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A film past 2 million admissions, and a fight that spilled outside the theater
The historical dispute surrounding “The Assassin(s),” a film that has drawn more than 2 million moviegoers, has widened into a police complaint, a call for a parliamentary hearing, and protests outside a cast member’s home. Directed by Hur Jin-ho and starring Yoo Hae-jin, Lee Min-ho and Park Hae-il, the film rode strong Chuseok holiday attendance to the top of the box office and has stayed there into its third week of release. Yet the response inside theaters and the political clash outside them are now moving in opposite directions.
What has shifted in this latest phase is the target and the method of criticism. A debate over how faithfully the film recreates a real event has turned into a question of whether the filmmakers should face criminal liability, and whether the National Assembly should summon the director to examine his creative intent. As protests have reached into an actor’s private residence, claims about protecting a historical figure’s reputation and claims about protecting a creator’s expression and personal safety are now being raised side by side.
At the root of the controversy is the August 15, 1974 shooting that killed First Lady Yuk Young-soo. The film adds a fictional layer suggesting the possibility that government authorities were involved. Its producers maintain that it is a dramatized work built around a real historical event, and that it does not identify any specific person as the mastermind. Untangling the actual investigation and court ruling, the film’s hypothetical premise, and the claims now being made by politicians is the starting point for understanding this dispute.
What happened at the National Theater on Liberation Day, 1974
The incident took place at the National Theater of Korea in Seoul, during a ceremony marking Liberation Day, the national holiday commemorating Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule. Mun Se-gwang, a Korean resident of Japan, fired at President Park Chung-hee as he was delivering a speech but failed to kill him. Investigators at the time concluded that First Lady Yuk Young-soo, seated nearby, was struck and killed by a bullet Mun had fired. Proposing an alternative to that official conclusion is the central point of contention in the film.
Along with Yuk, a high school student named Jang Bong-hwa also died at the scene that day. A fact-check report from the Chosun Ilbo explains that Jang was struck by a stray shot fired by a presidential bodyguard. The two deaths need to be considered together to understand the chaos of the shooting. But the fact that a bodyguard’s gunfire produced a separate casualty is not, by itself, evidence that Yuk was also hit by a bodyguard’s bullet, or that the government orchestrated the incident.
South Korean investigators at the time announced that Mun had acted in connection with North Korea and a pro-Pyongyang association of Korean residents in Japan, and the courts found him guilty. He was executed on December 20 of that year. According to a Hankook Ilbo report that reviewed records and court rulings, no evidence has since emerged to overturn that judicial conclusion. Examining lingering questions about the case is a different matter from declaring an unconfirmed theory of a mastermind to be a new historical fact.
How an old suspicion became cinematic material
The suspicions surrounding the case did not originate with this film. In 2005, the release of related diplomatic documents and a television investigative program reignited debate over possible accomplices, a hidden mastermind, and the exact circumstances of the shooting. That the records were made public created an opportunity to re-examine the old case, but the mere fact that questions were raised does not amount to proof of any particular conspiracy theory. For readers outside Korea, the key distinction is that the original investigation’s findings and the later questions raised about it belong to separate layers of the story.
“The Assassin(s)” draws its material from this long-running dispute. Because it uses real people and a real event while suggesting the possibility of government involvement, its relationship to historical fact is more direct than that of an ordinary fictional crime drama. That is also the source of concern that audiences might mistake the film’s speculative narrative for a historical account. On the other hand, whether using a real case as a backdrop should bar a filmmaker from proposing any hypothesis or fictional reconstruction at all is a separate question.
In a statement released on September 28, the production team said the film draws on a real historical event with added cinematic imagination, and that it does not identify a specific individual as the mastermind or present its dramatic premise as historical fact. That statement clarifies the nature of the work, but it does not settle every criticism directed at it. The film’s persuasiveness and its responsibility in depicting history remain open to evaluation. Still, turning criticism of a work into an actual criminal accusation requires evidence suited to that different standard.
September 28-29: from criticism to the National Assembly and the police
On September 28, lawmakers from the People Power Party held news conferences and made other public statements accusing the film of distorting history. Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok argued that while criticizing former President Roh Moo-hyun tends to draw a string of lawsuits, insulting former President Park Chung-hee is being treated as protected free expression, suggesting that different political figures should be held to the same standard. At this stage, the dispute centered less on the film’s craft than on how far to extend protection for a historical figure’s reputation versus freedom of expression.
The following day, a former city council member filed a police complaint against director Hur Jin-ho and the production team on defamation charges. The same day, at a meeting of the National Assembly’s Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee, a call arose to summon Hur as a witness for a parliamentary audit, though it was not adopted amid negotiations between the ruling and opposition parties. A parliamentary audit is the process by which the National Assembly reviews the work of government bodies, and a witness is someone asked to appear to provide related testimony. The fact that the summons was proposed is distinct from the summons actually being confirmed.
People Power Party figures also raised allegations that roughly 40 billion won in Chinese capital had flowed into the film and that its rating on Naver had been manipulated. A fact-check piece from OhmyNews, however, pointed out that the 40 billion won figure was not a confirmed production budget but rather the scale of investment the production company had been pursuing. The production company has denied any inflow of Chinese capital. The rating-manipulation claim likewise remains an allegation rather than a confirmed fact. Claims about investment ties and online scores are not, on their own, grounds to conclude that the film’s content was shaped at the direction of an outside force.
The dispute moves to an actor’s doorstep and a first lady’s birthplace
The threatened protest outside an actor’s home did not remain a mere warning. MBC reported on October 4 that a group had held a rally outside Yoo Hae-jin’s residence, demanding that screenings of the film be halted and that he apologize. Because this marked an attack aimed at an individual actor rather than the work itself, it raises a new question about the proper boundaries of criticizing a film: whether grievances over a role an actor played should be carried directly into his private living space.
On October 5, Jang Dong-hyeok and other People Power Party figures visited Yuk Young-soo’s birthplace in Okcheon County, North Chungcheong Province. According to KBS, Jang argued there that layering unverified allegations onto the historical record goes beyond the bounds of free expression. The dispute that began in the National Assembly had now moved to a site honoring the life of the deceased. That shift added a further dimension to the debate over the film’s premise: how to honor the surviving family, the reputation of the deceased, and historical memory.
On the other side, critics argued that political involvement had gone too far. An opinion piece in OhmyNews pointed to a pattern in which criticism of a work was turning into demands for punishment. A counterargument also emerged that summoning a creator before the National Assembly to interrogate his view of history could amount to ideological censorship. Raising that counterargument does not mean accepting the film’s historical premise as fact. One can judge a fictional reconstruction to be inaccurate or unpersuasive while still opposing political pressure and threats against an individual.
Box-office success and historical truth are separate judgments
Even as the political clash intensified, audiences kept making their choice. Citing the integrated box office network run by the Korean Film Council, Money Today reported on October 7 that “The Assassin(s)” had topped the overall box office the previous day. Cumulative admissions had already passed 2 million, and the film had entered its third week in theaters. But continued box-office success alone cannot prove the film’s historical premise, nor can it be read as audience agreement with its hypothesis.
There is a standard that can be applied consistently throughout this dispute. A film built around a real event carries a responsibility to make clear where fact ends and fiction begins, and politicians and audiences alike are free to criticize how well it does so. At the same time, alleging criminal liability or an organized cover-up requires evidence, and the personal safety of actors and directors must be protected. If that standard is applied differently depending on which historical figure a work concerns, the debate over free expression loses its consistency.
What remains to be seen extends beyond the film’s attendance figures. Still open are how the police complaint will be resolved legally, how the National Assembly handles its call for the director to appear, and whether the pressure aimed at individual creators will ease. Historical scrutiny of the 1974 incident and critical assessment of the 2026 film can both continue. But explaining a confirmed record, critiquing a work of fiction, and holding a person legally responsible each demand a different standard of proof.
Sources: BBC Korea, October 1, 2026; The Korea Times (Hankook Ilbo), October 3, 2026; Chosun Ilbo, September 28, 2026; OhmyNews, September 29, 2026; MBC, October 4 and 7, 2026; KBS, October 5, 2026; Money Today, October 7, 2026.
