It was every parent's worst nightmare: In South Korea in 2008, an 8-year-old girl was abducted and violently raped on her way to school. The perpetrator was caught and the girl identified her attacker, but she still had to appear at a public trial because the police couldn't build a solid case against him. The incident blew up into a media free-for-all, which forced to victim and her family to relive their horrible ordeal over and over again.
Now South Korean director Lee Joon-ik has turned the tragedy into a movie, originally released as "So-won," and packed it with hopeful, life-affirming messages — perhaps a few too many.
The question is, of course, how does a family recover from an experience such as this? In Japan these incidents may not be common, but they're also nothing extraordinary — kids have been carrying portable anti-crime buzzers for more than a decade and, in many districts, they are forbidden by their schools to talk to or associate with strangers. Horrific crimes against children do happen, a recent example being the abduction and confinement of an 11-year-old girl in Okayama by a middle-age illustrator who told investigators he wanted to "raise the girl as I wish."