Peppermint Candy

As children of immigrants, we often grow up sensing the weight of an unspoken past. We look at our parents, noting their sudden silences or unexpected bursts of temper, and wonder what ghosts they left behind in the motherland. For those of us trying to piece together the emotional landscape of modern Korea—the very landscape our families either fled or were shaped by—director Lee Chang-dong’s Peppermint Candy (1999) is an essential, albeit painful, roadmap.

The film famously opens with its protagonist, Yong-ho, standing on train tracks facing an oncoming train, screaming a line that has since etched itself into the Korean cultural consciousness: "I want to go back!" From this harrowing climax, the narrative travels backward in time, moving like a reverse train journey from the ashes of a ruined man to the bright innocence of his youth.

Through Yong-ho’s descending timeline, we traverse the scars of contemporary Korean history. We start in 1999, during the IMF financial crisis—an era of economic devastation that led many Koreans to lose their livelihoods, sparking a wave of emigration to places like Canada. As we step further back into the 1980s and 1990s, we witness Yong-ho’s transformation from an idealistic student into a brutal police detective under the military dictatorship. Ultimately, the film forces us to confront the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, a horrific democratic movement massacre where Yong-ho, as a young conscripted soldier, is coerced into committing an act of violence that shatters his soul forever.

For the Korean diaspora, watching Peppermint Candy is akin to opening a sealed time capsule of our parents' generation. Yong-ho is not a traditional hero; he is a man corrupted by the systemic violence of his era. Yet, as we travel backward, watching his hardened exterior peel away to reveal a fragile boy who loved photography and wild flowers, a profound sense of empathy washes over us. It helps us understand that the harshness we sometimes perceive in the older generation might be the calcified residue of historical trauma.

The titular peppermint candy serves as a poignant symbol throughout this journey. Crisp, stark white, and refreshingly sweet, it represents an uncorrupted state of being—a symbol of first love and the pure possibilities of youth. As Yong-ho’s life is ground down by the gears of history, the memory of that simple candy becomes both a comfort and a sharp blade of regret.

Lee Chang-dong does not offer easy comfort. Instead, he asks us to bear witness. For those of us living between cultures, Peppermint Candy translates the collective grief of a nation into the deeply personal tragedy of one man. It invites us to look at the generations that came before us, not with judgment for the flaws they carry, but with a quiet, compassionate curiosity about the innocence they lost along the way.