Comparing He's on Duty and Bandhobi: The representation of Southeast Asian migrant workers in South Korean cinema

Instead of focusing on how the Korean cinema represents the migrant worker minority group, this paper will examine the factors that might have played a role in influencing this representation. Two films have been chosen for analysis in this paper, based on their shared theme of South Korean societal issues regarding its Southeast Asian migrant workers yet difference in their representation of this minority group and variety in potential influencing factors: He’s on Duty, a movie about a native Korean man posing as a Bhutanese migrant in order to get a job at a chair manufacturing site, is produced and marketed as a mainstream comedy movie. Bandhobi, on the other hand, is an independent romance movie about the relationship between a Bangladeshi worker and a native Korean girl. The film branch and film genre, thus, are the factors that will be analyzed in both movies. This paper strives to identify the influence of both movies’ differences regarding film branch and film genre on its...Show moreInstead of focusing on how the Korean cinema represents the migrant worker minority group, this paper will examine the factors that might have played a role in influencing this representation. Two films have been chosen for analysis in this paper, based on their shared theme of South Korean societal issues regarding its Southeast Asian migrant workers yet difference in their representation of this minority group and variety in potential influencing factors: He’s on Duty, a movie about a native Korean man posing as a Bhutanese migrant in order to get a job at a chair manufacturing site, is produced and marketed as a mainstream comedy movie. Bandhobi, on the other hand, is an independent romance movie about the relationship between a Bangladeshi worker and a native Korean girl. The film branch and film genre, thus, are the factors that will be analyzed in both movies. This paper strives to identify the influence of both movies’ differences regarding film branch and film genre on its representation of the Southeast Asian migrant workers in order to answer this paper’s research question: How does the film categorization of He’s on Duty and Bandhobi influence their representation of Southeast Asian migrant workers?Show less

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Comparing He's on Duty and Bandhobi: The representation of Southeast Asian migrant workers in South Korean cinema