General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Spy (간첩 리철진)

The Spy (간첩 리철진, Gancheop Ri Cheol-jin) is a 1999 South Korean comedy-drama film directed by Jang Jin, about a North Korean agent sent to Seoul to steal a DNA sample of a super pig and robbed of his equipment by a taxi robbery gang on his first day in the South.¹ It was released in South Korea on May 15, 1999, runs 105 minutes, and stars Yu Oh-seong as the spy Lee Cheol-jin, Park In-hwan as the resident spy Mr. Oh, and Park Jin-hee as Oh's daughter Hwa-yi.¹^•² The film is frequently grouped with Shiri (1999) as part of a turn in South Korean cinema toward humanized, sympathetic portrayals of North Koreans in place of anti-communist caricature.³

Key fact	Detail
Original title / meaning	간첩 리철진 ("Spy Lee Cheol-jin"); English title The Spy¹
Release	May 15, 1999, South Korea; 105 minutes; comedy, drama¹
Director and writer	Jang Jin, his second feature after The Happenings (1998); original story by Jung Jin-an¹^•⁴^•⁵
Lead cast	Yu Oh-seong (Lee Cheol-jin), Park In-hwan (Mr. Oh), Park Jin-hee (Hwa-yi), with Shin Ha-kyun and Jung Young-sook in supporting roles¹^•²
Premise	A North Korean operative must steal a super pig DNA sample to relieve the North's food shortage, but a four-man cab robbery team takes his bag with operational funds and his gun⁶
Production	Cineworld, produced by Lee Joon-ik and Kim Seong-je; distributed by Cinema Service¹^•²
Recognition	Named for Baeksang Arts Awards (2000) film awards for Best Screenplay and Best Film; a Korean Film Council director profile records wins in the film section for work and screenplay⁶^•⁷

Spoilers

Premise

Lee Cheol-jin is a North Korean operative dispatched to the South with one mission: obtain a DNA sample of the super pig, a strain developed in South Korea, to help solve the North's food shortage.⁶ A newspaper account describes him as a graduate of a military-political university with excellent martial arts skills, an imposingly capable agent.⁸ The comedy begins where his competence ends: hailing a shared taxi to make contact in Seoul, he is robbed of his entire bag, which holds his operational funds and his gun, by a four-man cab robbery team.⁶

Stranded and penniless, Cheol-jin finally reaches Mr. Oh, a resident spy with 30 years of experience who has been waiting only for the new arrival's money; told that the agent was robbed by taxi gangsters, Oh doubts his qualifications outright.²^•⁸ Cheol-jin, unable to execute the operation empty-handed, stays at Oh's house, where Oh's daughter Hwa-yi treats him with warmth and he gradually opens up.⁶^•² Episodes of his adjustment to Seoul life give the film its comic spine: he subdues a bank robber and is treated as a hero, and when reality wears on him he shouts "Let's go to Pyongyang" at a taxi driver and ends up at a police station, where even declaring "I am a spy" draws no belief.⁹

Plot resolution

The comic setup carries a darker assignment. Cheol-jin receives an order to eliminate a spy who has defected to the South, and the target turns out to be his closest friend; having no choice, he kills him.⁶ Filled with remorse but mindful of his family and countrymen starving at home, he continues, succeeds in stealing the DNA sample from the laboratory, and then sees a news report that the South Korean government has decided to supply the super pig to the North, making him useless.⁶ As he attempts to return to the North, he is killed by fellow spies.⁶

Contemporary critics read this ending as the film's serious core under the comedy. The Dong-A Ilbo review wrote that Jang Jin, writing and directing, keeps laughter as the backdrop while portraying the tragedy of a person living through the era of national division, including Cheol-jin's death.⁸ The JoongAng Ilbo, broadcasting the film on KBS2, gave it three stars out of five and noted that Cheol-jin's startled reactions to South Korea offer glimpses of sides of Korean society the audience had not considered.⁵

Cast and production

Yu Oh-seong plays Lee Cheol-jin, and reviews from release singled out his performance: the JoongAng Ilbo called his portrayal of the earnest, somewhat clumsy agent excellent, and the Hankyung account described his deadpan spy act and Park In-hwan's weathered resident-spy turn as reaching a human pathos for the character.⁵^•⁹ Park Jin-hee, fresh from Wishing Stairs-era attention for Wishing Stairs' predecessor Bloody Bathroom (Yeogo Goedam, 1998), was cast in January 1999 as Hwa-yi, the woman who loves Cheol-jin.¹⁰ The four-man taxi robbery gang was played by Jung Gyu-su, Lee Mun-shik, Im Won-hee, and Jung Ji-hyun (listed as Jung Jae-young in some databases), supporting players whose distinct characters, including one who declares he hates communists, drew critical praise.⁹^•² Shin Ha-kyun plays Oh's high-school-age son U-yeol.²

The film was produced by Cineworld, the company founded by producer Lee Joon-ik, with Kim Seong-je as producer and Lee Seok-hyun as cinematographer.¹^•² Cinema Service distributed it. Reviewers at release placed the film within what the Hankyung reviewer called the emerging "supporting actor era" of Korean film, and the Korean Film Archive's screening notes describe the film as 105 minutes on 35 mm.⁹^•¹¹

Reception and significance

Cine21 records 172,474 admissions for the film's Korean release.² Scholars of Korean cinema place the film in the late-1990s moment when South Korean films began rethinking the place of North Koreans in national identity: Suk-Young Kim, a scholar of Korean cinema and performance at the University of California, Santa Barbara area programs, examines Spy Li Cheol-jin and Joint Security Area as the two films that best exemplify the humanistic projection of North Koreans and the tragic reality of division.³ A Nottingham doctoral thesis notes that both films were produced in the period after censorship eased and were box office hits, part of a boom driven by filmmakers who refused the traditional ideological stance toward North Korea.¹² A Korea Journal essay groups The Spy with Shiri as films in which political division itself was less the interest than how to thematize historical reality within a genre film.¹³

The film also fed a minor franchise of re-releases and home video: September 1999 marked the Korean industry's first DVD releases, and The Spy was among the three inaugural titles alongside Shiri and Whispering Corridors.¹⁴ Korean Film Council data later recorded the film under its English database entry with the quick-facts frame still in use for cataloging.¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 1995 to 1999 › Black and satirical comedies › Released in 1999

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

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