Review | Busan 2025: Good News movie review – hilarious Korean farce based on a real-life hijacking
Byun Sung-hyun’s riotously entertaining black comedy coming to Netflix features a whip-smart script and deftly judged humour
4/5 stars
The event in question is the March 1970 hijacking of Japan Airlines flight 351 by members of the Red Army Faction of the Japan Communist League. What unfolds is a riotously entertaining black comedy about the nature of truth, the power of propaganda and the delicate intricacies of international cooperation.
Featuring an all-star cast that includes Sol Kyung-gu, Hong Kyung, Ryoo Seung-bum and Takayuki Yamada, Good News, which just premiered at the 30th Busan International Film Festival, stays closer to how the events actually played out than its opening statement might suggest.
After seizing control of the aircraft in Japan, the hijackers, led by Denji (Show Kasamatsu), demand to be flown to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, where they hope to receive political asylum.
When the plane enters South Korean airspace, however, an international crisis team of politicians, military personnel and advisers from Japan, Korea and the United States concocts an elaborate ruse to deceive the terrorists by disguising Gimpo International Airport in Seoul to look like Pyongyang and directing the plane to land there instead.