A romance between a Korean man and a Chinese woman was a recurring motif in Korean films of the 1990s, often positioning the latter as a passive figure—a narrative device used to compensate for the insecure masculinity of her male counterpart. With a rising number of Chinese women in Korea as low-wage migrant workers, particularly within the eldercare sector, the gendered consumption of the devoted yet disenfranchised other in Korean films has only deepened.

Decision to Leave marks a significant departure from this trend, refusing to romanticize the Korean Chinese heroine Seo-rae as a figure in need of protection or salvation by Korean detective Jang Hae-jun. Even more subversively, the film achieves this twist through a calculated dehumanization. The search for Seo-rae’s “true” personality, hidden behind her persona as an elder-care worker, is mediated almost entirely through machines—Siri, smartwatch, recorded voice notes and translation apps—rather than direct human interaction. Both the detective’s and this film genre’s reliance on investigative apparatus to dissect a subject fails, leading not to a singular answer, but a total defiance and dismantling of the gendered, othering gaze.