Imagine yourself being the closest person to one of the potential successors of the chairman in the largest prorate crime syndicate. When the chairman accidentally dies, your superior fully trusts you to oversee the gang when he is absent for other businesses; however, the policeman threatens you to share internal information about the gangsters. Whose side would you choose?
But what if you are actually an undercover policeman?
The film New World (2013, dir. Park Hoon-jung) presents this dilemma of loyalty that the protagonist, Lee Ja-sung, faces in the eighth year of his undercover in the Goldmoon International crime syndicate. Ja-sung thrives in the gang and expects the police chief Kang to end his mission, but Kang rejects and threatens him with his pregnant wife and his true identity, leading to Ja-sung’s betrayal – killing Kang and becoming the new chairman of the crime syndicate. While the film is not about the battle between justice and crime, but the discovery of loyalty in the grey area that is shifting between black and white.
Ja-sung’s loyalty to his job as an undercover is unquestionable before his betrayal. Killing people for Jung and conducting crimes are both physically and mentally challenging. He has to risk his life every day dealing with the gangsters, doing things that violate all his moral standards as a policeman. More importantly, he has to hide his identity from everyone he knows in the crime syndicate. Although Ja-sung makes such sacrifices, Kang uses Ja-sung’s wife and plants other undercovers in Goldmoon to watch Ja-sung's every action. Not to mention that whenever the police department gains information from him during his go-game lessons, they only ask him questions without sharing any plans from the police side. This forms a great metaphor that Ja-sung seems to be one of the players in this game; however, he is nothing but an insignificant chessman in the battle between the black and white. Ja-sung is isolated from both sides of his world to complete his mission as an undercover, which requires tremendous faith to sustain a torn life like this for eight years. Albeit it is understandable from the police’s perspective to secure their plan, they forget that before Ja-sung becomes a policeman or a gangster, he is a human who needs emotional support instead of a negligible chessman doomed to be either black or white. The audience would not blame Ja-sung for betraying the law because it is the police department that ignores and exploits his loyalty first.
Ja-sung’s loyalty to his superior, Jung Chung, is more complicated. Getting Jung’s trust is the most important part of his mission, so he has to act his loyalty from the moment he meets Jung deliberately. Whenever they meet Jung’s opponent in Goldmoon, Lee Joong-gu, Ja-sung never bows as other members do to show his disrespect. It seems like an insignificant action, but it requires a strong determination that Ja-sung will never be against Jung’s side in the gang because he is purposefully building a boundary and provoking Jung’s opponent. But not every action can be faked. When Joong-gu tries to scare Jung by almost hitting Jung with a car, Ja-sung stands in front of Jung to protect him without hesitation. Within the second that a car is rushing towards you, it is not the brain that evaluates the situation and makes an action, but your instinct instead, and nobody’s subconscious is born protecting others first. As time passes, his acted loyalty becomes a reality.
But why? Why would an undercover, who is supposed to hate all the dirt and crime, have such a strong attachment to a gangster? The reason might be indeed simple – loyalty is two-sided. Unlike Kang’s constant suspicion, Jung always calls Ja-sung “brother,” and he never uses violence nor threatens Ja-sung. They build a bromance over the eight years of fighting against the brutality in the criminal world with each other. Living in a grey area with dividing sides, Ja-sung feels warmth, connection, and company in this dark environment with Jung. And when the world of justice treats him as an opponent, he is being pushed closer to the black side.
It might also be how everyone in Goldmoon prioritizes their internal bonds taught Ja-sung what loyalty is and made him become part of them. When Kang tries to bribe Jung to leak evidence to arrest his opponent Joong-gu, Jung immediately rejects and despises this external source’s intervention. There is no actual benefit to Jung by not accepting Kang’s offer, but it is against what he values the most – the brotherhood code. It is more ironic that what Kang uses to trade with Jung is a list of undercovers that will doubtlessly be killed by Jung once revealed.
As we are all human beings instead of chessmen that could be either black or white, we constantly shift in the spectrum of different shades of grey. After Jung’s death, he kills everyone who used to stand in Jung’s way to continue the code of brotherhood and takes Jung's position. Although he betrayed Jung as an undercover in the past and betrays his job as a policeman, he finishes his journey of discovering his need for emotional connections as a human and starts to be loyal to himself.