Synopsis
 Dong-cheol had been a pickpocket, beggar, pimp, etc. He is accustomed to the dark life of crime. One day, Dong-cheol meets Yuk-deok while trying to kidnap the fake college student, Hye-yeoug. Dong-cheol and Yuk-deok find out that Hye-yeoug is a prostitute. They do her errands and get fed, barely making it. Dong-cheol and Yuk-deok get thrown out after fighting with a customer.

 Program Note
 The film is about the ‘ghetto life’ of marginal people and their drifting lives in the outer edge of the city, hidden under the economic growth of the 80’s and the symbolic event of ‘88 Seoul Olympics. The story unfolds around the landscape of the city and Hae-young who is a prostitute pretending to be a college student. The ‘shantytown’ in Seoul, the university area of Shinchon, and the red-light district are the main locations of the film. Modern women parading on the streets are usually seen as prostitutes and Declaration of Idiot does make this categorization.
 The director LEE Jang-ho rejected realist representation through the frames distorted and twisted by a variety of experimental techniques, including an insert of sudden comic situation, fast forward recording, abridged editing, and non-diegetic sound with the visuals. Throughout the film there are no scenes with classical realism techniques. The class inequality and the bitterness carried by the lower working class towards capitalism reaches the climax when Hae-young is killed in a symbolic manner by her rich ‘clients’. Declaration of Idiot shows the allegorical space of the age by distorting and twisting the fantasy and the present at the same time. Also, making remarks on society and experimenting with forms, shows the first cinematic attempt in Korean cinema to represent the 80’s period. (KWON Eun-sun)