MovieChat Forums > Hwanghae (2011) Discussion > ***SPOILERS*** Ending credit scene

SPOILERS Ending credit scene

posted 10 years ago by update_panel
7 replies | jump to latest

Let's settle the question once and for all of whether or not Gu-nam's wife was alive.

Arguments for Alive:

1) The person who checks up on her at the morgue can't tell whether or not the woman is indeed the wife due to the injuries she has. So he just tells Gu-nam that it is indeed her presumably to collect his fee.

2) The scene during the credit where the train stops at the station and his wife steps out.

Arguments for Dead:

1) When Gu-nam goes to her apartment after beating up the sushi guy he finds a picture of a little girl. That looked their daughter to me, which is why the picture is on him in the end.

2) When Gu-nam shows the picture to the sushi man in the ally the sushi man says that he knows her. So most likely Gu-nam's wife was the woman the sushi man kills after he gets his ass beat.

For some reason I have a hard time accepting that the scene during the credits was a fanatsy-esque sequence. Why show the fantasy of a man sleeping with the fishes of the yellow sea? Isn't it more sad and poetic that his wife is indeed alive and she comes back? Gu-nam's whole quest was for naught and it's more tragic that way. Please no argument pointing to the fact that the station is empty and that's impossible considering how populated train stations are in asia because I just watched a man get stabbed multiple times and kill a room full of *beep* with just an axe and a knife so a ghost town train station does not seem too far fetched.

But then again why the hell was he carrying the picture of the little girl he found in the sushi man's apartment?

Help me decide IMDB.

Peace and Lve

[–] rochasnk 9 years ago

All your arguments are correct and valid. I think the creators wanted to leave to us if the wife was dead or alive. I personally think she was alive.

[–] Errington_92 9 years ago

2) The scene during the credit where the train stops at the station and his wife steps out.

I thought she was the wife of the person who had been assassinated?

I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

[–] purple66 8 years ago

So did I. I was pretty confused as to what that scene was for

[–] moonjo 9 years ago

Wife is alive
1) correct
2) correct

Wife is dead
1) Children lookalike when they're young. He was mistaken or that kid just looked alike his daughter.
2) Mistaken identity. Woman looked alike Gunam's wife which would also explain how the child in the photo resembles Gunam's daughter.

Bottom line
Woman killed by the sushi man was not Gunam's wife. Guy at the morgue couldn't tell for sure. But lied to collect his fee + cremation fee.
His wife shows up at the bank with that banker who handles wiring funds back to China for those people. He's also a contact for Myun.
This also hints that him and Myun have been stealing people's money being sent to China since at the beginning of the film, it's shown that Gunam's wife is not sending the money back home, but she probably was.

[–] stonekeeper_ever 9 years ago

Everything you said is plausible except the fact that the woman at the bank was the professors wife.

Excuse my English, I am French-Canadian

[–] DaliParton 8 years ago

The reason I think the end-credits scene is real and not a fantasy is because Gu-nam is already dead and buried at sea. He was dreaming about her departing for s korea while he was still alive on the boat. But after he's dead there is no one else to dream about her, so it is purely for the audience. In which case it would be really underhanded of the director to show us fantasy and not reality.

[–] lathe-of-heaven 8 years ago

Yep... 

Love the screen name, BTW... Didn't you have a different version of that before...

I now have over 7000 films; many of them very rare and OOP. I LOVE to trade. PLEASE ASK! 