The Spy Gone North

The mid nineties. The South Korean intelligence officer Park Seok-young leaves the army and takes on the cover of a businessman under the codename Black Venus. His job is to find out how far North Korea's nuclear programme has got. Entering the North via Beijing on the pretext of an advertising deal, he builds a relationship over years with Ri Myong-un, a senior official responsible for foreign trade. Each is using the other, and past a certain point each trusts the other. There is almost no action. All the tension is built at meeting tables, in hotel rooms and over drinks. The real subject is not espionage but both sides deliberately raising the temperature to win their own elections and meet their own needs, with the calculations of the South and the requirements of the North arriving at the same table. Yoon Jong-bin directed. Hwang Jung-min plays Park and Lee Sung-min plays Ri, with Cho Jin-woong and Ju Ji-hoon in the cast. The story rests on a real person: the agent codenamed Black Venus, Park Chae-seo. It screened in the midnight section at Cannes in 2018 and opened in South Korea on 8 August 2018. Who it is for: anyone who likes cold, conversation-driven spy films. Who it is not for: anyone expecting action. It runs long, the detail of Korean politics is dense, and an outside viewer can get lost in places.