No Other Choice - The Violence of Compliance

We usually understand violence as the result of clear and deliberate malice. But what if violence is not the outcome of an active choice, but of compliance? If violence arises through not resisting, not questioning, and repeatedly telling oneself that there was “no other choice,” then who should be held responsible?

This film confronts that uncomfortable question head-on. In his latest work, Park Chan-wook explores—through metaphor—the ways in which the logic of survival imposed by a capitalist society turns an individual into a perpetrator, and how violence is concealed and justified in the process. In the film, violence consistently appears with a legitimate face: to protect one’s family, to secure one’s livelihood, to solve problems efficiently. These justifications obscure the brutality of violence while simultaneously sustaining the very structure that enables it. This essay examines how violence emerges, repeats itself, and is ultimately produced through compliance with structural demands. 

Disguised Violence

A society grounded entirely in capitalism is inherently deceptive. Within such a system, violence is disguised through the language of class, survival, and rationality. In capitalist society, middle-class status has become a condition of survival. Stable income, housing, and appropriate leisure—once elements of a fulfilling life—are reduced to indicators of personal worth, and those who fail to meet these standards are swiftly classified as social failures.

Mansu’s struggle likewise appears, on the surface, as a sacrifice made for the sake of his family. Beneath this appearance, however, lies an obsessive fear of losing his middle-class status. Paradoxically, the choices he makes in pursuit of that security ultimately alienate him from the very family he seeks to protect. The musical performance played by his daughter at the film’s conclusion is preserved through Mansu’s violence, yet he becomes the only person unable to hear it. Similarly, Miry, his wife, remains silent in order to preserve the family, but the cost of that silence is the permanent loss of the man she loves, while their son inherits lasting trauma. Seon-chul’s life—idealized by Mansu as a model of success—also serves as an example of how following a socially prescribed image of success leads to the loss of those one loves. When social class becomes the measure of personal value, the ability to recognize what truly matters is obscured. Like Mansu wearing earplugs upon entering the factory, the truth becomes something that can no longer be heard.

This disguise of violence extends into the realm of labor. Mansu initially resists the restructuring not merely to secure his livelihood, but to preserve a sense of professional pride—of making paper with his colleagues and contributing meaningfully to society. Yet under the pressure to maintain economic stability and middle-class status, work is reduced to a mere tool for survival, and Mansu loses everything he sought to protect. He is left alone in an empty factory, reduced to a marginal caretaker of machines—an expendable component within the system.

Finally, violence becomes normalized in the name of convenience and efficiency. The pigs culled to prevent disease, the trees felled to produce paper, and the workers laid off due to automation are all explained away as “inevitable.” When actions are justified as necessary or efficient, violence ceases to be questioned. Even when deforestation is framed as environmentally friendly because only newly planted trees are cut down, the fact remains that countless trees are destroyed. Mansu’s murder is quietly dismissed despite the presence of the weapon, because the detectives choose an explanation that is easier and more efficient to manage. Truth no longer matters; what matters is that the system continues to function smoothly. Throughout the film, violence is repeatedly concealed: the greenhouse built atop the shed where Mansu’s father committed suicide, and Red Pepper Papers—a company that promises hope to the unemployed but is ultimately designed to eliminate them—present violence in a positive guise. In this way, violence hides its cruelty behind the language of rationality and necessity, becoming part of everyday life.

The Cycle of Violence

The house Mansu considers his ideal paradise is, in reality, a space where violence has been repeated across generations. His father once ran a pig farm there, and after participating in the mass culling during an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, he was consumed by guilt and ultimately took his own life in the shed. The North Korean pistol his father used during the Vietnam War is passed down to Mansu and becomes the weapon with which he eliminates his rivals, carrying the remnants of past violence into the present. Likewise, the willingness to use any means necessary in times of crisis—disguised as responsibility—reappears when Mansu pressures his adopted son to provide false testimony.

Ironically, this three-generation repetition of violence forms the very foundation of the paradise Mansu seeks to protect. The Vietnam War, in which his father’s gun was used, contributed to national economic growth, and the same weapon is later used to commit murder in the name of protecting one’s family. Lies and threats are employed to shield his son from punishment. The house, Mansu’s paradise, is thus rooted in a lineage of violence. Beneath the apple tree in the yard—reminiscent of the forbidden fruit of Eden—lie the remains of mass-slaughtered pigs, the bodies of Mansu’s victims, and the cellphone his son stole. As Mansu’s daughter repeatedly observes, the paradise he clings to is rotten at its roots. This violence is passed down unquestioned, disguised as efficiency, survival, and necessity.

Passive Violence

No matter how actively Mansu eliminates his competitors in his attempt to secure a position at the paper company, he remains, ultimately, “the one who is chosen.” That his wife’s superior, Oh Jin-ho, occupies the position of “the one who chooses” is no coincidence. The unemployed characters in the film fail to recognize the structural nature of their predicament, instead indoctrinating themselves to fit into the answers society presents as correct.

Even amid brutality, Mansu attempts to exert control. His hobby of bonsai—bending branches with wire to impose form—reflects his desire to maintain order, yet it cannot alter the tree’s essential nature. Mansu is not someone capable of dismembering a body; instead, he bends corpses with wire, just as he bends himself to fit predetermined structures. In this sense, his murders, though extreme, represent his submission to systemic violence and his effort to conform perfectly to its demands. Through murder, he eliminates his professional pride (Beom-mo), alternative possibilities (Si-jo), and personal ideals (Seon-chul), reshaping himself into the ideal candidate the system desires. Songs such as Dragonfly and Let’s Walk that accompany the killings underscore that his violence is the result of passivity rather than impulse.

Mansu does not resist violence; he endures it, like a decayed tooth left untreated. He wishes to extract it, to become the one who chooses rather than the one chosen. But when he drunkenly pulls the tooth out in a moment of rage, the root of decay remains untouched. His action merely exposes the rot more clearly.

Conclusion

Through Mansu’s passive violence, the film demonstrates that violence does not arise solely from deliberate malice. Structural violence is concealed through the language of class, survival, and rationality, and individuals who fail to confront it instead comply through a passive acceptance of “having no choice.” As a result, Mansu becomes both a victim of violence and a perpetrator who internalizes and repeatedly enacts it. His actions are not acts of resistance but of compliance, and this compliance becomes the most stable means by which violence persists.

In the final scene, the camera lingers on trees being cut down to produce paper, shifting the locus of violence from the characters on screen to the audience who consume the paper. The film thus compels viewers to ask whether they truly stand outside this violence. There is no such thing as inevitability. Even the smallest, seemingly inconsequential acts of everyday life are ultimately the result of choice—a realization the film forces us to confront.