status and hinting that he can never truly escape it. And all this leads us to the film’s critical turning point.
At this critical moment in the story, all the narrative motifs converge to express one of the film’s core themes: that people living in poverty, regardless of their hopes or ambitions, often have no real opportunity to change their social status or join the wealthy class.
At first, everything was going exactly as Ki-woo had planned. But when the plan collapses and the Kim family ends up homeless, Ki-taek says:
“That’s why you shouldn’t make plans. If you don’t have one, it can’t fail. Even when things go sideways, it won’t matter.”
The absence of a plan symbolizes the absence of opportunity. So, when Ki-taek once again faces the undeniable evidence of the class divide — Mr. Park pinching his nose at the smell of the dying basement man — he loses control and plunges a kitchen knife into Mr. Park’s chest.
As for Geun-sae, the housekeeper’s husband, who initiates the bloodshed at the Park’s garden party, he represents the deeply rooted traditional values lurking in the subconscious of millions of South Koreans. The basement, where he lives, is a metaphor for those suppressed ideas — and that’s why he first attacks Ki-woo, then Ki-jung, the younger generation trying to break free from the system.
The fact that Geun-sae uses the rock — the very one meant to bring Ki-woo prosperity — to crush his skull is no coincidence. It’s a cruel twist of irony, mocking the young man’s dream of climbing the social ladder.
And yet, despite exposing these harsh social realities, Bong Joon-ho ends on a note of cautious optimism. In the final scene, Ki-woo writes a letter to his father expressing hope for a better future. He says:
“Today I made a plan. A big one.”
With that, the director gives the younger generation a measure of agency and the potential for change — but reminds us that true transformation takes time.
