Made in Korea

The Architecture of Greed

If the 1970s were the crucible in which modern South Korea was forged, director Woo Min-ho is its most dedicated blacksmith. With *Made in Korea*, released this week on Disney+, Woo returns to the turbulent decade that defined his cinematic masterpieces *Inside Men* and *The Man Standing Next*. Yet, this is not merely a retread of familiar ground; it is an expansion of his canvas. By transitioning from the finite runtime of a feature film to the breathing room of a six-part series, Woo has exchanged the sledgehammer for the scalpel, dissecting the era's anatomy of corruption with a patience that is rare in the age of streaming.

From the opening frames of the first two episodes, it is evident that Woo has refused to dilute his visual language for the small screen. The series does not look like television; it possesses the suffocating, cigarette-smoke texture of 1970s noir. The standout sequence of the premiere—a "double hijacking" set aboard a commercial airliner—is a masterclass in tension. Here, we see Baek Ki-tae (Hyun Bin) not merely as a participant but as a conductor of chaos. As he orchestrates a deception that tricks hijackers into believing they have landed in Pyongyang, the camera lingers on the claustrophobic interiors, capturing the sweat on a brow and the tremble of a hand. It is a sequence that establishes the show’s thesis: in this era, reality is malleable, and the truth is just another asset to be leveraged.

The series thrives on a dichotomy of temperatures, a visual and narrative motif that director Woo has explicitly crafted. On one end of the spectrum is Baek Ki-tae, played by Hyun Bin with a chilling, reptilian composure. Shedding his romantic leading-man persona, Hyun Bin inhabits Ki-tae as a man hollowed out by insecurity. He is a KCIA operative who moonlights as a crime boss not out of simple greed, but out of a desperate need to fill a void—to be the "architect" of a nation that otherwise views him as a tool. His performance is one of subtraction; he does less to convey more, his stillness radiating a cold menace.

Opposing him is the "heat" of prosecutor Jang Geon-young, portrayed by Jung Woo-sung. Clad in an oversized, rough overcoat and thick glasses that seem to magnify his intensity, Jung is the animalistic force of nature crashing against Ki-tae’s calculated walls. Their inevitable collision is not just a battle of wits but a clash of ideologies: the man who believes the law is a suggestion versus the man who believes it is a commandment. When Ki-tae asserts, "I have the power to take responsibility for my choices," it is a chilling declaration of godhood in a godless time.

While the narrative is dense, demanding a viewer’s full attention rather than serving as background noise, it rewards that patience with a richness of character often missing from the genre. The "villain" here is not a cartoon, but a byproduct of a society growing too fast to check its own moral compass.

Ultimately, *Made in Korea* avoids the common pitfalls of the "miniseries event." It does not feel like a stretched-out movie, nor does it suffer from the bloat of "content" designed solely to keep subscribers hooked. Instead, it feels like a necessary excavation of history. Woo Min-ho has crafted a series that asks whether the foundations of modern prosperity were laid with cement or with the crushed integrity of men like Baek Ki-tae. As the credits roll on the second episode, we are left with the unsettling sense that the monsters of the 1970s didn't die out—they just put on better suits.