<A Happy Businesswoman (Ttosuni, Subtitle: The Birth of Happiness)> (1963)

Director : Park Sang-Ho
Production Company : Hae Seoung Films Co., Ltd
Date of Rate : 1963-02-08
Genre : Melodrama
Opening Theater : Asea Theater

Staff :
Writer : Kim Hee-Chang
Screenplay(Adaptation) : Yoo Il-Su
Producer : Jee Wu-Seong
Executive Producer : Han Kyu-Bok
Director of PhotoGraphy : Yoo Jae-Hyeong
Gaffer : Yoon Young-Seon
Music : Kim Yong-Hwan
Art Director : Hong Seong-Chil
Editor : Yoo Jae-Won
Sound/Recording : Han Yang

Cast(Actor/Actress) :
Do Keum-Bong, Lee Dae-Yeob, Choi Nam-Hyeon

Synopsis

Tto-sun (Do Kum-bong) is the younger daughter of a transportation company owner (Choi Nam-hyeon) who came to South Korea from Hamgyeongbuk-do. She possesses great financial acumena trait she inherited from her entrepreneurial father. One day, a young man named Jae-gu (Lee Dae-yub) comes in with a letter of recommendation and asks to be hired as a driver. Lending him a sum of money, Tto-sun befriends Jae-gu. When Tto-sun's father reprimands her for her act of generosity, she decides to move out of her own. Although her mother tries to dissuade her, Tto-sun does not yield, insisting that living alone will help her to cultivate her independence. Unlike the unworldly Jae-gu, Tto-sun shows herself to be enormously savvy: she assiduously makes money by every available means, including selling rat traps, vending rice cakes, and delivering coals. Tto-sun proposes to Jae-gu that they should buy a car and start a transportation business. Jae-gu, in his turn, comes to care for the resourceful Tto-sun. Her parents object to the marriage at first, but on the day Tto-sun and Jae-gu return to visit them with the newly-purchased vehicle in tow, they consent to the union.

Notes

A film that identifies the woman as the agent for building a nation-state in the 1960s
Until the late 1950s, Korean films portrayed the woman alternately as a vain hussy who loses her head in the flood of Western culture pouring into post-war society, a tormented soul who has lost her family or lover in the tumult of history, a victim of poverty who is forced to sell her body but retains her spiritual purity, or an arrogant yet naive member of the upper class. What ties all of these types together is the fact that they are somewhat unrealistic entities that likely exist only within the fictional medium of movies. In the early 1960s, with the emergence of such genres as the family melodrama, believable female characters finally began to make their appearance; the eponymous heroine of Ttosuni is the most representative of this new class of realistic onscreen women. The reason one can rightly apply the term "realistic" to the characters in this film is because they belong to the lower middle class (although Tto-sun comes, strictly speaking, from the upper middle class, she starts at the bottom without any help from her bourgeois father), because the various jobs they take on to "make a living" are depicted in a realistic manner, and because the space, setting, props, and costumes in the film function realistically in accordance with their social class. Ttosuni richly depicts the lives of the working classes during the early 1960s, through such sights as bus terminus, the street performance of traveling medicine peddlers, the traditional market, and the shantytown. Indeed, it is a text that seeks to enlighten the public by educating them in the various ways of overcoming their underprivileged environment. In this respect, it does not seem too much of a stretch to read Ttosuni in light of the fact that such a thematic focus was the very agenda advocated by the incipient Park Chung-hee administration as it embarked on modernizing Korea and building it into a solid nation-state. At the time of its release, the film's use of the Hamgyeong-do dialect caused something of a stir. The acting chops of Do Kum-bong, who expertly wielded the northern dialect in her impressive turn as the unflaggingly enterprising yet irresistibly human Tto-sun, is a delight to watch.

Afterword:

- Adapted from Kim Hee-chang's radio drama, The Birth of Happniess, which aired on KBS.

Director Bio: Park Sang-ho (1931-2006)

Born in Seoul on September 24th, 1931. He graduated from Gyeongdong High School and dropped out of the Department of Business Administration at Yonsei University. He worked in theatre for a while and in 1955, began his life in movies by helping in the production of Director Shin Sang-ok's Dream (Kkum) (1955). He made his directorial debut the next year with The Sea (Haejeong) (1956). He directed and produced 24 fictional films and 26 documentary films. Of those, A Happy Businesswoman (Ttosuni) (1963), The DMZ (Bimujang Jidae) (1965) and Family Meeting (Gajog Hoe-ui) (1962) are considered his most important works. He was active during the late 50s and 60s, the golden age of Korean cinema, and usually made movies about family with a melodramatic element. He passed away in 2006. He is the older brother of actress Park Jung-ja.