Summary
Just as Moon-gwang and Geun-sae begin to reminisce, the Kim family charges at them, knocking the cellphone out of Moon-gwang's hand and onto the floor. A struggle for the phone ensues, when Moon-gwang begins to hit them with a vase. Ki-jung runs to the fridge and grabs a bag of peaches, emptying it onto Moon-gwang's face and triggering an allergic reaction. Ki-woo deletes the video as the house telephone rings.
It is Mrs. Park, who asks Chung-sook if she can make some ram-don for Da-song, since they are returning home early from the camping trip because of the rain overflowing the river. She tells Chung-sook that they are eight minutes away from the house, and Chung-sook hangs up the phone, asking her family what ram-don is.
She rushes to the kitchen and cleans, making the ram-don, as Ki-woo and Ki-taek bring Moon-gwang and Geun-sae down to the bunker, binding their hands and feet. Ki-jung pushes the broken plates and bottles under the couch, as Chung-wook chops the meat for the dish. Just as the Parks are returning home, Ki-jung tosses Ki-woo the journal he stole from Da-hye's room and hides under the living room table.
The Parks gather for dinner, as Moon-gwang runs up the stairs of the bunker, yelling for Mrs. Park. When she reaches the top of the stairs, Chung-sook pushes her back down just in time, and she goes flying down to the bottom with a thud.
Ki-taek drags Moon-gwang's body into the bunker, when he hears Geun-sae chanting something. When he goes to investigate, he sees that Geun-sae hits the buttons that turn on the lights in the front stairway, which make it seem like there is a motion sensor. "You do this everyday?" Ki-taek asks, and Geun-sae tells him that he sends messages, via Morse Code, to express his gratitude. He suggests that Da-song will be able to parse out the code, since he is a Boy Scout.
Upstairs, Mrs. Park notes that the light is going on and off, and confides to Chung-sook that Da-song is post-traumatic, because he one saw a ghost in the house when he was in first grade. We see Ki-taek tying Geun-sae to a chair, as Mrs. Park tells Chung-sook that on Da-song's birthday, late at night, he snuck into the kitchen to eat his cake, when he saw a ghost coming up the stairs from the basement. In flashback, we see that the ghost in Geun-sae.
Ki-taek asks Geun-sae if he has a plan, and Geun-sae tells him he feels like he was born in the basement. He tells him that he does not qualify for the National Pension, and wants to keep living in the bunker into old age.
Upstairs, Mrs. Park tells Chung-sook that a ghost in the house brings wealth, while Ki-taek scrambles downstairs. When he finds Moon-gwang on the stairs, he notices she has suffered a head wound and is relieved that she is dead. He then leaves and closes up the bunker from the outside.
In Da-hye's room, Ki-woo is hiding under the bed, while one of the Parks' dogs looks at him. Da-hye almost finds him, but then goes to talk to her mom instead. Ki-woo escapes from Da-hye's room and goes downstairs. Just as Ki-jung, Ki-taek, and Ki-woo are about to escape, Da-song comes downstairs, and runs outside to set up a tent. The whole Park family comes downstairs, as the Kims hide under the living room table.
As Da-hye goes up to sleep, Mr. and Mrs. Park sit on the couch looking out at Da-song's tent, and speaking to him on the walkie talkie. They then decide to sleep on the couch, to watch over Da-song. As they curl up on the couch, Mr. Park thinks he can smell Ki-taek, commenting on the fact that his driver smells like an old radish or a boiled rag, or a person who rides the subway.
As they lie on the couch, Mr. Park begins to touch Mrs. Park's breast, and compares the couch to the backseat of a car. As he touches her crotch area, he tells her that if she wears the cheap panties he found in the car, he will get more turned on. "Buy me drugs!" Mrs. Park moans, in ecstasy.
Later, when the couple is asleep, Chung-sook texts her family telling them to sneak out. Ki-jung and Ki-woo make it to the stairs, but as Ki-taek slides across the floor, Da-song calls to his father on the walkie-talkie, saying he cannot sleep. As they talk, Ki-taek slides across the floor and the family sneaks out of the Parks' garage, running out into the rain.
When the Kims return to their neighborhood, Ki-jung asks Ki-taek what he did with the people in the bunker, and he tells her he tied them up. Ki-jung becomes anxious about the fact that they do not have a plan, but Ki-taek tells her that they have to be grateful that they made it out of there safely.
When they arrive at their house, the streets are flooding with sewage water. Their house is completely underwater. The toilet is overflowing and the apartment is filled with brackish sewage. Ki-jung sits on top of the toilet, which is overflowing, and smokes a cigarette. Ki-woo finds the rock that his friend gave him.
Suddenly, the scene shifts back to the bunker. Moon-gwang is still alive, but concussed, and she goes over to her husband to help him escape. She tells her husband that Chung-sook pushed her down the stairs.
Analysis
The violence that until now has been lying dormant beneath the surface of the narrative bursts forth in this section of the film. When Moon-gwang and her husband struggle with the Kim family, the stakes exceed the ornamental concerns of the upper-class Park household, and become life-and-death. Moon-gwang and Geun-sae fear that if they are thrown out of the bunker, they will be killed by loan sharks, and the Kim family worries about losing the employment that is keeping them afloat in the world. As a result, a battle ensues, first as a cold war—in which Moon-gwang threatens to send incriminating evidence to the Parks—and then as outright violence, with wrestling, clobbering, and biological warfare (the triggering of Moon-gwang's allergic response to peaches).
Making matters even more complicated is the fact that the Parks are returning from their vacation early because of the rain. In the midst of the struggle between the former housekeeper's family and the current housekeeper's family, the Kims must now also clean up the house and make themselves scarce in time for the Parks' imminent arrival. In the blink of an eye, the stakes of the film become extremely high, and the Kims' stability as employees becomes extremely tenuous.
The tension continues to escalate once the Parks are home. The Kims must silence Moon-gwang and Geun-sae as well as escape from the house, unnoticed, but this proves more complicated when Da-song elects to sleep in a tent outside and Mr. and Mrs. Park sleep on the couch to keep watch over him. Ki-woo, Ki-taek, and Ki-jung are all hiding under the table when the Parks make this decision, which heightens the dramatic irony considerably. Not only are the Kims already in a rather precarious position, but it does not seem like they will be able to escape any time soon.
This awkward situation is made all the more awkward by the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Park gossip about Ki-taek and demonstrate their condescending class privilege when they are alone. On the couch, Mr. Park compares Ki-taek's scent to that of an old radish, or a boiled rag, and the camera cuts to Ki-taek's face under the coffee table, as he smells his own shirt. Mr. Park's disparaging comments become all the more classed when he suggests that the smell is something one smells when one rides the subway, suggesting that the people who must ride the subway—less economically privileged people—smell worse than rich people. It is a tragic moment, in which Ki-taek must explicitly confront the secret prejudices his employers hold against him.
Bong Joon-ho stages the class disparity between the Parks and the Kims in the sequence of the rainstorm. For the Parks, the rainstorm ruins their camping trip, but does not deter Da-song from camping in the backyard, so hearty is their American-made tent. For the Kims, they return to find their home and neighborhood completely flooding with sewage. Their domestic lives have been completely destroyed, and the house is filled with literal feces. By showing these domestic scenarios juxtaposed with one another, Bong Joon-ho stages the gross extent to which class inequality completely rearranges the conditions of lives, and how something that is innocuous for a wealthy family is actually completely destructive to a poor family.
