The movie nineteen-eighty-four by George Orwell depicts the negative utopia of a totalitarian society, where a socialist party has absolute control over individuals and a sense of freedom of action and speech is lost. The movie takes place in Oceania during the time of constant wars among Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. The current Oceania is under an extreme rule of Big Brother, who is idolized as the only savior to life. The society is divided into uneven class: The leader Big Brother, then followed by the Inner Party, in which O’Brien and only a few party members belong to, and the Outer Party, to which Winston, Julia and most of the party members are present. The major population is the proletarians, often called proles. Proles are depicted as ignorant, helpless and underprivileged.

The main character of the movie, Winston Smith, works at the Ministry of Truth, one of the four ministries run by the territory. His job is to manipulate the past written works to match the current news, so that every word Big Brother passes on can transform itself to truth. Even though he is a Party member, he struggles to grasp what to do in this devastated society. While he suspects O’Brien to think the same way as him, he encounters Julia, to whom he eventually falls in love with. Despite the challenges of using the Newspeak instead of old English, and preventing himself show his thoughts in front of the telescreens, Winston works on revealing the hidden truths of the philosophy of Ingsoc and Goldstein’s Brotherhood. Unfortunately, Winston and Julia are eventually captured, where they are sent to the Ministry of Love and tortured severely.

I should say that the overall society depicted in the movie has a very different impression from the modern Korean society. First of all, Korea is run under a democracy, where citizens have more rights to the expression of speech and actions. There is no single dictator who controls everything in Korean society, rather citizens try to deliver their messages to the president. Fortunately, Koreans are not under continuous surveillance, nor they are forced to participate in any kind of ceremony similar to the Hate Week. These points pretty much shows the difference in the intensity of intervention over society between Korea and the movie’s Oceania.

Even though the overall political structure of the two societies is quite distinctive, there are some elements that are existent in both situations. Though Korea does not have a classification of the social structure, there still are people who are underprivileged, while some are very prosperous. Also, at all times there are people who are in favor of overturning the government, but have no power to fulfill their intention. In a way, these are many aspects that are always present in any society, no matter which political system the country chooses to go by.