A Bureaucrat Turned Monster, a Don Quixote with a Sword... Confronting an Era of 'Madness' [Slate]

Director Woo Minho's "Made in Korea"
The White Poison Hidden Behind the Export Miracle
A Portrait of South Korea Exporting Desire

Disney+ 'Made in Korea' Still Cut

In the 1970s, South Korea was an era defined by the rallying cry, "Only exports can save us." Anything stamped with "Made in Korea," from wigs to textiles, was considered an act of patriotism. The Disney+ original series "Made in Korea" attaches this glorious slogan to the darkest of crimes: drugs, the most harmful poison that sickens a nation.

Director Woo Minho overlays the myth of "high-speed growth" with a grotesque source of funding. Beneath the dazzling economic indicators, the story reveals how those in power, in secret rooms, produced white poison to secure capital, spreading it like cement. The series insightfully exposes how the most repressive regime paradoxically grew by feeding off the most primal human desires.

KCIA Agent: Selling Drugs in the Name of Patriotism

At the heart of this chilling paradox stands Baek Gitae (played by Hyun Bin), a former army officer and now the head of intelligence at the Busan branch of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. In public, he shouts "anti-communism," defending the system, but in the shadows, he sells drugs to fund the regime. He is, in effect, a "state-sanctioned drug dealer," licensed by the government itself.

Disney+ 'Made in Korea' Still Cut

Hyun Bin's face, cast in this bizarre role, is chilling-not with the slyness of a criminal, but with the earnestness of a bureaucrat determined to fulfill his duty. Yet, he is no loyal dog sacrificing himself solely for the organization. Deep in his eyes burns a personal ambition to reinvent himself as someone stronger, backed by the immense power of the state.

Baek Gitae, having raised his younger siblings alone, has internalized the ruthless laws of survival. In an age of barbarism, it was not lofty ideals but overwhelming capital that protected him. This is why the drug trafficking, disguised as a national mission, inevitably becomes the bricks with which he builds his own kingdom.

"This is all for the country." This nonchalant remark proves that, for him, patriotism is the perfect alibi to launder his sordid self-interest. The paradox of national security standing atop drugs that rot the minds of the people, and the corrupt individual exploiting the system's loopholes for personal gain-through this toxic symbiosis, Director Woo ruthlessly exposes the hypocrisy of the 1970s.

Disney+ 'Made in Korea' Still Cut

A Don Quixote at Odds with His Era

Prosecutor Jang Geonyoung (played by Jung Woosung) confronts this age of madness head-on. While everyone else staggers in the intoxication of growth and drugs, he alone stands upright, a modern-day Don Quixote.

Clutching an old law book like a lance and charging at the windmill of overwhelming power, he appears not just resolute but almost foolish. The conflict between these two men goes beyond a simple clash of good and evil. If Jang Geonyoung is a naive idealist who believes in the proper functioning of law and justice, Baek Gitae is a relentless realist who uses the power of the state to ensure his own survival.

The fight is unfair from the start. When the prosecutor pursues, the drug dealer hides behind the sanctuary of the KCIA. The state, which should defend the law, instead shields the criminal-a farcical tragedy. This relentless game of hide-and-seek proves that, at the time, South Korea was a nation of laws in name only, where the will of those in power reigned above the constitution.

Disney+ 'Made in Korea' Still Cut

The Drug King Is Gone, but the Addiction Remains

The title "Made in Korea" ultimately serves as a painful self-mockery. Was it really only wigs and textiles that South Korea exported to the world in the 1970s? The series suggests that the era's greatest export might have been the drug called "desire."

In the story, the drugs are eventually cracked down upon, and Baek Gitae is destroyed. Yet the aftertaste the drama leaves is bitter. Where did the dirty money Baek Gitae amassed from selling drugs, and the era's logic of "money can do anything," go? Most likely, it became buildings, conglomerates, and political funds, seeping deep into the veins of today's privileged class.

The night of dictatorship has ended, and the age of barbarism has faded. Yet South Korea, now addicted to the even stronger drug of capital, still suffers withdrawal symptoms. The value of a just process has long been forgotten, and only immediate results and profits are blindly worshipped. Perhaps this is why the drug dealer's excuse from 50 years ago still sounds so familiar to us today: "This is all just to live better."