Diving into uncharted waters
The Sewol Ferry disaster of 2014 remains one of Korea's most deeply felt national tragedies. While public attention has long focused on those who were on board, the stories of civilian divers who risked their lives to recover victims' bodies have largely remained in the background.
"Sea Tiger," Jung Yoon-chul's ('Marathon,' 'A Man Who Was Superman') first film in eight years, brings those overlooked narratives to the fore through an experimental approach that strips cinema down to its theatrical bones.
Adapted from Kim Tak-hwan's novel "Sea of Lies" and based loosely on real-life figures, the film follows diver Kyung-soo (Lee Ji-hoon) as he struggles with lingering trauma from the recovery operation. When the government attempts to hold Kyung-soo's supervisor Chang-dae (Son Sung-ho) responsible for another diver's death through manslaughter charges, the case forces Kyung-soo to relive those harrowing underwater moments while also battling decompression sickness, a potentially fatal condition common among deep-sea divers.
Speaking at Monday's press conference at Megabox Coex — where director Jung was notably absent due to a medical emergency — the producer and cast reflected on carrying the emotional weight of the project. 'When I learned about what diver Kim Kwan-hong went through, I kept asking myself: How much of his pain could I really understand?' Lee said. 'I started from the point of 'what if it were me?' If I had been there, experienced those things, how difficult would it have been?'
Kim Kwan-hong was a civilian diver who took part in the Sewol ferry rescue and later died from complications linked to decompression sickness after months of recovery efforts.
Son spoke about the responsibility he felt portraying the character, explaining how he drew inspiration from real-life diver Gong Woo-young's unwavering moral clarity. 'I wondered what strength allowed this person to readily volunteer to go to the disaster scene,' he said. 'It was probably his life philosophy — the values he upheld throughout his life.'
Beyond its loaded themes, the film is sure to confound viewers with its radical art of make-believe. Shot almost entirely on a black-box sound stage with bare walls and minimal props, "Sea Tiger" resembles a stage production filmed on camera. Actors mime swimming across dry floors, speak to unseen victims, and rely entirely on performance and imagination to convey the tension of underwater operations and their raw emotional aftermath.
'Human imagination is infinite and sometimes frightening,' Lee reflected on the film's minimalism. 'The power to believe something non-existent exists — by me seeing it that way, and the audience imagining it together — it's really amazing.'
The stripped-down approach wasn't just an artistic choice. Originally conceived as a large-scale commercial production, the project spent years in development before the COVID-19 pandemic triggered an industry-wide funding freeze that made the original vision unworkable.
'What started out as a budget issue ended up becoming a creative strength,' Lee said. 'If we had actually filmed inside the ship, showing children being recovered, we would've had to ask whether audiences could even bear to watch it.'
That minimalism at times succeeds in creating genuinely unsettling imagery, especially when Lee's character combs through invisible wreckage using only body language, but other scenes feel awkwardly caught between stage and screen. Extraordinary formal experiments demand extraordinary execution to justify their existence, and "Sea Tiger" doesn't always clear that bar. More often than not, the earnest emotional delivery strikes as overwrought for cinema, more suited to live theater's broader gestures.
Producer Yoon Soon-hwan emphasized the team's commitment to handling the subject with sensitivity. 'When we initially pursued this as a commercial film with over 10 billion won in budget, one of our biggest concerns was avoiding so-called 'disaster porn,'' he said. 'But with this stripped-back format, that risk is gone. It gave us a way to tell the story with dignity and restraint.'
Reactions from victims' families have been especially meaningful to everyone involved. 'Min-woo's father — father of one of the Sewol Ferry victims from Danwon High School — watched the film in Jeju,' Yoon said. 'He stood up in the theater for the first time to share his thoughts. He said he was deeply grateful.'
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