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The biggest winner at the 2020 Academy Awards was the South Korean hit Parasite. The movie won four Oscars including the most coveted prize of Best Picture. This makes Parasite the first foreign-language movie to win Best Picture and the first South Korean movie to win any type of Oscar.

Critics and audiences alike love the movie and with this amount of praise usually comes some criticism. This time the critique comes in the form of plot holes. Read on to find out some plot holes already found in the movie and what these may mean.

1 Ki-Jeong’s Teaching methods and practice

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In the film, the brother Ki-woo suggests that his sister, Ki-jeong pretends to be an art therapist named Jessica who has a suitable degree from Illinois State University in the US. The mother of the employing family, Yeong-gyo can’t initially see how “Jessica” will be able to discipline her son but to her surprise, Ki-jeong manages to do this with ease.

Ki-jeong uses her own street-smarts to bring Yeong-gyo’s son under control but she needs a way to pass this off as “an expert at work”. Ki-jeong decides to search for the words “art therapy” on Google and cites some of the techniques to Yeong-gyo. Fans have questioned the legitimacy of this plot point arguing that none of Yeong-gyo’s family ever question the plausibility of Ki-yeong’s techniques. An argument for why this never happens could be based around the fact Yeong-gyo comes off as the gullible type, and this is talked about during the movie. Her husband, Dong-ik also seems to show little interest in all the new people coming to work in his home and their daughter Da-hye is perhaps too naive to notice. Additionally, Ki-jeong’s delivery of her character Jessica is delivered with the perfect amount of rigidness to make it believable.  

2 Geun-sae explanation for why he is hiding under the house

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The biggest turn of the film occurs at the time when the fired maid, Moon-gwang returns to the Park residence one night. After being back in the house for a short time she reveals that her husband Geun-sae is being hidden in the basement as he is hiding from loan sharks.

It could be argued that this plot point is not explored properly leading to the audiences’ suspension of disbelief being a bit too extreme. The question of why he borrowed money in the first place is not explored and why he should go to the extreme measure of hiding in someone’s basement for many years. Audiences can probably guess that if found, Guen-sae would be in serious trouble with the loan sharks. However, if the loan sharks are so dangerous, why haven’t they tried looking for him? An explanation for this poorly explored plot point could be based around Geun-sae’s character. We see him as a hopeless person, so he has probably already condemned himself to a lifetime of living in the Park’s basement already.

3 Ki-Taek mimicking the light switch tapping

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After the movie’s extreme climax, Ki-Taek retreats to the basement of the families home mimicking the downfall of Geun-sae. The audience learns that in the interim a German family moves into the house and Ki-taek begins to tap the light switch on and off to try to communicate to his son Ki-woo in the hopes that he would notice. Some fans have questioned why the German family wouldn’t notice the odd flickering of the lights in their home and not do anything about it.

That being said, The Park’s never did anything about the lights either even after their son’s worrying encounter, which is discussed in the movie.

4 Da-song doesn’t seem to do anything with the coded message

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The Park’s young son Da-song is the only member of the family to notice the coded messages in the light switch. At one point in the movie, he evens writes the code down presumably to decode later. Despite this, Da-song never seems to do anything with the message. Da-song even notices the messages again during the movie’s climax at his birthday party but still does nothing with the message. Fans have suggested this might be because Da-song doesn’t care so much about what happened to him in the past, but that he is rather just craving more attention from his mother and father.  

5 Park’s Not Present in the concluding part of the movie

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Skip this part, if you are not wanting to read any spoilers

In the final part of the movie, the Park family are not present when Ki-woo and his mother Chung-sook are being sentenced for their participation in the fateful events at Da-song’s birthday party. Viewers of the movie might be left asking why they aren’t in court on that day, but the plot seems to lend itself to the idea that Yeung-gyo probably moved the family far away from their previous home.

6 The House at the end of the movie

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Even though a murder took place at the Park’s house nothing really happened to it after the fact. Usually, when a murder or serious crime happens at a property, realtors will normally have the house rebuilt, or at the very least redecorated to look completely different from the original. However, on this occasion, the house is resold to a German family and it looks very much identical to the Park’s residence.

One explanation for this is in the movie’s central themes. The movie tries to show cyclical acts much like the life cycle of a parasite or other virus. One would die only to be replaced by another almost identical version. This means that the new German family is not really any different from the Park family.  

7 Ki-taek invisibility

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Skip this part, if you are not wanting to read any spoilers 

Perhaps the most obvious plot hole of the movies happens as Ki-taek tries to escape the Park residence from under the table. While Ki-taek is crawling to safety from under the table Da-song radios his parents Dong-ik and Yeong-gyo from the garden while they are sitting right next to Ki-taek. At this point, Ki-taek decides his best course of action is to simply freeze still on the floor and hope no one notices him. It is here, where audiences find it almost impossible to believe that Ki-taek isn’t seen even though he is lying on the floor right next to Dong-ik and Yeong-gyo.

It can be argued that this happens because of some of the movie’s central themes. The movie tries to show that the rich or upper class, refuse to see the lower class as people, and do not empathize with them in any way. It can be argued that Ki-taek is completely invisible to them unless he is in his role working for the Park’s

Whether you agree that the movie’s plot hole can be ignored or not, Parasite is an excellent movie deserving of all its praise. If you haven’t seen it yet, then make it next on your list.