Juvenile Justice Pirate Bay, the Korean legal drama that raises the issue of juvenile crime and the causal link with parental or social responsibility, is available on Netflix from 25 February 2022.
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| Juvenile Justice Pirate Bay |
From February 25, 2022, the new Korean TV series Juvenile Justice is available on the Netflix catalog, a legal drama in ten episodes directed by director Jong-Chan Hong. Starring Sim Eun-Seok (Kim Hye-Soo), a side judge just appointed by the Yeonhwa District Juvenile Court to deal with the cases of very young criminals on the fringes of society.
Intransigent and fully convinced of the contempt she feels towards those minors, the woman finds herself in her hand with delicate stories that are not easy to resolve, of children left alone by absent or violent parents, stranded between addiction and aggression, tossed around in family homes a lot. often the breeding ground of as much hostility and incomprehension.
Juvenile Justice: the law on minors and age limits
The series places at the center of its reflection the law on the protection of minors in court which provides for the annulment of imputability if under fourteen years of age and a maximum sentence of twenty years of imprisonment for young people under 18, trying to ask limits and the concrete benefits of an extremely lenient (non) punishment like this (in force in the Asian country as well as in Italy) and, on the other hand, to question whether it is possible to abolish it.
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| Juvenile Justice The Pirate Bay |
Everything is filtered through the implacable and icy face of actress Kim Hye-Soo, the pivot around which the whole story revolves and the guarantee of a sort of emotional gap that permeates the stylistic totality of the work.
Entrenched behind the walls of deliberate human detachment from the painful events of the children in question and a symbol of legislation that must be as objective as possible, the judge struggles a bit to find the right coordinates of empathy with the spectator, reinforcing more than necessary the distance of impartial vision and frequently losing participation in the stories he deals with, both inside and outside the courtroom.
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| Juvenile Justice Pirate Bay |
The k-drama has the merit of touching urgent and contemporary issues, but without the courage to really understand the social reasons for that generational malaise
Although violence is handled with honesty and to make explicit its cyclical educational transmission from father to son without too many words and not depriving itself of raw elements of extreme realism, the Netflix series dares to bring the parental and social responsibilities behind the juvenile crime, but not that of fully understanding why, that is, of seeking an even broader discourse capable of touching the deepest roots of that generational malaise.
In fact, the writing seems to touch upon the causes of the crimes, even real brutal and senseless murders, however liquidating them with reasons such as the absence of parental figures, mental illnesses not properly treated, lack of money.
Truth certainly that would justify (in part) acts carried out by adolescents left alone by a society that should instead take charge of them, yet the judge does not seem to dare to go further into the thorny question, preferring instead to remain within the limits of semi-denunciation and in the coldness of staging, marked by a staid rhythm and affective rationality measured to the maximum, just as the protagonist herself approaches cases.
Juvenile Justice, however, remains interesting although not a fully compelling product, a courtroom drama with a consequent approach to crime modulations that finds its value in the univocal choice of bringing the lives of minors to court.
To understand whether or not adults are complicit in their delinquency while avoiding proposing solutions or alternatives within the narrative limit of raising (necessary and not trivial) questions about our contemporary youth condition. So in Korea as in the rest of the world.