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Contrary to popular portrayals of the lives of presidents and prime ministers as serious and straightforward in films, the Korean movie, Good Morning President, emphasizes on the personal lives of three presidents with a touch of humor, wry and drama. The film depicts the Korean politics inside the Blue House with three successive presidents who all encountered different dilemmas. The first and older president to be featured in the movie is Kim Jung-Ho who, at the end of his term, won the lottery which puts him to the predicament whether he would fulfill his promise to donate the prize to his fellow countrymen or keep it all to himself and buy the things he needed after he retires. The second president, Cha Ji-Wook, who is a dashing young single father had to deal with diplomacy problems between United States, Japan and North Korea. During his term, he also encountered to choose a decision of whether to save the father of a young man seeking for his help through kidney transplant or not. The third and first female president, Han Kyuong-ja, had to go through with the crisis of her divorce after her husband gets involved with a real estate scam that also puts her credibility as a president in danger. All of these three presidents are placed into the state of distressing over the decisions they had to make between politics and ethics to resolve their personal crises. But apparently, they were able to find the answers to their problems by starting a conservation with the Blue House's head chef who unconsciously gave them words of wisdom. And although the portrayals of these presidents are just fictional, it is not be impossible that what these characters had to go through could also happen in real life. In fact, some scenarios in the film are quite applicable to the political life story of every politician.
With regard to the scenario of the first president in the movie, I think all politicians have encountered the dilemma of whether to stay true to their promises they made to the people or to just break and forget the promises they had made. All politicians, at some point, had to make promises to their people... probably because of the good intentions they have to better serve their country or maybe because they just wanted to uplift their image and popularity in the game of politics. But whatever their reasons are, the promises they make tend to be broken most of the time. Why? probably because they were never really true to their words and all of those promises were just mere white lies. Or maybe because they tend to be influenced by different factors that can alter their decisions or they just probably want to pursue their self-interests more than the interests of the majority of the people. Moreover, because of the promises that have continued to be broken, majority of us citizens are already used to it and that we no longer believe and hope for reforms or any kind of changes that our government officials always tell us. Hence, the challenge for those politicians who are in their thrones is to keep and fulfill the promises they make or better yet to just avoid telling promises to the people that they know they wouldn't do.
Highlighting the essence of the story in the term of the second president (at least based on what I understood), is the difficulty of carrying the burden of being the president for the whole country. The second president in the movie had to deal with the problems of diplomacy between other countries and that his decisions can strongly affect the lives of his citizens. It is very difficult for a president to carry the burden of his own countrymen. The future of the country depends solely on the decisions of the president and that he has to make these decisions carefully. Moreover, a deeper dilemma that a president can go through during his term is the ability to reach out to the needs of every citizen of a country. Based on the film, the president was asked by a young man to help his father survive by going through a kidney transplant. The president, who was hesitant at first, finally gave in to the request of the young man because of what his father said "you cannot love your own country if you cannot help your own neighbor". But shortly after his operation, another man begged for the president to donate his liver to him. This scenario in the last part was hilarious but the point here is that people often regard a president as a "hero"...someone who can save the people from all their sufferings and who can bring about many changes to the lives of the people. But apparently, of course, a president couldn't be superman or batman or all those other superheroes. A president is only a regular person who we have given the authority to govern us and allocate resources for us. We should not expect that a president can solve all of a country's problems because he doesn't have all the answers. So, instead of being too dependent to the president, we as part of a country, must also do our responsibilities and obligations as citizens in order to help ourselves achieve what we want to desire for our country. Because without the help on our part, the president cannot truly "save the day".
The story in the final part of the movie is for me, less interesting than the other two. But one thing I've noticed with the story is the role played by the president's spouse during the president's term in the office. The life of a president becomes public to the people as well as the life of his/her spouse. It is important for the spouse to be careful with her/his actions because any wrong doing may lead to the damage of the credibility of the president just like what is portrayed in the movie. In the life of a president, everything becomes under scrutiny. Opposition and the media are always on the lookout for any action or event that can expose the true identity of the president. They also have a way of manipulating any information into something that can make or break the image of the president. Moreover, becoming a president gives you the duty of setting an example to the people. Since people look up to you as a great leader, you as a president, must act in such a way that people will love and trust you. Sure, it is easy to pretend acting like how the people want you to be but you can never hide your true colors.
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