In the wake of pioneering works like Space Sweepers and The Silent Sea, it will be meaningful to witness how Korean content might bring its own unique historical contexts into the genre, shaping new poetics and politics.
The fear of attack by RX and RX-loyal individuals is constant and palpable throughout the series, a foreign threat that places the crew in perpetual peril.
South Korea’s fraught history of invasion by foreign powers like Japan and the Soviet-backed North Korea - and even American imperialism - have become the subject of many Korean films and can potentially give a greater gravity to the events unfolding onscreen.Īrriving at Korea’s Balhae Lunar Research Station on the moon, the Silent Sea ’s mission team encounters a deceased foreign mercenary and team members whisper about a possible intrusion by “RX,” a multi-national mafia that loots resources from the moon and space stations. In The Silent Sea, this cosmic fear of foreign threats is heightened in the foreboding, forsaken landscape of space. For example, this has been famously explored through the interplanetary wars of Star Wars and Ridley Scott’s Alien. Space cinema has also often taken liberties with the elevated fear of invasion and attack in outer space. These are systemic injustices and institutional inequalities - and perhaps, the vastness of space is the only setting that can capture the sheer expanse of these issues. In the cruelly capitalistic world of Space Sweepers, space junk - and even human lives - are all given a value, to be commodified and traded within a system where the rich get richer, while the poor are oppressed in a vicious cycle of poverty. Amid the breezy humor and quirky visuals, there is a more serious commentary in Space Sweepers about capitalism, class and climate change.
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