JUNG_E, a science fiction film from South Korea was written and directed by Yeon Sang-ho. Kang Soo-yeon died before the film’s release, so this is her final movie appearance.
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The film’s action picks up in the year 2194. The story actually begins 35 years earlier in the year 2159. By 2195, climate change has forced human beings to abandon the earth’s surface. Instead, they have been living for decades in 80 man-made shelters that have been built in space. Also decades previously, three of the shelters broke away from the others that comprise the Allied Force. The breakaway shelters formed the Adrian Republic and began a civil war with attacks on earth and the shelters of the Allied Force.
Captain Yun Jung-yi (Kim Hyun-Joo) joined the Allied Force as a mercenary to pay for the treatment of the lung tumor suffered by her daughter, Yun Seo-hyun (Park So-yi as the young Yun Seo-hyun and Kant Soo-yeon as the adult Yun Seo-hyun). Captain Yun Jung-yi became a legend among the Allied Forces leading them to victory over a long string of missions. However, on the day that Yun Seo-hyun underwent surgery, Captain Yun failed and fell into a coma.
The Kronoid Laboratory works to develop AI technologies. They convince Captain Jung-yi’s family to allow them to clone the Captain’s brain in exchange for paying for the living expenses and education of Yun Seo-hyun.
Thirty-five years later, Yun Seo-hyun joined Kronoid Laboratory. She is the lead researcher for project JUNG_E, and Kim Sang-hoon is the project director. The project has copied Captain Jung-yi’s brain data and inserted it into a series of android bodies in an effort to develop an AI mercenary code-named JUNG_E. Kronoid sends the androids through simulations of the final mission in which Captain Jung-yi failed.
Yun Seo-hyun hopes she can extract combat data memory from her mother’s brain data. This will help create a superior combat AI, restoring her mother’s image as a successful warrior. However, the androids repeatedly fail the simulation, just as Yun Seo-Hyun’s mother did. Sang-hoon is as driven as Seo-hyun to see the project succeed. They hold many discussions in the lab that touch on the movie’s themes. They seek to solve the problem of the android’s repeated failures.
Then, Seo-hyun learns that her cancer has returned, leaving her only three months to live. She also learns that the Allied Forces and the Adrian Republic have signed a treaty ending the civil war and the need for a combat AI. Seo-hyun then discovers Kronoid Laboratories is switching its research to domestic uses for AI and that one of her team members has to investigate the use of JUNG_E robots as sex toys.
Seo-hyun and one of the JUNG_E robots flee Kronoid aboard an elevated train pursued by Kronoid security forces and combat androids. Sang-hoon has believed that he is human, but the chase reveals that he is also an AI robot. Sang-hoon shoots Seo-hyun, and the JUNG_E robot fights him off. Sang-ho’s part of the train falls, and he is destroyed. Seo-hyun tells the JUNG_E robot to continue the escape alone. The JUNG_E displays affection for Seo-hyun before leaving, and the movie ends with JUNG_E surveying the earth as she stands on a rock on top of a mountain range.
