‘The Hand of Destiny’: Korean cinema’s controversial first on-screen kiss
It’s been a long time since audiences were up in arms over on-screen kissing, but Korean audiences weren’t even exposed to cinematic smooching until the mid-1950s, and it turned out they were drastically unprepared.
Tonsil tennis is hardly a taboo, but that hasn’t always been the case. The first kiss ever captured on film came all the way back in 1887, and more than 70 years on it had never been witnessed in a locally-produced Korean production. Han Hyeong-mo sought to change all of that, though, with The Hand of Destiny making history.
The subject matter should have prepared viewers for a different kind of film, though, considering the story revolves around a North Korean spy who falls for a South Korean intelligence officer. It was rooted heavily in the social and political climate of the time, so the burgeoning romance between two characters hailing from opposite sides of the divide already carried the inherent potential to shock.
Protagonists Margaret and Sin Yeong-cheol aren’t your everyday intelligence operatives, either, with the former working in a cabaret as part of her cover while the latter masquerades as a manual labourer. Neither of them is honest with each other, which only complicates matters when she discovers his official identification.
He discovers who she really is, too, and in the spirit of many noirs of the period, it ends in double-crossing and tragedy. After Yeong-cheol puts his prejudices to one side in the name of the woman he loves, she betrays him by luring him to his demise. Making the ultimate sacrifice in the name of love is a noble way to go out, even if it’s one that isn’t highly recommended.
In their final moments together, the fateful kiss unfolds. Even though it was a case of the characters brushing lips for two seconds, it was something Korean crowds had never seen before. It proved so contentious that the husband of Yun In-ja wanted to sue the director for his wife being involved in a controversially pioneering moment.
Yeong-cheol and Margaret carve out their slice of history in The Hand of Destiny, and then he shoots her to put her out of her misery for good after she’s been mortally wounded in karmic retribution for changing her mind at the last second and realising she didn’t want him to be killed after all.
It would have been an emotional enough resolution without the kiss, but with The Hand of Destiny released a year after the Korean War had ended, it became a statement. There were radical societal and cultural changes looming just over the horizon, and having two characters swap saliva for the first time in a feature was akin to kicking down a door that had been permanently locked beforehand.
