‘Concrete Utopia’ depicts struggle for life in quake-devastated Seoul

“Concrete Utopia,” an upcoming post-apocalyptic Korean film, imaginatively explores what may sound rather unrealistic: What would happen if the apartment complex where I live were the only building to survive a massive earthquake that devastated the world?

Based on the second episode of the popular webtoon series titled “Joyful Outcast” by Kim Sung-nyung, the disaster thriller depicts the struggle to survive of the residents of an apartment complex that becomes the only surviving building after a catastrophic quake in Seoul.

They face a new threat when a few survivors from outside arrive, seeking shelter from the ruins and the harsh cold.

“I saw the webtoon series about four years ago and found that it has an apartment building as its setting unlike other disaster stories,” Director Um Tae-hwa of the film said during a press conference at a Seoul theater Wednesday to promote the project.

“Since an apartment is a space familiar to many Koreans and where they were born and raised, I adapted the work while trying to imagine what would happen there in an extreme situation,” he said.

The director, best known for “Vanishing Time: A Boy Who Returned” (2016), said he put his blood and soul into creating the filming set because “it was important to make the story sound real.”

The production team actually built an old-style apartment building that can be easily found in South Korea but with only three stories, according to the director.

Lead actor Lee Byung-hun said he was deeply impressed when he first saw the set.

“When I first went to the filming set, it felt like a real apartment. It was so identical to the typical apartments with common parking lots that I wondered if they used a real building that has only three floors remaining after destruction.”

He plays the character, Yeong-tak, who leads the residents’ efforts to establish their own rules to ensure their survival against the massive influx of refugees.

Park Seo-joon, who starred in the hit drama series “Itaewon Class” (2020) and Oscar-winning film “Parasite” (2019), takes the role of Min-seong, a resident to whom safeguarding his family becomes the only goal in his life after the disaster while actress Park Bo-young is his nurse wife named Myung-hwa who sympathizes with the refugees.

Park said he experienced no trouble in focusing on acting thanks to the realistic set.

Lee said he thinks the film should rather be classified as a “black comedy.”

“If it were a typical disaster film, the disaster would continue throughout the movie until the end and is the focus. However, this film is about what happens after a disaster, focusing on how people strive to cope, communicate with each other and overcome it,” he explained.