After an evening smoking cigarettes in the desolate South Korean countryside, the wealthy and enigmatic Ben reveals his secret ‘hobby’ to the broke and disaffected Jong-su — namely, burning down abandoned greenhouses. This represents a turning point in Lee Chang-dong’s Burning (2018), as the film switches gears from an innocuous drama to a psychological thriller.In contemporary South Korea, where the film is set, young people have coined the term ‘Hell Joseon’ to describe the stark social inequality plaguing their society. One belongs to either the geumsujeo (golden spoon) or the heoksujeo (dirt spoon)1 classes. The term ‘Joseon’ itself refers to Korea’s half a millennium long Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910), during which similar inequality, at that time enforced through ultra-orthodox social hierarchies, existed. Although those social structures are no more, in recent decades social inequality has widened, perpetuated by the Asian financial crisis of 1997 during which unemployment, particularly amongst the lower classes, increased. Since then young South Koreans have inherited irregular employment, a merciless education system, and the widening gap with the geumsujeo — in other words, a modern-day Joseon-style society.In Burning, Ben, who is geumsujeo, seduces Hae-mi, a former lover of Jong-su, with expensive dinners and gifts. Later she mysteriously disappears. Ben’s dominant personality and the ease with which he exploits Jong-su and Hae-mi, who are of the heoksujeo class, correspond to the real-life narrative of contemporary South Korea as sketched by director Lee Chang-Dong. For Ben the destruction of vulnerable things is not a crime, but a natural consequence, what he describes as ‘the morals of nature’ (1:17:08). The skeletal silhouette of a burning greenhouse is metaphorical of how, in Chang-Dong’s view, the exploitation of the weak has become endemic, a natural order, of South Korean society.Jong-su is portrayed as a victim of this natural order. His meekness in giving up Hae-mi and his daily struggle in running his farm are signs of a ‘loss of control’ and a ‘remarkable degree of passivity’.2 Over the course of the film, we see him develop from a brooding, introspective writer to the protagonist of a thriller. Ben’s enigma — the source of his wealth, his role in Hae-mi’s disappearance and the burning down of the greenhouse — begins to obsess Jong-su. He stalks Ben’s social haunts; however, he is hampered by his heoksujeo status: closed off from Ben’s elite circle and easily dismissed by them.For Chang-dong, the helpless inevitability thriller heroes face — compelled to piece together shifting pieces of a puzzle in a nightmarish test of endurance — is not dissimilar to navigating South Korean society as a poor, directionless man with few prospects and no influence.Chang-dong offers no solutions to the ‘ambiguities’ of the world in which South Koreans live, saying in a 2018 interview, ‘I feel like young people these days have realized that there’s something wrong in this world, but it’s very difficult to figure out exactly what is causing the problems and what lies underneath.’3However, through Burning, Chang-dong surfaces the struggle that many endure in South Korea’s Hell Joseon society, shining a light onto the factors that give rise to its underlying problems.