Subscribe
E-Paper
 |
| Education is a tool for achieving greater wealth and power in Korean society. But the pursuit of truth has nothing to do with the process, nor do ethics. Courtesy of JTBC |
By Emanuel Pastreich
 |
The primary means of expressing the overflowing ambitions of these families is through education. But education does not mean erudition or wisdom, but rather the accumulation of the "specs" required to advance to the top in Korean society through school connections and by asserting domination over all who fall below.
Education is tool for achieving greater wealth and power in Korean society. The pursuit of truth has nothing to do with the process, nor does ethics. Appearance has become everything and neither parents, nor children, show any interest in discovering how society works, or in confronting the injustices that surround them.
The word "sky" in "Sky Castle" is an acronym for the three top universities in Korea: Seoul National University, Korea University and Yonsei University. These three schools are the grazing fields for established families in Korea, dating back to the Japanese colonial period, and their gates are carefully guarded. Increasingly, the entrance exams are designed so that only through professional drills with expensive tutors can one hope to be admitted. It is not breadth of education, creativity or insightfulness that makes one a likely candidate.
The competition for admission, unvarnished psychological warfare carried out between the families, also spills over into terrifying, and sometimes life-threatening, confrontations between the mothers and fathers and also between the children. Competition goes beyond any survival of the fittest to become a destructive, even psychotic, ritual of passage. The landscape is sprinkled with traces of suicide, violence, and broken personalities.
The word "castle" is also pregnant with significance. The hills around Seoul are peppered with exclusive housing developments that employ the term "castle" because it evokes vague images of the gracious living of the European aristocracy. The degree to which such privilege has become an accepted part of Korean society, even something to be emulated by those less fortunate, is an indication of the degree of social inequity. But the bitter fights throughout the drama also suggest a more literal interpretation of the term "castle." For the families, and the individuals, are also literally involved in a war and their homes serve as the castles where they plan for political and economic domination. Each encounter between parents or between children in the driveways between the castles is a chance for bitter confrontation.
"Sky Castle" is ultimately about class, although the term never enters into the discussion explicitly. The unwritten law for the compound is that no matter how cruel the competition between family members, between husbands and wives, or between the families of Sky Castle may be, they are also all in agreement about the need to protect their economic status. Thus the resemblance to France of Louis XVI in "Sky Castle" is not limited to the marble interiors and soaring ceilings of the palaces.
The twisted plot unfolds between four rival families who inhabit Sky Castle and three broken families on the margins who overlap with those central families at critical points.
But there are three central female protagonists who lead the battle like the heroes of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" (Sanguozhi 三國志): Han Seo-jin (한서진), Lee Soo-im (이수임) and Roh Seung-hye(노승혜).
Han Seo-jin is the most ruthless and domineering of the women, determined to promote the interests of her daughters Kang Ye-bin (강예빈) and Kang Ye-seo (강예서) at any cost and to keep her mercurial and self-obsessed husband Kang Jun-sang (강준상) in line. She will abase herself, pretend weakness, or make blatant threats of psychical violence in order to achieve her goals.
Her husband Jun-sang is a rising professor (and surgeon) at the plastic surgery division of Joo-Nam University Hospital (which is meant to represent Seoul National University Hospital). Seojin is proactive in her efforts to intimidate her rivals and her strategies for subduing others are as complex as they are ingenious. For example, she accepts unending insults behind the scenes from her imperious mother-in-law Yoon Yeo-sa (윤여사) in order to get funding for her plots. In fact, Seo-jin's toughness is related to her background. She did not come from a wealthy family originally and changed her name to disguise her origins.
Lee Soo-im (이수임) adopts a more feminine persona in her interactions with others, but reserves an unparalleled fierceness that she displays when required. She demonstrates powerful self-control. Soo-im guides her husband Hwang Chi-young(황치영), a neurosurgeon also at Joo-Nam University Hospital who completes with Kang Jun-sang for power and status. Above all, she defends her single son Hwang Woo-ju (황우주) against external threats, often adopting a defensive position.
Roh Seung-hye strives to create harmony within the family while advancing the interests of her two sons, Cha Seo-jun (차서준) and Cha Ki-Jun (차기준). But familial stability is no simple task for her. She must deal with the unbridled ambition of her husband Cha Min-hyuk (차민혁) who dreams of reaching the very highest levels of economic and political power, and pushing his sons even further up the ladder of success.
Jin Jin-hee (진진희) is the mother of the fourth family and, although she also has ambitions, she does not have quite the same ruthlessness as the other three mothers. Her husband Woo Yang-woo (우양우) is a junior professor of plastic surgery who carefully avoids confrontations with Ye-Seo's husband Kang Jun-sang, his senior in the department. But Jin-hee remains unbending in her will to make her son Woo Soo-han (우수한) study day and night for school so he can succeed in the future. Jin-hee uses her son as a substitute for her husband, for whom she lacks respect.
One of the broken families that appear on the stage occasionally is that of Lee Myung-ju (이명주), the woman who commits suicide early in the series, soon after her son Park Young-jae (박영재) is admitted into Seoul National University Medical School. She was unable to respond to the overwhelming crisis that resulted when her unhinged husband attempted to shoot her son Young-jae after he learned of Young-jae's illicit relationship with a servant Lee Kaeul (이가을). This catastrophe is magnified by the manner in which Kim Ju-young (김주영), the "coordinator" who handles the college admission process for the children of these super-rich families, intentionally created deep resentments against Myung-ju in the mind of Young-jae as a means of spurring him to study even harder.
Another fragment of a family is that held up by Kim Hye-na (김혜나), the secret daughter of Kang Jun-sang. Emotionally tough, but caring and insightful, Hye-na cares to the end for her sick mother as she grows weaker in a hospital. Hye-na uses all her smarts and her skills to survive without the assets of the other children. She even carries on a powerful rivalry with Kang Ye-seo in school, and in love. But when Hye-na ends up living with the father she cannot acknowledge as father (to refer to Hong Kil-dong), and falls under the ruthless control of Han Seo-jin, her life takes a tragic turn.
And then there is the mysterious and fractured family of the "coordinator" Kim Ju-young who advises the families concerning their children's educations. Ju-young's daughter suffers from a terrible mental illness that leaves her completely unreachable. Ju-young responds to this hidden tragedy by cutting herself off from others, working through a male assistant in his twenties whom she orders around with brutal and cold efficiency.
The manner in which competition corrupts all aspects of the lives for the inhabitants of Sky Castle is revealed in the social gatherings that they put on to create the appearance of cooperation. A dinner to celebrate the acceptance of the Young-jae into Seoul National University medical school is reduced to a ruthless competition for social dominance that spurs the rival mothers to plot against each other even more fiercely. A book club organized to encourage the children to read and to discuss intellectually challenging writers like Nietzsche, turns into a thinly disguised battle for supremacy between the children driven by the ambitions of their parents. Their reading of Richard Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene" becomes itself a celebration of selfishness.
Hierarchy goes hand in hand with competition in Sky Castle. We witness hierarchy in multiple forms: how the husbands treat their inferiors at work, how the children treat those they think of as social inferiors, and also in the distain shown by the families for ordinary families and shop employees with whom they happen to interact.
The pyramid as a symbol for social hierarchy is associated with Cha Min-hyuk (husband of Roh Seung-hye), a man of uncontrolled ambitions. He employs a pyramid-shaped metronome to force the children to answer difficult test questions in the shortest time possible, driving them to breaking point by demanding an answer to a complex math equation in four minutes.
The metronome stands on Min-hyuk's desk next to an even sharper pyramid that appears to be a piece of sculpture (perhaps suggesting the out-of-control concentration of wealth in contemporary Korea). At one point, Min-hyuk grabs his son Seo-jun and forces him to kneel before this pointed sculpture and promise that he will do everything in his power to rise to the pinnacle of political and economic power.
Min-hyuk points at the pyramid and traces with his fingers how he has risen up the ranks, from law school student, to prosecutor and now to politically influential professor. He then demands unlimited commitment to this ambition from his son. His son Seo-jun is reduced to tears and agrees only in the most pained manner to his father's demand. So obsessed is the father with competition, and so threatening his gestures, that the sharp pyramid appears like a weapon that threatens to injure his son.
In another memorable scene, Han Seo-jin prepares an elaborate three-course lacquer lunch box for the "coordinator" Kim Ju-young. The first two levels of the lunch box are filled with elaborate snacks (much like kaiseki ryori dishes) that she has carefully prepared in the kitchen. But Kim Ju-young discovers at the bottom of the lunch box a row of gold bars that Seo-jin offered as a bribe to win back her back (she had previously attacked Ju-young for her ruthlessness before she realized that such a degree of ruthlessness was required for success).
Kim Ju-young orders her male assistant to return the lunch box, gold bars untouched, to Han Seo-jin. This action means not only that the amount offered was insufficient but also that nothing less than complete submission to her orders will be acceptable. Seo-jin readily complies with this demand, for the moment.
But the lunchbox also represents the entire doll's house of Sky Castle. On the surface, we see families wander through rooms of marble and polished steel filled with porcelain dishes in cabinets and elaborate sculptures. They take picnics among the pruned bushes, flowers and perfect green grass in the parks that surround the homes. But beneath the surface of daily life lie the assets that support these competing families, stock, real estate and bonds that are buried beneath the elaborate "Fantasy Island" scenery.
The viewer gets the feeling that there is much that we are never shown. The rapid concentration of wealth in South Korea over the last 10 years has created completely unfettered communities of the super-rich whose manipulation of markets and real estate has made the world their oyster.
Such wealth, like the gold bars at the bottom of the lunch box, threatens to turn all aspects of daily life, no matter how sophisticated or thoughtful, into mere decorations to cover up the real sources of desire.
Kim Ju-young, the coordinator to whom the families turn for help in the preparations for college, appears to be a ruthless and cold woman who looks more like the head of a spy agency than a tutor. Her actions are calculated to make each of the families dependent on her in a manner that goes far beyond college admissions. She plays the mothers, the fathers and the children against each other to enhance her position.
The repeated scenes in which the children steal food from a convenience store and then waste it in a ritual of mindless consumption are oddly unnerving. Such rampages seem to serve as a means of releasing the stress that builds up in the children as they are shuttled to and from cram schools ("hakwon" in Korean). They rush into the convenience store, pilfer crackers and cookies by slipping them under their clothes and then find a place where they can fling the food around and stomp on the packages of potato chips and popcorn in a wild orgy.
Ultimately, the actions of the children are a mirror of the predations of their parents, who amass great wealth through improper means and then escape into a world of consumption and of endless competition over status to relieve the stress created by their greedy actions.
Although Han Seo-jin is disturbed when she sees these actions of the children, she ultimately ends up working with the shop owner to delete photographs of the theft from the CCTV.
Interestingly, the postings in the blogosphere by netizens about "Sky Castle" suggest that although the drama may be over the top in the hysteric family fights it presents, that the corruption of the super-rich seeking advantage for their children are in reality even worse than what is revealed here.
Although "Sky Castle" identifies the terrible distortions in Korean society that result from the reduction of human experience to desire and selfishness, the series fails to address them in a sufficiently objective manner. When the camera pans over room after room full of objects but bereft of any intellectual or ethical content, it seems to be presenting a vision to be envied by the audience. Ultimately the series serves as much as a celebration of the lives of the wealthy as it does as a criticism. Just look at the purveyors of luxury goods who are commercial sponsors and you will know that it this series is as much a commercial product as it is a critique.
We do not get the details on the exact sources of the family money, nor do we learn what Sky Castle looks like from the perspective of the servants and gardeners who also inhabit it. The maids appear only as paperboard cutouts with no dramatic depth ― as if the producers shared the same bias as the protagonists of the drama.
"Sky Castle ran from November 11, 2018 to January 26, 2019 and was produced by Kim Ji-yeon (김지연), directed by Jo Hyun-tak (조현탁) based on a script written by Yoo Hyun-mi (유현미).
