If you watched Parasite and thought Mr. Park was the villain, you are definitely not alone.
But there is another group of viewers asking a surprisingly difficult question:
What did Mr. Park actually do that was so evil?
Years after Bong Joon-ho’s movie became a global phenomenon, viewers are still debating whether the wealthy Park family are bad people — or simply privileged people who have no idea how the other half lives.
The Park Family Are Actually the Victims of a Scam
Look only at what happens on the surface.
The Kim family lies to the Parks from the beginning.
Ki-woo pretends to be a qualified tutor.
His sister Ki-jung becomes “Jessica.”
They manipulate the Parks into firing their driver and longtime housekeeper so Ki-taek and Chung-sook can replace them.
From the Parks’ perspective, they hire people they believe are professionals and pay them for their work.
They have no idea the four employees are one family.
That is why some viewers struggle to see the Parks as villains.
One Reddit discussion asked essentially the same question:
Why are the Park family considered the bad guys when they are the ones being deceived?
And many viewers agreed.
But Mr. Park Keeps Talking About “The Line”
Mr. Park’s problem is more subtle.
He repeatedly talks about employees not “crossing the line.”
Ki-taek can drive him.
He can listen to him.
He can even share personal moments with him.
But he must always remember that he is an employee.
Mr. Park wants intimacy without equality.
Then there is the smell.
He associates Ki-taek’s odor with people who ride the subway.
Ki-taek overhears this conversation.
Mr. Park never directly insults him to his face.
But Ki-taek realizes something painful:
No matter how well he dresses or behaves, Mr. Park can still smell the social class he comes from.
The Rain Scene Makes the Divide Even Clearer
After a violent storm, the Kim family’s semi-basement apartment is flooded.
They lose almost everything.
The next morning, Mrs. Park talks happily about the beautiful weather and how the rain cleared the pollution from the sky.
She does not know what happened to the Kims.
That is important.
She is not deliberately being cruel.
The point is that she doesn’t have to know.
The same rain that destroys one family’s home makes another family’s garden party more pleasant.
That may be the most uncomfortable kind of inequality in Parasite.
Nobody needs to be deliberately evil for it to exist.
So Is Mr. Park a Bad Person?
This is where Reddit viewers remain divided.
One side argues that Mr. Park is snobbish and insensitive, but hardly a villain.
During the chaotic birthday scene, his son is unconscious. Wanting the car keys immediately is exactly what a frightened father would do.
Others argue that this misses the larger point.
Mr. Park may not intentionally hurt poor people, but his comfort depends on people whose lives he barely notices.
Both readings can exist at the same time.
And Bong Joon-ho appears to have designed the movie that way.
The director described Parasite as a “tragedy without villains.”
That phrase may be the key.
Mr. Park does not have to be an evil man for Ki-taek to feel humiliated by him.
And Ki-taek does not have to be an innocent victim for his humiliation to be real.
Maybe the Villain Isn’t Mr. Park
Perhaps that is why the question has survived for so long.
Parasite would have been much easier to understand if Mr. Park were a cruel billionaire who deliberately abused his workers.
But he isn’t.
He can be polite.
He pays his employees.
He loves his family.
And he can still treat the people working for him as if an invisible line separates their worlds.
That leaves viewers with a much more uncomfortable possibility:
Maybe Parasite never wanted us to find a villain at all.
Maybe it wanted us to look at the system that put the Parks above the stairs, the Kims below them — and another family even further underground.