Haemoo (aka Sea Fog) (2014)

Struggling to make ends meet and keep his boat, the captain (Kim Yoon Seok) agrees to smuggle illegal immigrants into South Korea without consulting his crew. What follows is a horrifying tragedy of near operatic proportions involving insanity and murder. The directorial debut of screenwriter Shim Sung Bo (MEMORIES OF MURDER), the film uses the real life tragedy of Chinese-Korean immigrants who suffocated to death in the storage tank of a vessel and whose bodies were dumped into the sea. Shim Sung Bo turns this tragedy into a large scale melodrama with a budding romance between the youngest crew member (pop star Park Yoochun) and an a female migrant (Han Ye Ri) at its center. It's an intense and very disturbing movie yet it doesn't feel exploitative of a real life tragedy. It does highlight the horrors of human trafficking and the frequent abuse they must endure by their "couriers". Shim Sung Bo gives us a bittersweet ambiguous ending rather than a conventional ending that might have provided closure for both its lead protagonist and the audience. Strong stuff but well worth seeking out. With Moon Sung Keun, Yoo Seung Mok and Lee Hee Joon.