This Halloween, I ended up watching three thriller dramas of which one was ‘Save Me’. It was on my watchlist for quite some time and I’m so glad that I finally watched it. Also, as the segment is crime and thriller, I will be including some facts about such cults, their leaders, and crimes happening because of them.
So a WARNING for those who do not like such content!
Director: Kim Sung-Su
Writer: Jung Shin-Gyu, Jung Yi-Do, Jo Geum-San (webcomic)
Network: OCN
Episodes: 16
Country: South Korea
The story starts with Sang-Mi’s (Seo Ye-ji) family, who are led into tragedy as soon as they enter Moji (imaginary) town from Seoul. The family gets dragged into a mysterious church lead by the Spritual Father (Jo Sung-Ha) and his Apostles (disciplines). After suffering and witnessing cruel things in the church for three years, she gets determined to expose the place with the help of 4 local boys, and rescue her parents.
Before we dive into the analysis part of the blog, let’s understand what exactly is a cult and how it works.
~ SPOILER-FREE PART ~
I’ve read up some articles on this subject and the contents below are a result of my understanding of it. I never had any first-hand experience with a cult. So, if my understanding is wrong feel free to correct it in the comments.
A cult is a religious group that has a spiritual leader and is loved and followed blindly by his followers. The leader’s main motive is to spread a new religion among the world and gather as many followers as possible. They somewhat believe in the ‘heaven on earth’ logic and believe that with complete faith and ardent prayers to their God, the followers will be rewarded with a new soul.
When such groups are formed initially, for the first few years they are called cults. But when the cult goes on for generations after and the follower base increases tremendously, then it becomes religious.
!! SPOILER AHEAD !!
The Spiritual Father says that, whoever believes in the existence of Mighty New Sky, prays to him with complete devotion will be relieved from their pain and suffering. The Mighty New Sky never gives up on his loving followers. Basically, he’s an imaginary idol who was created to build befriend innocent people and take advantage of their trust and belief.
Spiritual Father
He believes one’s sin must die to make their spirit live, his calm behavior scared me the most. Like he was freakishly quiet and hardly behaved violently in the initial episodes. But, when he did he was the scariest of all.
Apostle Kang
She believes in the Mighty New Sky, rather loves him and wants to sail in the ‘Ship of Salvation’. Also, she seemed to be the only one in Guseonwon who was a tad bit normal, but I was so wrong about her.
Apostle Jo
I found everything about this guy creepy, his looks, his whistle , the way he speaks, how he invades one’s personal space. Although he believes in the Mighty New Sky, there are times when he tries to restrain himself from showing his true self.
They exploited people’s beliefs, made them think that the church will make their lives better and giving them numerous false hopes like- Healing non-treatable illness which even hospitals said had no cure. The Apostles provided the followers with ‘Miracle water’ and told them to consume it with faith in the Mighty New Sky. If they prayed with an open mind and complete belief in him, he would take away their past sins, heal their bodies, and provide them with a new pure soul.
The Guseonwon also had a shelter for the homeless and elders, which claimed to take care of them like their families. Also, in the initial episodes, it was shown that they really helped the elderly in their daily activities by keeping them clean and feeding them. But, later it was revealed that in the beginning, they used to lure them and force them to believe the Mighty New Sky, with the bait of a shelter.
The Apostles would come into the people’s lives at the time of their hardships and portray themselves to be their saviors, sent by the Mighty New Sky. These disciples would prey on the weak minds, give them false hope of a better and peaceful life and lure them to become a follower.
The followers would find momentary solace in the words of the Spiritual Father, as they would delve into hallucination and forget about the actual reality. Gradually they would think that life at Guseonwon to be real, and everything and everyone outside as fake and evil. The followers get so addicted to this way of living that many a time they actually start acting like maniacs when asked to come out of the lifestyle and live in the actual world.
‘Save Me’ was a very heavy content drama, focussing mainly on the cult group, how they work, and disguise their wrong intentions from the public. Some of the societal problems shown there are- Discrimination towards people with disabilities, school bullying, suicide due to depression, innocents getting jailed, exploitation of power using bribery and coercion, violence, attempt to rape, murder, fraud, and embezzlement. You name it, you have it!
However, I would like to emphasize two of the most shocking incidents shown in the drama.
— — — — —
— — — — —
Kang Eun-shil lived with her drunk husband and daughter before becoming an Apostle. She and her daughter followed Baek since his preaching days and joined Guseonwon together. It was shown that Apostle Kang was so blinded by the idea of achieving salvation that she was ready to sacrifice her daughter as well.
It was shown that she had forced her daughter to marry Spiritual Father so that she becomes the Spiritual Mother, even after knowing that he will exploit her sexually after this. She was completely blinded by the so-called preachings of this Father, which even took over her motherly instincts. The saddest part was that even after her daughter’s death, she believed that her trust was genuine and she would meet her daughter someday after achieving salvation.
— — — — — —
Initially, when Sang-Mi went to Guseonwon for the first time along with her family, she was asked to meet the Spiritual Father. While everyone was busy praying to the ‘Mighty New Sky’, Baek took this opportunity and touched Sang-Mi inappropriately. She was still a minor then, and he very well knew that even if Sang-Mi felt uncomfortable she will be too scared to talk against him.
If we reflect upon why Sang-Mi didn’t tell her parents at that moment, it was because she was scared. Scared that no one would believe her, scared that the blame would come on her only, that’s she’s accusing such a pure person, etc. Also, if we look back at the circumstance, do you think anything would have changed after her complaint? I don’t think so. Spiritual Father had created such a genuine hoax about himself in the minds of his followers, that it was impossible for anyone to make them believe the actual reality.
Cult groups are there all around the world. Some are famous for their notorious activities, while some stay well hidden. However, I won’t be talking about any specific group, solely because I believe I’m not knowledgeable enough to talk about the topic.
But for the purpose of writing the blog I’ve researched a bit about whether ‘Save Me’ was based around any true events or not. The result was NO, not anything, in particular, however, there’s a name ‘Shinchonji’ group in South Korea which is quite controversial in this matter. You can Google about it.
Also, from the Director’s interview what I could gather was, the story had been somewhat adapted from the webcomic ‘Out of the World’ and other facts were built around the crew’s understanding about how a cult operates, which seems to be influenced by few real-life groups.
I was waiting for some backdrop on Spiritual Father and the origin of the ‘Mighty New Sky’ concept, but couldn’t find much reference from the drama. Maybe a backstory would have been more interesting.
Also, I found a few parallel storylines (like the Gangster and Corrupt Detective) distracting at times. They could have cut short those scenes and maybe reduce the number of episodes by one or two. Other than this, the drama was a pure work of perfection!
The blog would remain incomplete if I do not appreciate the acting of various characters in the drama. I have to say, each one of them did an amazing job and made it so believable. Although the whole experience was quite high on bitterness, it left me with a lot of curiosity about such cult groups. I must say, I was shocked to read about such real-life groups and their crimes.
