This article mainly analyzes the ending and Easter eggs of the movie “Kill Boksoon”. If you haven’t watched the movie yet, you can read the spoiler-free review on the other side. If you want to understand all the detailed analysis of the content of “Kill Boksoon”, please refer to this article for a more comprehensive analysis of the plot, meaning, and ending of the movie: → “Kill Boksoon” review: 12 points of in-depth analysis, thematic summary, and ending: raising a child is harder than being an assassin.
Analysis of the Ending of ‘Kill Boksoon’: How did the director depict the showdown between Boksoon and Cha Min-kyu?
“Kill Boksoon” Ending Analysis: How did the director depict the showdown between Boksoon and Cha Min-kyu? In the final scene, the screenwriter intentionally arranged for a confrontation between Representative Cha and Boksoon, which was a scene full of details. I don’t know if the audience will only see it as an action scene or if they will think there is more meaning behind it. I think this article can help you think about what the screenwriter and director want to express. Perhaps you will find that “Kill Boksoon” is really not a simple movie.
Back in the “Kill Boksoon” 12-point analysis article, we mentioned that the screenwriter and director of “Kill Boksoon” designed action scenes that were not just about the action. “Kill Boksoon” is a movie full of imaginative violent sequences and tells a thoughtful story about the trauma endured by Boksoon and the mother-daughter relationship. Action scenes are the essence of “Kill Boksoon,” and the director found a way to make the movie shine by giving each scene its own personality and vitality. The same approach was used in the showdown between Boksoon and Cha Min-kyu at the end of “Kill Boksoon,” which we will now analyze one by one.
First, let’s take a moment to recall the scene where Cha Min-kyu kills Boksoon’s father. From the dialogue in the scene, we can infer that Cha Min-kyu did not know Boksoon’s father before this, as he mentions “it’s a good thing your daughter takes after her mother. If you want to die a peaceful death, you should be kind to others.” The plot doesn’t reveal who sent Cha Min-kyu to kill Boksoon’s father, but it’s clear that Boksoon’s father was just as tyrannical and evil towards others as he was towards Boksoon, forcing her to swallow the cigarette. Boksoon’s father saw himself as an adult who could “set the rules”.
So the climax of this scene is when Boksoon kicks the chair from under her father’s feet, as if she is kicking away the “rules” that have imprisoned her since childhood. Before this, when Cha Min-kyu sees Boksoon returning, he knows he has to kill her because there can be no witnesses. The director adds two layers to this scene:
Boksoon starts a conversation with Cha Min-kyu:
“The magic cube can be solved quickly if you follow the rules.”
“But in the end, it will be messed up anyway, so why rush to solve it?”
“How old are you?”
“17.”
“I have a sister, so I don’t kill children.”
“It seems that not all people in this job are bad, but the standard for defining ‘children’ is vague. The rules should be clear enough. Change it to ‘minor.’ I haven’t even got my ID yet.”
Boksoon’s expression was not only surprised, but also showed “approval”. There is nothing more attractive than being approved by someone, especially when that person is someone who understands them without needing too much explanation. Through this scene, the screenwriter and director delicately portrayed Cha Min-kyu’s liking for Si-fuk.
Cha Min-kyu faced his sister’s constant questioning about what makes Boksoon so special and why she deserves such special treatment. This is also the answer Cha Min-kyu wants to know. In the end, we can feel from the conversation between Boksoon and Cha Min-kyu before their final confrontation that Cha Min-kyu also wants to know why Boksoon doesn’t want to renew her contract. This is an important core issue that runs through the entire movie “Kill Boksoon”. In fact, Boksoon’s decision is not entirely based on her daughter. It’s because she cannot accept that the unequal competition in this world will harm the next generation. Boksoon sent the “bloody knife” to Cha Min-kyu because he killed Yeong-ji, and Cha Min-kyu had violated the rule (breaking the rule of not killing children) first, so Boksoon could no longer tolerate the existence of such “rules”.
This is also why Cha Min-kyu is furious with Sergeant Shin during the company meeting and slaughters everyone, shouting “I am the rule!” This echoes the conversation about the magic cube: “As long as you play by the rules, you can solve it quickly”, “Anyway, in the end, it will all be messed up, so why bother solving it quickly?” This dialogue reveals Cha Min-kyu’s intolerance of errors in the rules, and at the same time, it also reveals that although Boksoon follows the rules, she believes that rules will become chaotic due to everyone’s differences. Therefore, facing Cha Min-kyu, Boksoon must also believe that even if Cha Min-kyu has perfect rules, she thinks he will eventually break the rules, so she chooses to break Cha Min-kyu when his rules are chaotic and solve her own inner problems.
Love is often associated with “selfishness”, so the reason why the rules go out of control is all because Cha Min-kyu cannot let go of his feelings for Boksoon as a starting point. In “Kill Boksoon”, we can see that Cha Min-kyu likes Boksoon but cannot express his love for her, which also means that Cha Min-kyu may have always known that Boksoon will never respond to his feelings. One very poignant scene is when Director Cha asks Cha Min-kyu, “Who is Jae-yeong’s father?” and Cha Min-kyu only answers, “A good person.” It is evident that Cha Min-kyu does not think of himself as a good person. (This is also why Cha Min-kyu never dares to express his feelings to Boksoon clearly throughout the entire film, because he knows he is not a good person and has no chance of winning her over. Therefore, he uses the negotiation to renew Boksoon’s contract as a way to keep her as a killer by his side forever.)
Cha Min-kyu knew about Boksoon’s situation and used her failure in a mission to his advantage. He broke his own rules to make sure Boksoon stayed with him by using the contract renewal as a way to bind her to him forever. When Boksoon was set up by Director Cha to kill her own colleagues, Cha Min-kyu broke his rules again to protect her. This echoes Hee-seong’s question in “Kill Boksoon” about why those who make rules are always the powerful ones. It’s because they want to expand their own power and achieve their greed. For Cha Min-kyu, he suddenly thought of the “fourth rule,” which showed that he was a person with the power to make rules, and such people would change rules for their own benefit, as Boksoon said, “The Rubik’s Cube will eventually be messed up.” Cha Min-kyu was the most senior killer, and he never had morals from the beginning, but Boksoon was different. As a mother, she only turned off her moral compass when she worked. That’s why during their negotiation, Cha Min-kyu said, “I thought you had changed.” He thought Boksoon had become like him.
Therefore, the final duel was actually created by Cha Min-kyu’s unrequited love for Boksoon. Cha Min-kyu had known Boksoon for almost his entire life, but his love for her never wavered or even grew stronger, which made him willing to break the rules for her in the end. Perhaps it was the fact that Boksoon never loved Cha Min-kyu that made him act this way. Especially when Boksoon was set up by Director Cha to kill her colleagues, Cha Min-kyu knew he had to protect her. Boksoon was on his mind all the time, which made him stand up for her, but the problem was that Boksoon didn’t love Cha Min-kyu at all.
When Boksoon killed Director Cha and challenged Cha Min-kyu to a life-or-death fight, Cha Min-kyu realized that he could never kill Boksoon (because he himself knew that his weakness was Boksoon). He knew then that he would be the one who dies. However, as a former top assassin, he had his pride, and so he needed to accept the one-on-one fight to mask his pride and glory. Cha Min-kyu’s weakness was Boksoon, Boksoon’s weakness was Jae-yeong. In the finale action scene of “Kill Boksoon,” Cha Min-kyu made Jae-yeong the “witness.” Look, Cha Min-kyu now broke his own rule of “no witnesses” because of his hatred for Boksoon. His goal was to hit Boksoon’s most painful weakness because killing Jae-yeong would destroy Boksoon, but telling Jae-yeong the truth would ruin the mother-daughter relationship. That was Cha Min-kyu’s final revenge against Boksoon. Everything he did was because he was angry and disappointed about not receiving love. The ending of “Kill Boksoon” is truly a tragedy and ends in a twisted way.
“Kill Boksoon” Easter Egg Analysis
There are two key Easter eggs in “Kill Boksoon”:
- Boksoon failed the mission because she realized that the true devil in this world is the world constructed by adults, not the children. It is the adults who determine right from wrong for children. I believe that Boksoon realized that the father who hired the killer to kill his own son was the real devil, which is why she remembered when she killed her own father when Sergeant Shin was going to kill him. In Boksoon’s heart, her father was a person who wanted her dead, but she didn’t do anything wrong. Why did her father think that smoking was wrong and unacceptable? This behavior reflects the fact that Congressman Wu wanted to kill his own son, which shows that Wu does not acknowledge his own mistake and thinks that his son’s death can exonerate him and absolve him of his guilt.
In the end, Congressman Wu was killed in the “Kill Boksoon” Easter egg, and my suspicion is that Boksoon killed Wu Zhengzhi because she discovered that Wu Zhengzhi was the person who wanted to kill the child, and she thought that this kind of adult was too evil. Therefore, she forged his suicide, which could also ensure that the world would not be poisoned by him and become an evil world. This may also be why Fukumi originally wanted to renew the contract for this work, because this is what Fukumi wanted to ensure. - In the end, Jae-yeong chose to face the world calmly. The writer and director of “Kill Boksoon” allowed Jae-yeong to choose a different way to solve the problem in the Easter egg. Jae-yeong not only protected her loved ones, but also did not harm the people she hated. Instead, she chose to leave calmly. I don’t think Jae-yeong became the second Boksoon because Fukumi deeply taught Jae-yeong that “it’s not her fault.” Therefore, I think Boksoon, as a mother figure, has truly succeeded on her journey and finally gained inner freedom. She is no longer trapped by the rules of MK and has successfully retired to become a mother.