Once Upon a Time, Gay Love in Seoul

We have this sense of time. It tells us it is gonna remain. That it will not be used up. Like a river that is never supposed to dry up. But it does, and looking back, we wonder what is still there.

Some things never leave. But it is a mix of things right now. Both a memory that is not mine, and the fact that I keep wondering too late at night, why am I so late.

But it doesn’t really have to be yours. When you know you lived through the same thing, you are no longer required to own it. It becomes yours before you know.

So, when the car crashed into a tree, with two gay boys inside it on a Korean road, you knew this happened to you. Without ever happening, without having to happen.

It is the last scene that will linger. It is when Su-min finally said, ‘nice to meet you, Jae-min shi’.

The cops pulled their car. They were about to check what happened. Jae-min took the chance to prove something. That he was probably no longer afraid to love him. He put his hand on Jae-min’s penis, waiting for the cops to discover them in that state… all in blood. He was opting for the consequence himself, and choosing it willingly.

This is where the film ends. Perhaps, South Korea’s greatest gay classic, No Regrets (2006). The Korean name, 후회하지 않아/Huhoehaji Ana.

The Violent History of Gay Love in Seoul

Lee Song Hee-il is the director of the film. It struggled with definitions of love, with two boys loving each other. They were played by Lee Yeong-hoon and Kim Nam-gil. And this struggle was happening in a gay bar named X-Large, where rich people come to find their moneyboys. Boys, who whore out themselves, to make a living.

Su-min, a boywhore, doesn’t know why Song Jae-min, the son of a CEO of a giant corporation where he was slaving away, ever would fall in love with him. And he was right in his own worldview.

He was walking on Seoul’s road, holding the ashes of a friend in his hand. After his cremation, this friend’s body was now resting in a ceramic jar. His accomplice, walking with him, was right in his own worldview as well, so he screamed, ‘everything is illegal in this city’.

They had no place to scatter the ashes. Su-min was right on the point when he said, ‘in Seoul, never trust anyone’. That is the truth.

But this CEO’s son still arrived, and entered his life. He was being beaten up by everyone in the gay bar, while calling out Su-min’s name. Like always, like in every other gay film, they were violently loving each other.

Violence is a feature of gay love in most of its picturizations. No one knows why, but this is a retro artifact now. With a wave of content creation, the picture is also altering. Now it is way more romantic, way more unhindered, something that so many people couldn’t think of, across the world, before the arrival of social media. But all of this turned into a reality.

In 2006, Su-min was right to ask, ‘of all cocks I suck every night, why should yours be special?’

No Regrets answered it in the end, completely.

‘Once a Shy Man Fell in Love with a Poor Man’

There was everything else. A rich mom who said she isn’t ignorant enough not to understand sexuality, and still told her son to marry the girl she found for him.

There was a dad freaking out in the elevator. A fiancée who slapped Jae-min. Right after Su-min screamed his name in the corridor and Jae-min ignored him, locked his arms with her and walked away.

There was a not-so-handsome boy who arrived at the gay bar one day. He had no place to stay in Seoul, so Su-min took him in. The day he left with a police officer, he called a shirtless Su-min bidding him goodbye from the terrace. Finally, he told him, the one he likes lives on a rooftop. Right before a gay cop with fat cash in his pockets took him away, for good.

If this was the previous century, Su-min would probably be a girl. But time has moved ahead, though many things remain the same. But if it were, a girl would take his place and a man would tell her, ‘see me as a man, not as a John’.

Su-min has so many Johns in the city. And that is why he can afford a tiny rooftop apartment and a pet dog. In exchange, he sells his body in a gay bar.

Right before the final scene, Su-min was burying Jae-min alive in his grave, before he himself joined him–to probably go under together. His accomplice again yelled at him, and cursed for the last time.

Then…

All of this stays with you. You look back. And you realize that your own gay love was probably violent, too. It wasn’t the Instagrammable romantic affair you wished it were. Probably, that just wasn’t possible. And it was just as rough, and things were blowing up all the same.

But the core point is probably the fact that you still loved. You touched the body of a man being a man yourself, while there were too many cocks to suck out there. And his cock was nothing special. It was him. He was the not-so-ordinary, and somewhat special thing who will live in your memory.

In one life, sometimes that is more than enough. If life allowed you to fall in love, you were rewarded. It was a blessing.

And this is the only possible reason behind the film’s naming itself. There really is nothing to regret, at the end of the day.

That is why it ends with ‘nice to meet you, Jae-min shi’.

That is why it named itself No Regrets.