Director July Jung Confronts A Societal Problem In ‘Next Sohee'
When July Jung made her film Next Sohee she suspected that her preferred methods of storytelling would not result in the film becoming a blockbuster. Yet, taking cinematic risks to convey an important message has paid off with multiple awards and nominations.
One of the unconventional aspects of Next Sohee is that the film relays its story in two parts. The first half focuses on Sohee, a high school student with few prospects who takes a job at a call center. As part of her job she must persuade consumers to sign on for unwanted services, but no matter how zealously she masters the con, it's impossible to achieve the company's goals. Unable to meet such arbitrary goals she decides to take her own life. The second part of the film focuses on a police investigator named Yoo-jin, who wants to understand why Sohee committed suicide. She suspects that it has to be someone's fault, but no one is willing to take responsibility. The story was partly inspired by a real incident that Jung uses to explore larger issues. Who is to blame for this kind of soul-deadening exploitation?
'I actually had no idea of this incident when it first happened, to be honest,' said Jung. 'While I was making the movie, I came across this incident and I learned more about it. And the more I looked into the details of this incident, I realized that none of these details were coincidental. All of this was just a reflection of how all of society is at fault, including myself. This is merely not just a coincidental incident, but it's more of a structural problem.'
Kim Si-eun plays Sohee in the film 'Next Sohee.'
Although the story is set in a small office and focuses on one individual, Jung sees it as a reflection on society, how having unrealistic expectations in a highly competitive society can work against individuals getting the basic human respect they deserve.
'I think that was the reflection that I was trying to derive from this story,' she said.
Sohee wants to succeed at her job, but can't because of the company's odd ranking system, which is also a con designed to benefit the corporation. She wonders what she's doing wrong and without any clear answers assumes she's to blame. Although Yoo-jin has some authority, being a detective, she also faces obstacles in discovering the truth, including colleagues who want to close the case and corporate spokespeople who refuse to take any responsibility. Splitting the narrative allowed viewers to first spend time with Sohee and understand her motivations.
'When telling the story, I really focused on a few things and the first thing I wanted to focus on was what happened to this girl, what her life was like that it led her to commit suicide,' said Jung.
She also wanted to stress that Sohee is not the first person to be exploited in this way and it can still happen to others.
'I wanted to depict this in a way the audience can see the daily life of Sohee in the first half of the movie, what kind of environment she's living in, what kind of work she's doing, what kind of hardships she's suffering," said Jung. 'In the later half of the movie when Yoo-jin starts investigating and we start going backwards with Sohee's story, that comparison shows the reflection of the same societal problem. And although the problem is not resolved by Yoo-jin in the end, I think that's the message it's supposed to send, where it could happen to anyone. And at any time.'
Bae Doona's character seeks to understand who is to blame for a girl's suicide.
For the role of Yoo-jin, Jung enlisted actress Bae Doona. Jung worked with Bae in her 2014 film A Girl At My Door, which won Jung a Best Director Award at the 51st Baeksang Arts Awards. In both films Bae plays a police investigator. In A Girl At My Door Bae's character protects a bullied and abused girl, played by Kim Sae-ron. The collaboration between Bae (Cloud Atlas, Kingdom, Stranger) and Jung also won Bae several Best Actress awards and nominations.
'Working with her has been like a dream," said Jung. "I'm very, very lucky to have worked with her, especially a big star like her.'
Jung acknowledges that its a challenge when a character is introduced halfway through a movie, as Bae's character was.
'It's difficult because it's hard to explain to the audience who this person is, the details about this person, and the audience can be confused a lot of times,' said Jung. 'I thought that Doona is the only one who could really deliver these emotions without any dialogue or anything, but just simply through her face and her facial expressions to this extreme level of detail. So that's why I was very, very happy to work with her again.'
Casting Bae was a given, but Jung was sure that finding a young actress to play Sohee would require multiple auditions and readings. That did not turn out to be the case with Kim Si-eun (Squid Game 2, Run-On, Mental Coach Jegal).
'Actually she was the first person who came to audition and immediately from that meeting I knew that we would be working together," said Jung. "When I first met her it wasn't really like I knew right away that she would fit just from seeing her or seeing her acting, but rather this came through a simple conversation that I had with her. And the question that I asked her was a very simple question. How do you like the scenario? How do you like the script? And I was very surprised by her response when she said, 'I want this story to be told to the world.''
Between Girl At My Door and Next Sohee, Jung had time to think about her priorities. After finishing A Girl At My Door, many people expected her to work on large scale commercial projects.
"I was actually more interested in smaller films that really focus on telling the story," said Jung. 'Smaller independent films.'
In the time between A Girl At My Door and Next Sohee the film industry has changed significantly for Korea's female filmmakers.
'When A Girl At My Door first debuted, it was hard for a female director to even debut,' said Jung. "So I was very, very lucky to be able to have debuted it. However, after that things actually got a lot more progressive. For example, the biggest thing is that there has been a new grant and fund support for women directors to produce films and create more opportunities. This was also the influence of the Me Too movement, which was a global movement. And I think due to these kinds of changes in the way the funding and the society works, we've moved a lot forward. And of course, mainstream films, having large commercial films, we're still lacking female directors in that area. But definitely since then in the independent film scene, we've been able to see a lot more female directors.'
Next Sohee was released in Korea in 2023, winning Jung several awards and nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay. The film hits U.S. and Canadian theaters on May 16 and will be available on streaming platforms at a later date. The film is distributed by Echelon Studios and Zurty Studios.
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Emma and Carl Jung at an Eranos Foundation Conference. Photograph by Margarethe Fellerer via INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo For two generations, Emma Jung—the wife of the famous Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung—was remembered inside her family mostly as a beloved mother and grandmother. Her original work documenting the deep and rigorous exploration of her own unconscious simply wasn't discussed. 'No one was any longer aware of what she actually produced,' says Thomas Fischer, great-grandson of Carl and Emma—and the former director of the Foundation of the Works of C.G. Jung—who currently serves as a board member and the editor for the foundation. Now, 150 years after Carl Jung's birth, Emma and several of his other female collaborators are finally stepping into the spotlight and being recognized as brilliant thinkers of their own who helped shape some of Jung's most famous theories, including individuation and the archetypes. Like Sigmund Freud, Jung—the founding father of analytical psychology—believed in the importance of the unconscious and dream analysis. (The two men enjoyed a close personal and professional relationship early in Jung's career, and Freud considered the younger man his successor until the two had a falling out.) Jung, however, broadened the concept to a theory he called individuation. Jung thought the deep psychological work of every human was not only exploring the individual unconscious but also exploring the collective unconscious (or the universal symbols and archetypes inherited and shared by all humans that can appear in places like dreams) and integrating those two forces with the conscious to achieve self-actualization. Beyond establishing a new branch of psychoanalysis, Jung pioneered the idea of introversion and extroversion in his personality-type work that inspired the Myers-Briggs personality test. He originated the theory that every person has a 'shadow' self, or suppressed characteristics and desires. He identified 12 archetypes of the human psyche that have been used as storytelling devices by writers in all forms, including those in Hollywood. His ideas have influenced artists like Jackson Pollock and the abstract expressionists, writers like Herman Hesse and Olga Tokarczuk, and musicians like David Bowie and the South Korean boy band BTS. In honor of Jung's sesquicentennial birthday, the XXIII International Congress on Analytical Psychology will be hosted in Zurich this August. But the opening presentation won't be about the man himself. Instead, the topic will be a new book published in January, Dedicated to the Soul: The Writings and Drawings of Emma Jung, which, for the first time, documents the private work of his wife, Emma. 'Emma Jung was at the center of [Carl] Jung's life,' says Sonu Shamdasani, Professor of Jung History at University College London and editor of The Red Book, Jung's dive into the depths of his own unconscious during a troubled time in his life, which had been locked away in a bank vault and left unpublished in his lifetime. 'Without Emma Jung, his work would not have been possible, and not just in terms of maintaining the household, raising the children, and so forth, but as a co-participant in his work.' (Not an extrovert or an introvert? There's a word for that.) There are many wives of great men who were only later given credit for the critical role they played in their husbands' work. (Pollock's wife Lee Krasner, Alfred Hitchcock's wife Alma Reville, and Vera Nabokov, to name a few). While Emma Jung was celebrated during her life and in the nearly 70 years since her death as a key supporter of her husband, the record has largely been silent on her role beyond wife, mother and associate to Jung—that is, on her independent inquiries into her own psyche that she expressed through poetry, paintings, dream analysis, lectures, and other writings that established her as an intellectual force in her own right. And she isn't alone. Jung was surrounded by female followers, so much so that the women were given derogatory nicknames at the time—including Jungfrauen ('Jung's women') and 'Valkyries.' Some started as patients, some as students, but many became scholars, psychoanalysts, and Jungian acolytes. Some also became Jung's lovers. 'These women had come from all over the world,' writes Maggy Anthony, author and one-time student at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, in Salome's Embrace: The Jungian Women. 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Their courtship was filled with both romance and ideas. Jung encouraged Emma's intellectual curiosity and included lists of book recommendations in his letters. Once they were married, Emma eagerly assisted her new husband with his work. Jung was at the start of his career, working for what would become the famous mental institution, the Burghölzli. Emma was his translator, notetaker, test and case study subject when needed, and even assisted him with patients. Over the course of their marriage, the Jungian education Emma received led her to become an analyst herself, as well as the first elected president of the Psychology Club of Zurich. She also published two books: one on the legend of the Holy Grail, a subject of fascination since her youth, and a set of papers exploring Jung's ideas of animus and anima, or the masculine and feminine aspects of the psyche. 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The keeper of the family archives had also been busy for years fielding requests concerning Carl Jung. 'Up until then, Emma Jung hadn't been that much in the focus, so I don't think he had too many reasons to check in more detail her papers.' Gaudissart's interest prompted Fischer to take a deeper look into the family archives. What he found was a treasure trove that would become Dedicated to the Soul, a book he co-edited and published earlier this year. Dedicated to the Soul is a collection of Emma's lectures, poetry, letters, and drawings that show the depth of Emma's private inquiry, the creativity and breadth of her thinking, and the strength of the analytical work she was doing on herself. Fischer describes the discovery as like finding pieces of Emma's mosaic 'to get a much better understanding of how she became who she was and who she was portrayed and remembered [as] at the end of her life.' 'We don't have to exaggerate; she doesn't necessarily have [Jung's] originality, but she's very curious. She works for years on her own psychological material and takes it to a very deep [place], and I think that that somehow got lost,' Fischer says. 'You could tell this woman made peace with her situation, namely in her married life. And you have to wonder how she did it. It can't have been easy.' Self and Shadow One of the chief difficulties in Emma's marriage was the other women—and her husband's wandering eye when it came to his female collaborators and followers. Sabina Spielrein was one of the first. Spielrein met Jung when she was committed to the Burghölzli at 19. Her upbringing had been difficult, characterized by emotional and possible sexual abuse. She reached her breaking point after the death of a beloved younger sister and eventually landed in the mental institution in Zurich where Jung was working and where she was diagnosed with hysteria. For decades, the story told about Spielrein embodied all the sensational stereotypes of the Jungfrauen. She was reduced to the femme fatale who fell in love with and seduced the genius young doctor on the verge of developing a revolutionary new field in psychology. The dramatized and ahistorical portrayal of her life in David Cronenberg's 2011 A Dangerous Method didn't help. The truth, of course, is much more complicated—and much more interesting. She was Jung's first affair, but not the last, and the exact nature of their relationship is not fully known. But at the Burghölzli, Spielrein turned her life around. Within three months, she was recovering, had applied to medical school, and was on her way to becoming 'one of the most innovative thinkers in psychology in the twentieth century,' according to an article in European Judaism by John Launer, the author of the first biography of Spielrein in English published in 2014. 'The erasure of her life story and intellectual achievements, and the invention in their place of an erotic walk-on part in Jung's life, is one of the more shocking examples of how women's histories have often been rewritten to diminish them,' Launer writes. Sabina Spielrein, who corresponded with both Jung and Freud and helped the latter develop the concept of the death instinct. Photograph by Eraza Collection / Alamy Stock Photo Throughout her career, as catalogued by Launer, Spielrein conducted the first study of schizophrenic speech (the subject of her dissertation); came up with early ideas that contributed to the development of the death instinct, an idea later fully formed and introduced by Freud (who gave her a glancing nod in a footnote); wrote a handful of innovative papers on family dynamics; radically combined several scientific fields of study in her work on child development; and began working on ideas that would eventually pop back up in the field of evolutionary psychology. Spielrein promoted her ideas through lectures and in her professional work, but there were several factors working against their having a lasting influence at that time, according to Klara Naszkowska, a gender, sexuality, and women's studies professor at Montclair State University and founding director of the International Association for Spielrein Studies. First, her groundbreaking perspective on combining ideas from different disciplines extended to combining ideas from different schools of thought. Spielrein had a complicated relationship with Jung and Freud—the former for the obvious reasons, the latter due to a three-way correspondence that developed between Jung, Freud, and Spielrein, 'which puts both men in a poor light as they had tried to silence her' about the affair, according to Launer. But that didn't stop her from also trying to draw on both their schools of thought in her work. Unfortunately, by that time, the intellectual schism between Jung and his one-time mentor Freud was firmly in place, and the camps maintained a scholarly separation. (What makes a genius? Science offers clues.) Second, Spielrein moved to Russia in 1923, far away from the hub of the psychoanalytic movement. 'She basically moves to Mars,' says Naszkowska. Then, during the Holocaust, she and family were murdered by the Nazis, and 'she completely disappears from the intellectual record for 35 years.' Naszkowska says the erasure of Spielrein started to change in the 1970s when a box of her papers was discovered during renovations at the Rousseau Institute in Geneva. People were initially interested in her because of her interactions with both Freud and Jung. While the first wave of attention focused on the affair, in the past few decades, more attention has been paid to Spielrein's own groundbreaking achievements. The International Association for Spielrein Studies was founded in 2017. According to Naszkowska, 'The main idea behind it was always to make the wrongs right with our work, to do her justice that wasn't done to her during her lifetime, but also after her death for many, many, many decades, so that her name is known and so that her ideas not only receive the recognition they deserve, but also they're used, incorporated in syllabi, and taught.' Toni Wolff may not have languished in quite the same decades-long obscurity, but her reputation and ideas have only begun to receive more serious attention since the publication of The Red Book in 2009, with her critical role in that period of Jung's life attracting more notice. Wolff met Jung six years after Spielrein, but under similar circumstances. She would become one of the most serious of Jung's affairs, both in the intense connection between the two and in how interwoven Wolff became in the lives of Jung and his family. Wolff arrived in Jung's world as a patient after a breakdown induced by the death of her father. Following the set pattern, she came for treatment and stayed as a Jungian convert after her recovery. According to Anthony, their professional relationship turned personal around the time that Jung was going through his seismic breakup with Freud and beginning the deep and difficult exploration of his own unconscious that would become The Red Book and set the foundation for his lifetime's work. It was this last event that would establish their close relationship. 'For it was to Toni that he turned as he began his descent into the dark, largely unexplored realms of the unconscious,' Anthony writes. 'In essence, she had to become his analyst.' Wolff would go on to become one of his primary assistants and his muse before becoming a professional analyst herself. While Wolff would work mostly within the Jungian model—unlike Spielrein, who also pursued inquiries outside of it—she was critical in developing a framework that addressed how Jung's idea of individuation specifically applied to women. She is best known for a paper she published in 1956 titled, 'Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche.' When it comes to Jung's ideas, both Shamdasani and Fischer say that what the scholarship around the Jung women shows is that Jung was not on a solo intellectual journey. His work was collaborative, both in its nature and in the necessity for Jung to see that the ideas he was generating based on his own unconscious work were replicable in others. 'I think with every individual story that is being more profoundly researched, it becomes clear that [Jung] wasn't just a solitary genius working everything he ever wrote out from his inner self,' Fischer says. 'He operated in dialogue not only with his soul, but also with the people around him…I see much of it is an interplay, and it's sometimes hard to really pin it down to one person or the other as being the sole original originator of a concept or of an idea.' Emma Jung, Spielrein, and Wolff aren't the only three women whose collaborations and ideas touched Carl Jung and who deserve their own spotlight. Their stories show that the work unpacking the lives and intellectual worlds of the early women of psychoanalysis will only lead to a deeper, richer understanding of the intellectual history of the field As Emma wrote to her husband on February 5,1902: 'The world is full of the enigmatic and the mysterious, and people just live their lives without asking many questions…O who could know much, know all!'
UPI
18-07-2025
- UPI
Unification Church scandal expands with raids at more than 10 locations
Han Hak-ja attends a Blessing Ceremony in Gapyeong, South Korea, in 2020. At the center of growing focus today is Jung Wonju, Executive Secretary to Hak-ja Han. Though Han remains the official spiritual leader, Jung is widely regarded as the church's de facto second-in-command and is believed to have overseen high-level political outreach and internal consolidation of power. File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo July 18 (UPI) -- South Korean prosecutors on Thursday executed coordinated raids on more than 10 locations connected to the Unification Church, including its Seoul headquarters in Cheongpa-dong, the Cheonjeonggung Palace in Cheongpyeong, a foundation office in Mapo, and the private residence of former church executive Yoon Young-ho. The large-scale operation marks a significant escalation in a widening political influence scandal involving the church and top government figures. During the raid at Cheonjeonggung, Lee Cheong-woo -- the church's director of central administration and its third-ranking official -- allegedly mobilized approximately 600 young members to physically obstruct investigators. According to JTBC, Lee issued verbal threats and threatened to ram his vehicle into media reporters in an attempt to intimidate and disrupt coverage of the raid. JTBC also reported that investigators discovered large bundles of cash and high-end luxury items inside a hidden safe, possibly intended for use in lobbying operations. Prosecutors allege that the Unification Church sought to secure political favors in exchange for luxury goods and financial support, including lobbying for public development assistance (ODA) projects along Cambodia's Mekong River and South Korea's bid to host the United Nations' Fifth Secretariat Office. The church has denied all allegations, characterizing the investigation as a case of "individual misconduct" by Young-ho Yoon. However, the hierarchical nature of the Unification Church makes it unlikely that Yoon acted alone. Many observers expect the seized materials to provide more definitive evidence implicating higher-ranking officials. At the center of growing scrutiny is Jung Wonju, Executive Secretary to Chairwoman Hak-ja Han and Vice President of Cheon Mu Won, the Unification Church's highest administrative body. Though Han remains the official spiritual leader, Jung is widely regarded as the church's de facto second-in-command and is believed to have overseen high-level political outreach and internal consolidation of power. Jung began her rise within the organization as Han's personal hairdresser but gradually leveraged her close relationship with the chairwoman to sideline rival figures and accumulate influence behind the scenes. In recent years, she is believed to have effectively replaced senior leadership, quietly assuming control over key decision-making processes. She left South Korea for the United States in early June -- more than a month before the July 18 raids -- reportedly citing her husband's illness. Despite being subject to a de facto travel restriction, she has not returned since. Her prolonged absence is widely viewed as compelling circumstantial evidence of her central role in the alleged scheme. Further intensifying public scrutiny, Jung's family ties have raised concerns over media influence and nepotism. Her husband's younger brother, Tom McDevitt, currently serves as chairman of The Washington Times, a U.S.-based newspaper with long-standing ties to the Unification Church. Additionally, Jung's younger brother, Hee-taek Jung, is CEO of Segye Ilbo, a major South Korean daily also affiliated with the church. Critics argue that these familial connections have enabled Jung to exert behind-the-scenes influence over both domestic and international media. Just a day before the raids, The Washington Times published a glowing profile of Chairwoman Hak-ja Han, prompting allegations that the outlet -- though publicly operating as an independent journalistic institution -- was being privately leveraged to defend and legitimize church leadership amid mounting legal pressure. As the investigation widens, calls are mounting for Jung Wonju to return to South Korea and face legal proceedings. Many within the broader religious community argue that assuming responsibility is not only a legal duty but a spiritual obligation. The special prosecutor's office has indicated that additional indictments and arrests are likely as evidence is reviewed. International cooperation may also be sought if Jung continues to remain overseas.
