OK. There was one thing I didn't understand about the movie. Why did the site with the girls call them N. Korea spies? The same with the newspaper. I just didn't get it. I got that it was a joke to call someone a North Korean Spy to make fun of them but the web site and the newspaper were beyond me. Can anyone clear this up? Thanks.
shareI too am confused about this. The translation in the subtitles was "Those who don't know her are N. Korean spies". Perhaps it is a reference to how famous her beauty is - like the way they used to try and catch out Russian spies by asking questions like "What's the name of Mickey's girlfriend". No matter how perfect their English, such cultural questions will probably unmask them. Perhaps someone who knows Korean can answer this better.
share "Gancheob" generally means a north Korean spy who operates a mission in south Korea. It also means a local idiot who does not knows what recently happened around between friends.
In many times, Korean says right after "Are you a Gancheb?"
"How come you don't know her!?"
"How come you haven't seen star wars episod III?"
etc.
North and South Koreans are same people, and speak same language. But, they have been separated for 60 years by foreign political powers. Tragically, there were no civil communication between South and North for those days after Korean war from 1950 to 1953;therefore, Koreans starterd being transformed into two different peoples. Now days things are getiing better. North Korean leaders are trying to open their country to the world, and changing their communism system into capitalism.
Let's get back to the story. There is no "Gancheb(local idiot)" who doesn't know our heroine, but the real "gancheb(N.Korean spy)" is our heroine. Nobody realizes she is a real spy from North Korea.
Isn't it ironical? The filmmakers might wanna symbolize the ironic situations between two Koreas.
I hope it would be helpful to you guys to understand more about this movie.
The official English title of "Geunyeoreul moreumyon Gancheob" is "A Spy Girl".
I think "A spy Girl" is more accuracy for the film.
This film did not successfully lauched at market, and got very poor degree from critics. Because most of Korean still considers their divided country as the biggest tragidy, not a comedy.
If you have enjoyed this film, I would recommand following Korean Films.
Swiri(or Shiri 1999)
JSA (Joint Security Area 2000)
Taegukgi (2004)
Anyway, It's really amaging!!
I never expected that I could have audiences abroad.
Someday I'll make "Spy Girl Part II"
Dreaming north and south comes to one, I'll make two main characters finally meet together.
Thank you for your interestes about my film.
from the director of "A Spy Girl"
The impression I got was that when they were saying "Those who don't know her must be North Korean Spies"; they were meaning that since this girl is so good looking that you couldn't fail to notice her and know who she is if you'd lived in the town for any length of time. So if you didn't know who she was, you must have come from out of town and just arrived. As a joke, they're saying you must be from North Korea and a spy (ie way out of town). Of course, the irony is, she IS a North Korean Spy.
To the director if you look this way again ...
Your film made it to Australia, I bought it a few months ago. I'll lend it to some of my Korean friends when I get the chance.
Filmpath - if you really are Park Han-Chun -- then I wanted to thank you for making Spy-Girl. As an American, it was the first Korean movie that showed me a contrast between USA and Korea - burger king, shopping malls, etc vs mandatory military service, north/south divide, etc.
I have seen Swiri, JSA and many other north/south divide movies, but none of them showed much of the western influence in Korea. Maybe it was not your intent to show how Korea is like the USA, but that was one thing that stood out to me.
I also really enjoyed the movie in general, I thought it was funny, especially the old spy couple from the North who liked the South better. And that Kim Jung-Hwa, I don't think I have ever seen a prettier girl. If you see her, tell her I said that.
I downloaded Spy Girl from the internet very recently after it was released in 2004 without knowing anything about it. And when it finally was released on DVD in the USA 2 years later, I bought it and have since shown it to about 15 people, some of them from Korea but mostly just regular Americans, and they all liked it. I may even buy a print of the movie poster - the only other poster I have is for Lee Chang-Dong's Oasis, not that the two movies are anything alike, just that I liked Spy Girl almost as much as I liked Oasis.
So, if by chance you wander back here to imdb to check up on your movie, at least you will know that some regular Americans liked your movie very much.