*spoiler* Questions about Do-Joon

I rather agree with you, than your friend. I've watched this with my friend, who works in ambulance, and in fact it was his opinion first that Do-Joon's mental handicap was caused by that intoxication.

His mother wasn't, well, perfectly OK after all, too.

I thought that she attempeted to kill herself and her son because she couldn't cope with poverty and her son't mental deficiency, and that her devotion to her son came also from the guilt she carried for once trying to kill him, but your theory makes sense too. The poison she used might have damaged him mentally, and that added to the guilt and her devotion to him.

So, then, she's the cause of his mental retardation and the cause of the murder he commits. She taught him to hit anyone who calls him "retard" and he followed her advice. I don't even think the term offended him, he just responded to it the way he was taught.



"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
Oscar Wilde

In Korea, it is shameful for a person to be a parent of child who is mentally challenged or slow to learn. It is a society which is critical and blames the parents even if a person was born that way. My uncle (mother's brother) is extremely slow mentally (he doesn't have down syndrome) and for a long time never left the house and was almost never seen in public with my grandmother.

I think Do Joon was born that way, and the attempt at poisoning him was to get rid of him and all the parental responsibilities.

I disagree with the idea that she wanted to poison him because of their poverty & her being a single parent, because Korean culture def does place a stigma on single parent households, and the children take the brunt of the negativity, but as a loving mother I doubt this + poverty is enough to try to commit suicide and kill your son. We aren't given info on how the father left the picture. He could have passed from a disease, which happened frequently back then, and if so, the stigma would not have applied. On the other hand, even today, mentally handicapped individuals in Korean are made pariahs and are completely and utterly rejected from society. So I would guess that her struggle that made her want to die and kill her son could only be his handicap, which is seen as much worse than not have a parent around in Korean culture.
As for the scene with young dojoon, I think its arguable to say he looked normal thus he must not have been handicapped. you really couldn't tell but i think like twice in the movie, they said that older do joon was good looking (the friend and the film lady), and at times do joon looks completely normal.. like when he's concentrating & talking to his mom etc. but he's obviously still handicapped.
At the same time, i'm aware that at such a young age, poison, od of drugs etc, can cause brain damage. so yeah. who knows.