General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Public Enemy (공공의 적) (2002 film)

Public Enemy (공공의 적; hanja 公共의 敵) is a 2002 South Korean crime action film directed by Kang Woo-suk, in which a corrupt, violent Seoul detective pursues a wealthy fund manager who murdered his own parents. It stars Sul Kyung-gu as detective Kang Chul-joong and Lee Sung-jae as Cho Gyu-hwan, was produced and distributed by Cinema Service, and opened in South Korea on 25 January 2002 with a running time of 138 minutes and an adults-only rating (청소년관람불가)¹. The film became a commercial hit, won Sul Kyung-gu major acting awards, and launched a series built around the Kang Chul-joong character².

Key fact	Detail
Director / producer	Kang Woo-suk, who also produced through Cinema Service¹
Release	25 January 2002 (the Korean Film Council database lists 24 January 2002)¹^•³
Running time / rating	138 minutes; rated 청소년관람불가 (not suitable for minors)¹
Lead cast	Sul Kyung-gu (Kang Chul-joong), Lee Sung-jae (Cho Gyu-hwan), Kang Shin-il (Chief Investigator Uhm)³
Box office	1,161,500 admissions recorded in the KOBIS-based year ranking (6th place for 2002); press accounts give higher figures of over 3 million and 5 million tickets⁴^•⁵^•⁶
Awards	Blue Dragon Award for Best Actor (2002); Paeksang Arts Awards Grand Prize; Daejong Film Awards Best Actor²
Sequels	Another Public Enemy (2005) and Kang Chul-joong: Public Enemy 1-1 (2008)⁷

Spoilers

Plot and characters

Kang Chul-joong is a detective at Seoul's Gangdong police station, specially recruited after winning a silver medal in boxing at the Asian Games, whose rank has only fallen over time. He takes bribes from street vendors, steals drugs from arrested criminals to sell, and ignores his superiors; the Korean Film Council synopsis describes him as "more vicious than a gangster"³^•⁸.

On a rainy night while on stake duty, Kang collides with a stranger in a dark alley and the two come to blows, with Kang cut above the eye by a glinting object¹. A week later, an elderly couple is found stabbed to death. Kang remembers the raincoat-wearing man from the alley, and a knife he had kept matches the wounds on the bodies⁹.

The suspect is Cho Gyu-hwan, an ambitious fund manager at a respected company who presents himself as a gentleman. When his father intends to withdraw an investment to help an orphanage facing demolition, Cho stabs his parents with a knife dozens of times, leaving no traces³. With no evidence beyond his intuition, Kang pursues Cho through surveillance, interrogation, and beatings, while Cho, backed by money and power, has Kang stripped of his post. Further murders occur and the case deepens into a standoff that neither man can retreat from⁹. The Busan International Film Festival program notes that Kang eventually decides to take justice into his own hands, with a corrupt prosecutor in his way¹⁰.

Sequels

The film spawned a series. Another Public Enemy (공공의 적2, 2005) moved Kang Chul-joong from the police to the prosecution: he investigates the death of a foundation chairman's son and pursues the new chairman Han Sang-woo (Jung Joon-ho), a former classmate whose elite background masks his crimes. Critics at the time judged it a more socially conscious drama with a clearer antagonist than the first film⁶^•¹⁵. A prequel, Kang Chul-joong: Public Enemy 1-1 (강철중: 공공의적 1-1, 2008), continued the collaboration between Kang Woo-suk and Sul Kyung-gu⁷. The character has remained a reference point for Korean crime cinema; a 2020s commentary on the film The Roundup draws a direct line between its hot-tempered protagonist and Kang Chul-joong²⁰.

Production

Kang Woo-suk, one of South Korea's most commercially successful directors of the 1990s through comedies such as Two Cops (1993), wrote and directed the film and produced it through Cinema Service, the company he had founded¹⁰^•¹¹. The screenplay is credited to Baek Seung-jae, Jung Yoon-seop, Kim Hyun-jung, and Chae Yoon-suk, from an original story by Gu Bon-han; Kim Sung-bok was the cinematographer and Cho Young-wook composed the music⁹^•¹.

Sul Kyung-gu gained over 40 pounds for the role of Kang Chul-joong, and Film at Lincoln Center's notes credit his chemistry with Lee Sung-jae as central to the film's tone¹². In a 2024 interview Sul Kyung-gu recalled that he took the part because the script by Baek Seung-jae was enjoyable, and described a chaotic, laughter-filled shoot in which actors were told to hit each other for real¹³.

A JTBC crime program has reported that the film drew on the Park Han-sang case, a 1990s crime by a wealthy Gangnam resident against his own family, as a motive for the story¹⁴.

Reception and box office

The film premiered in Korean Panorama at the 7th Busan International Film Festival in 2002, where the program described Kang Woo-suk as combining his familiar comic action conventions with crime-thriller tension and social satire¹⁰. It later screened at festivals including the Cairo International Film Festival and Seattle International Film Festival (both 2003), Fantasia (2003), the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival (2005, Korean Cinema Special), the New York Asian Film Festival (2014), and BIFAN (2022)³.

Box office figures differ across sources. The KOBIS-based year ranking records 1,161,500 admissions, placing the film 6th among 2002 Korean releases⁴. Cinema Service's own publicity for the sequel states the film drew over 3 million admissions nationwide¹⁵, the Korea JoongAng Daily reports it sold more than 3 million tickets⁵, and the Chosun Ilbo writes that it drew more than 5 million in 2002⁶. These figures have not been reconciled in the available record.

Before release, about 100 violent-crime detectives from Seoul police stations attended a preview screening. Kang Woo-suk appeared on stage and apologized for once again depicting bad cops after his Two Cops series, presenting the film as an encouragement to detectives fighting social evil; the audience of detectives reportedly laughed throughout and applauded when Kang Chul-joong finally fells the serial killer¹⁶.

Themes and place in Korean cinema

Korean film criticism has read the film as a turning point in how cinema portrays the police. The Kyunghyang Shinmun notes that where the Two Cops films of a decade earlier satirized police corruption, in Public Enemy the corrupt detective becomes a guardian of justice once he confronts a killer who harms ordinary people, a shift the paper links to the changed public mood of 2002, the year Roh Moo-hyun was elected president¹⁷.

An academic study of 2000s Korean comedy places Public Enemy in the police-and-prosecution comedy type and argues that the liberal political affect it carries spread across Korean cinema of the decade¹⁸. The Korean Film Council's English-language profile calls it one of the best Korean cop movies and compares the Kang Chul-joong character to Dirty Harry, a character whose name itself represents a genre¹⁹.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026