New York Observer columnist Rex Reed set off a wave of anger when he reviewed Park Chan Wook’s film “Old Boy,” making derogatory comments about the director’s homeland in the weekly magazine’s March 28 issue.
“For sewage in a cocktail shaker, there is ‘Old Boy,’ a noxious helping of Korean Grand Guignol as pointless as it is shocking,” wrote Reed. “What else can you expect from a nation weaned on kimchi, a mixture of raw garlic and cabbage buried underground until it rots, dug up from the grave and then served in earthenware pots sold at the Seoul airport as souvenirs?”

Reed’s review also contained racially charged verbiage reminiscent of an earlier era.

“Part kung fu, part revenge-theme Charlie Chan murder mystery, part metaphysical Oriental mumbo-jumbo, all of it incomprehensible.”

Angry e-mails and letters poured in from readers, and the Observer received responses from outraged community groups, including the Korean American Coalition and the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA), who lambasted Reed’s comments and demanded a public apology.

In a letter to Reed, Abe Kwok of AAJA wrote that the critic’s offensive language “reduces an entire people to a backward, ‘different’ lot that’s meant to be mocked. The punch line of a cruel joke. We’re not laughing.”
In the May 2 issue of the Observer, Reed posted the following:

“A few weeks ago, in my broadside against the gory Korean movie schlockfest ‘Old Boy,’ I apparently raised the hackles of several readers who objected to the way I mentioned the Korean film industry and the fermented Korean national dish called kimchi in the same sentence. I’m not an admirer of political correctness in first-person byline opinion writing, but that doesn’t make me a racist, so if I inadvertently offended anyone who misinterpreted my humor, I apologize. I like Koreans. In truth, I have probably spent more time in Korea than any of the irate letter-writers currently bombarding me. I even lived there for several months while making a movie called ‘Inchon!’ with Laurence Olivier, Jacqueline Bisset, Ben Gazzara, Richard Roundtree and Toshiro Mifune. We had many happy times, admired the lush landscape and liked the friendly people. We all hated the kimchi.”

Reed can be reached at rreed@observer.com.