If I had to distill Korean media to its most singular trait, it’s that their makers often find an alchemic way of blending multiple genres seamlessly. The Netflix hit Squid Game mixed high-concept murder game tropes with anti-capitalist sentiment and family drama to world-dominating effect, and this year’s star-studded Korean series, Moving, does the same to the superhero genre. I’ve no doubt more people would be talking about this hit series were it not locked away on Hulu without any promotion.
First, a little background. Moving is a brand-new Korean action series based on a webcomic from author Kang Full, one of the earliest Korean comic creators to obtain domestic mainstream recognition with numerous comics adapted into Korean shows and movies. This includes the 2012 thriller The Neighbors, which earned several nominations at the Baeksang Awards, which could be considered Korea’s equivalent of the Academy Awards.
Moving blends a coming-of-age story of a young boy named Kim Bong-seok with a superhero story akin to The Boys, with an emphasis on brutal fight scenes and realistic treatment of how superheroes could exist in the real world. In Moving, superpowered humans who’ve previously served as black-ops agents for various national intelligence agencies around the world have since retired but are now being brutally and mercilessly hunted down by a mysterious assassin.
Bong-seok is part of a younger generation of superpowered teenagers with the ability to fly ever since he was a child. Rather than a story about Bong-seok learning to control his powers, Moving swerves by examining how this innocuous power could become a parent’s worst nightmare. Given that as a baby Bong-seok is unable to control this power, the threat of him flying off into space haunts his mother, who is forced to send her child off to school with weights to prevent a tragedy. A very teenage problem arises when a new girl named Jang Hee-soo (who’s also hiding a secret ability of her own)transfers to his high school. Thanks to his newfound crush, Bong-seok seems to find himself floating whenever Hee-soo looks at him. What makes Moving work is that it is essentially two different superhero shows in one. While Bong-seok’s coming-of-age, superpowered romance is happening, the second, more action-focused part of the show is occurring in the background when a mysterious assassin is hunting the retired superheroes around Seoul. In one standout battle, Ju-won, one of the parents, has the ability to regenerate himself. This means he has no problem having every bone in his body broken in order to take down the mysterious assassin. His fight makes Wolverine’s regeneration seem almost pleasant in comparison. Just check out a snippet of a fight scene from the series.
Well, Frank-Naju fight scene was outstanding, but it can't beat Jang Joowon and Frank fight scene, this is so satisfying the way they fought it out but they recovered not long after. DAMN Ryu Seung Ryong and Ryu Seung Bum were so insane for this scene#Moving #무빙 #MovingEp7 pic.twitter.com/Koe2mmkMeK
— nophias?| soocheol nara au? | #무빙 (@nophiasandverb) August 10, 2023
And of course, there’s the international intrigue of it all. Governments both foreign and domestic are discovered to be engaged in a deep conspiracy of raising the next generation of child supersoldiers. And as is the case whenever the Korean government faces off against a hostile nation, North Korea is involved in the superhero conspiracy as well.
Moving demonstrates the same kind of effortless blending of genres the best Korean movies and shows have become known for. Bong-Seok and Hee-soo’s budding romance is the right level of sweet and humorous and gives My Adventures With Superman’s Lois and Clark competition for the cutest superhero romance this year. But it also makes you fully invested in the couple, as the audience knows there’s a possibly violent fate awaiting them, just like their parents.
Alongside the historic budget, Disney has been heavily promoting the series in Korea as it boasts a who’s who of top-level Korean talent. Just as Squid Game featured household-name Korean actors like Lee Jae-Jung and Lee Byung-Hyun, Moving showcases a similar level of Korean star power, including actor Ryu Seung-ryong (whose action-crime comedy Extreme Job is currently the second highest-grossing film of all time in South Korea). That is to say, between the budget and cast, Moving is not just another South Korean import hastily licensed in the US to ride the Korean Wave, but a genuine blockbuster production.
Squid Game, which Netflix immediately began promoting when it looked to be a hit, became inescapable once audiences discovered the show. But Moving’s muted release in the United States is weirdly limp compared to the rollout the show is receiving in other regions. The series also has a bit of a strange domestic release schedule, with the first seven episodes available now on Hulu, and two new episodes released each week on Tuesdays.
Nevertheless, Moving is South Korea’s first real stab at the superhero genre since the Marvel Cinematic Universe has taken over the pop-culture world. It’s not that South Korea has no interest in capes — MCU movies have performed strongly at the Korean box office for years now — but Korean filmmakers seem to take joy in finding uniquely local angles to mix with the popular genre du jour, as in the case of Kingdom which combined zombies with the medieval Korean period drama. And as if on cue Moving has a story that slots right into this current era of superhero fatigue. Rather than working to build an interconnected universe, Moving is largely self-contained and requires no knowledge of the source material or watching a handful of origin story movies.
Like Squid Game, Moving’s pilot is exposition-heavy and delightfully melodramatic, making the action — when it finally hits — all that much more surprising and powerful.
What is immediately apparent to me as someone who has watched a lot of Korean stories over the years is that Moving is made with a clear creative vision in mind. There have been instances in the past where Korean creatives, drunk on massive budgets and dreams of global success, squandered their talent to create messy, CGI-extravaganzas (I’m looking at you D-Wars). But Moving feels like a serious attempt at answering what K-Dramas could offer to the superhero genre.
And the result is a show that is, so far, succeeding at what Korean media does best—taking existing multiple genres and blending them together into a surprising mix that doesn’t exist anywhere else, especially compared to the superhero offerings Disney+ has put out so far this year.
Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's Senior Features Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.
