This probably wasn’t—and perhaps couldn’t possibly be—apparent to non-South Korean viewers and interviewers, but “No Regret” is schematic precisely because it deliberately follows the storyline of many South Korean movies from the 1970-80s that have been dubbed “hostess films.”

Due to extremely rapid, concentrated, and government-directed industrialization and urbanization following the devastation of the Korean War, South Korean society saw the predictable disintegration and impoverishment of agrarian communities and the consequent influx of unskilled, often undereducated, youths into growing cities and rather Dickensian factories in the 1960’s-70’s.

Unsurprisingly, this migration for economic survival applied to men and women alike. However, because of even stronger sexism back then, these young women had not only less education and hence fewer career choices than their male peers but also considerable likelihood of being exploited, economically and sexually, and even being dismissed unfairly, which meant starvation for their families in the country.

Consequently, young women who were either dismissed from their jobs or simply jobless from the beginning had two options: 1) find work at other equally grimy factories and, if adequately fortunate and determined, even form labor unions, starting a continuing battle against the management, or 2) work as “hostesses” (the English loanword is used) at “teahouses” and “cafes”—i. e., seedy men-only bars with young female servers who, upon request and for an unofficial fee, would (have to) sleep with their clients.

Though it certainly wasn’t as difficult and dirty as working, for example, at a factory, being a “hostess” was equally or even more dangerous because of the implicit prostitution involved. In an era of strong sexual double standards when virginity was an unmarried woman’s most important socioeconomic and moral asset, no “hostess” could dare to reveal her profession to her family back home—even if she was the only breadwinner. In addition to physical and verbal abuse and economic exploitation from both the clients and the “madams” who ran such shady establishments, the “hostesses’” own awareness of this moral stigma obviously led to severe psychological repercussions. While some luckily ran away or became mistresses or even wives of well-to-do clients, most of these “hostesses” slipped further down the social ladder, many of them turning into “madams” or even full-time prostitutes.

Depicting star-crossed or even self-deluded “love” relationships between “hostesses” and their clients, “hostess films”—and the novels on which they were based—enjoyed considerable popularity because they reflected but often sensationalized or sentimentalized contemporary social reality at the expense of women, both on-screen and off-screen.

An avowed fan of such “hostess films,” Leesong does faithfully follow their melodramatic, “rich boy meets, loves, and leaves poor girl” plot—but only to a certain point and with a twist or two. By juxtaposing what has long been a cliché in South Korean culture with homosexuality, still a “shocking” phenomenon to the majority of the population despite the decade-long struggles of gay/lesbian rights activists and the public coming out of a gay actor in 2000 (which left him jobless for over 2 years), the director not only betrays the audience’s expectations of the genre but also creates subtle and new tension in an old story. Conversely, the built-in class consciousness and conflict of “hostess films” allow him to create a gay love story with a strongly socioeconomic bent, which in turn is tied to Leesong’s refusal to sentimentalize or romanticize gay life in South Korea today. Indeed, the realism of the scenes depicting illegal gay baths and “host bars” (the gay male equivalents of heterosexual establishments employing “hostesses” that thrive to this date despite many differences from their precedents), which stems from the director’s own homosexual orientation, actually discomfited not a few South Korean gay viewers. Notwithstanding their paucity, gay-themed movies have been produced in South Korea—e. g., “Broken Branches” (1995) and “Road Movie” (2002). However, created by straight directors, all of these earlier works failed in one way or another, perhaps not incidentally, to reflect the psychological and social lives of queer people in modern South Korea. Moreover, Leesong dispenses with the tragic ending customarily associated with “hostess films” and, perhaps to a lesser degree, “serious” queer drama, South Korean or foreign, thus once again overturning the expectations of both the genre and the audience. The latter half of the movie, which may be abrupt and unexpected to many viewers, reflects all such departures from cinematic traditions (as well as a good bit of the director’s personal humor, as in the final scene).

Despite its shortcomings, which are due mainly to an extremely low budget (roughly US$ 100,000 in total; in fact, everyone involved in the creation of “No Regret” including the actors, director, and producer agreed to receive the uniform amount of slightly over US$ 500 per person, which is unthinkable even for the South Korean film industry) and adverse filming conditions, Leesong’s movie certainly is and deserves to be recognized as an achievement for South Korean cinema on many levels—be it indie, mainstream, queer, or hetero.

I watched it recently in my own home and was moved by the subtlety and edgy feel in the later part. I have been to Seoul myself last year so I could still remember the loneliness one of the characters mentioned there in the story. It’s not bad. Every place has its own sad story but I really felt sadness immediately when I got down the taxi. Anyway, back to the film – I just admire the director for making a risque material in Korea. He’s very courageous. I hope their other directors take the cue.