Celebrated for his richly diverse body of work as an actor, Hah Myung Joong also stands out as a visionary Korean filmmaker whose projects are marked by an arresting blend of dream-like atmospheres and visceral scenes of social depravity. Life Line exemplifies this counterintuitive aesthetics at its most potent, deftly playing with the folksy motifs and erotic tropes that were promoted by Chun Doo-hwan’s military regime to distract audiences from political realities.

Set on a secluded island during Korea’s colonial period under Japan, the story follows two lovers who resist the exploitative local elites controlling the fishing trade at inflated prices. Equally striking is the presence of a shaman figure, serving as a potent allegory for a film industry reduced to a passive mouthpiece under Chun’s dictatorship. The picturesque depiction of the island—attained through overexposure and wide shots—combined with an abundance of pornographic imagery, reads as a performative act of self-reflection on the Korean cinema in the 1980s. Far from an apolitical aesthetic experiment, the film stages itself as a site where a military dictatorship’s crime against cinema is laid bare, offering a searing indictment of the era.