Summary
Ki-jung pretends to be the administrator at "The Care" and asks Mrs. Park, over the phone, for a number of formal documents. Soon enough, Chung-sook is working as the housekeeper, bringing fruit to her two children, the tutors. In the middle of Da-song's session, Mr. Park arrives home with gifts, including walkie talkies. While looking at the gifts, Da-song observes that Chung-sook and Ki-taek smell alike, and when Mrs. Park sends him back up to "Jessica," he says that she smells that way too.
At home, the Kims discuss the fact that they will have to use different soaps, detergents, and fabric softeners from one another. Ki-jung suggests that what they should really do is leave the semi-basement, which is creating the smell. Ki-taek observes that, given the state of the job market, they are lucky to all be employed and to be worrying about the small issues they are worrying about. In the middle of a speech about his gratefulness, he sees the man outside their window, urinating in the street, and Ki-woo takes the rock outside to scare him. At the last minute, Ki-taek gives him a water bottle to use instead. He throws water on the urinator, while Ki-jung takes a slow-motion video, giggling.
The scene shifts to Da-song in the Parks' yard, reporting on the weather to his father via walkie talkie. Da-hye is pouting about the fact that the family is going on a camping trip for Da-song's birthday together, but Mrs. Park insists that they ought to have fun. Mrs. Park goes down to the basement and tells Chung-sook to pack their outdoor projector and Da-song's raincoat for the trip.
Before they leave, Mrs. Park points out their dogs to Chung-sook and gives her the food that they are meant to eat. After the Parks leave, Chung-sook sleeps on their couch next to Ki-taek, while Ki-woo lies on the lawn outside, reading. Ki-woo drinks Voss water from the fridge, while Ki-jung watches television in a bubble bath.
Ki-woo goes in Da-hye's room and looks through her diaries. Later in the evening, they drink whiskey and eat food in the living room while it rains. Chung-sook asks Ki-woo about the yellow notebook he is carrying around, and he tells them it is Da-hye's diary. Ki-jung grabs it and reads, mocking him for dating his student. He tells his family he will ask Da-hye out when she enters university, and they all imagine what it will be like when the Parks are their in-laws.
Ki-woo imagines his wedding to Da-hye, in which he will have to bring in actors to play his family. As a family, they discuss the fact that while acting has been a big part of their ruse, the Park are also incredibly gullible. When Ki-taek observes that Mrs. Park is nice, even though she is rich, Chung-sook insists that she is nice because she is rich. "Rich people are naive. No resentments, no creases on them," says Ki-taek, and Chung-sook agrees.
Ki-taek wonders if the previous driver has another job, worried about him. Ki-jung gets angry, suggesting that they are the ones he should be worrying about. Ki-woo observes that, of all of them, Ki-jung fits in best in the fancy house, "like she's lived here for years." Chung-sook makes fun of Ki-taek, observing that he is comfortable now, but if Mr. Park walked through the door, he would scurry away like a cockroach. Abruptly, Ki-taek becomes very angry, grabbing Chung-sook's collar and throwing the plates and bottles off the table.
Chung-sook laughs suddenly, and Ki-taek joins her, as if the whole interaction was a joke. Suddenly, in the midst of their laughter, the doorbell rings, shocking everyone. They check the security camera and see that it is Moon-gwang, out in the rain. She rings the doorbell incessantly, and when Chung-sook answers, tells her that she forgot something in the basement under the kitchen.
After consulting with her family, Chung-sook decides to let Moon-gwang into the house. As Moon-gwang goes downstairs, Chung-sook asks what she left behind, and Moon-gwang invites her to accompany her downstairs. With the encouragement of her family, Chung-sook goes downstairs, where Moon-gwang is pushed up against a cupboard and trying to push it aside with her whole body. Chung-sook helps her move the cupboard and Moon-gwang falls to the floor with a thud.
Moon-gwang opens a secret door and calls to someone, running down a flight of stairs. Chung-sook runs after her, frightened, until she finds Chung-sook in an underground bunker with a sickly man. Chung-sook is shocked and Moon-gwang tells her that she knows her name because she still texts with Da-song. She then tells her that she cut the wire to the intercom, so that her visit will not be recorded, then introduces the sickly man as her husband, Geun-sae.
Chung-sook asks Moon-gwang how long her husband has been there, and they decide that it has been four years, ever since the famous architect who built the house moved to Paris. She explains that many wealthy houses in South Korea have bunkers in case of disaster, but that the architect was embarrassed to have one and never mentioned it to the Park family.
Chung-sook tells Moon-gwang that she has to call the police, but Moon-gwang begs her to take pity on her and her husband, as they have no house and no money, only debts that they must repay to loan sharks. Nearby, Geun-sae eats a banana, and tells Chung-sook that his business folded, as Moon-gwang offers Chung-sook some money for her silence, a small monthly payment in exchange for leaving Geun-sae some food.
Just as Chung-sook goes to call the police, her family, who have been listening on the stairs, fall down to the bottom, revealing themselves. Moon-gwang recognizes them as the other servants in the Park household, and takes a video just as Ki-woo calls Ki-taek "dad." Moon-gwang realizes that they are all related and begins to laugh, before threatening to send the video she took to Mrs. Park.
Moon-gwang leads her husband upstairs to the living room, where she gives him a massage and they make the Kims take on ridiculous poses, threatening to send the video to Mrs. Park if they do not. Geun-sae compares the video to a North Korean missile. Moon-gwang impersonates a North Korean news anchor and takes a video disparaging the Kim family, and belittles them for not knowing about the architect who built the house, and not understanding art.
Moon-gwang and Geun-sae reminisce about how they would bask in the sunlight in the house when they lived there with the architect. We see them dancing in the living room in a flashback.
Analysis
A great deal of dramatic tension and humor comes from the Kims' deception of the Parks. We spend a great deal of time watching the Kims expertly duping their wealthy employers, inhabiting various roles and exploiting their paranoia and gullibility for their own gain. Just as it seems like the Parks could not possibly fall for another of the Kims' schemes, they do. In this section of the film, we see all four of the Kim family members working under the same roof, pretending to be completely different people.
The Kims are grateful for their position in the household, even when they fear getting found out. After a conversation about the fact that Da-song noted that they all smell the same, Ki-taek observes that, in the present economy, they are lucky to all have jobs, and under the same roof. The family rejoices that they have been able to figure out a way to live even in an economic system that is not conducive to class mobility.
When the Parks go on a family vacation, the Kims take over the house, taking the places of their employers. Chung-sook and Ki-taek nap on the couch, while Ki-woo reads on the grass outside. They take baths, eat foods, and spread out in the luxuriously large house, cosplaying as their entitled and out-of-touch superiors. It is a comical and fascinating sequence, in which Bong Joon-ho stages class inequality in a stark and undeniable way. In these scenes, we see the ways that the luxuries that one family takes for granted can be such a gift to another family.
But there is a tremor of violence in their interactions, just below the surface. The violence often reveals itself to be playful, a game, but it often shocks in its first moments. For instance, right after Chung-sook calls Ki-taek a cockroach, he throws the bottles and plates off the table and grabs her collar, as if to hurt her. Ki-woo and Ki-jung both start begging their father not to hurt their mother, but as the parents begin to laugh, everyone realizes it was all for play. This reversal is humorous, but also unsettling, in that it suggests that the enactment of violence—even as a performance—is readily available to the characters.
In this section, a huge and game-changing narrative reveal takes place. When Moon-gwang unexpectedly visits the house, she reveals a subterranean bunker beneath the Parks' house that even the Parks do not know about. There, she is keeping her husband, on the run from loan sharks, and begs for Chung-sook to keep her secret. However, the tables turn when Moon-gwang discovers that the Kims are all related, and she and her husband blackmail the family by threatening to tell the Parks. The two working-class families struggle to assert their dominance over the other, in a house where they both have slaved away, but which belongs to neither of them.
