Parasite (2019) Trivia Quiz

Answer: A scholar's rock

The Kims are a family of ne'er-do-wells who live in a semi-basement apartment and struggle to hold down a steady job. At the start of the film, they have resorted to sponging off their neighbors' wi-fi and working menial, low-paying jobs like folding pizza boxes to get by. They even keep their windows open when their street is being fumigated, in a desperate attempt to get rid of their stinkbug infestation.

Ki-woo's friend Min, a college student, arrives at the Kims' apartment at the start of the film to pay his respects. "When I said I was meeting Ki-woo, my grandfather insisted I bring this to you," he says, as he places a heavy box on the kitchen table. He opens the lid to reveal an ornate grey stone sitting on a wooden display stand. It is a suseok, or a scholar's rock or viewing stone. "My grandfather has collected scholar's rocks since his cadet days. Now the annex, the study, every room in the house is filled with these things," Min explains. "But this stone here is said to bring material wealth to families." Ki-woo holds up the stone to the light. "This is so metaphorical," he remarks as he admires it. "It's a very opportune gift," Ki-taek says appreciatively. "Please relay our deepest thanks to your grandpa." Only Chung-sook appears unimpressed. "Food would be better," she mutters under her breath.

The scholar's rock is supposed to confer prosperity and good fortune on the Kims, but brings them something quite different by the end of the film.

Answer: Replace him as English tutor to the daughter of a wealthy family

Min presents his proposal to Ki-woo over a glass of soju. "Park Da-hye, high school sophomore," he says as he holds up a picture of his student on his phone. "You take over as her English tutor." Ki-woo is confused. "Tutor a rich kid. It pays well," Min offers. "She's a nice girl. Look after her while I'm studying abroad." When Ki-woo asks why he doesn't just ask one of his university friends to do it, Min explains that he hopes to have a romantic relationship with Da-hye when she is older, and he only trusts Ki-woo to take over as her tutor. "When she enters university, I'll officially ask her out. So you take care of her until then. If it's you, I can leave in peace," he says. Still doubtful, Ki-woo questions his qualifications for the gig. "Ki-woo, think about it," Min says. "For years including your military services, you took the university entrance exam four times. Grammar, vocabulary, composition, conversation." Min is confident that Ki-woo is up to the task. He convinces Ki-woo that he'll be a shoe-in with his recommendation and some forged credentials. "Plus, how should I describe the mother?" Min adds, pausing to find the suitable word. "She's a bit simple. Young and simple."

Ki-jung helps Ki-woo forge his college paperwork and he attends an interview with Mrs. Park, who is less interested in documents and more interested in his teaching style and insists on observing his first lesson with Da-hye. Ki-woo manages to impress both Mrs. Park and Da-hye, and gets the job.

Answer: Art therapy

The Parks live in an upper-class neighborhood in a large, comfortable house with a beautiful sun-lit yard in front. When Ki-woo attends at their home for his first lesson with Da-hye, Mrs. Park chats with him about her son's obsession with native Americans and shows him his paintings. "We've been through so many art teachers. None of them lasts even a month," she says. "And Da-song is just so hard to control." Sensing an opportunity, Ki-woo tells Mrs. Park about a friend of his cousin who studied applied arts at Illinois State University and provides lessons to aspiring artists. "Her teaching is unusual, but she knows how to handle kids," he explains. "She's got a special reputation in her field. But even though her methods are unique, she can help kids get into good art schools." Her curiosity piqued, Mrs. Park asks Ki-woo to arrange a meeting.

Ki-jung attends at the Parks' house posing as "Jessica". She conducts a quick evaluation with Da-song and sits down with Mrs. Park with her assessment. "Madame, I told you that I study art psychology and art therapy?" she begins. "Did anything happen to Da-song in first grade?" Mrs. Park lets out a gasp and covers her mouth with her hands. Ki-jung shows Mrs. Park the painting that Da-song just made during their lesson. "The lower right region of a painting is called the 'schizophrenia zone'. Psychotic symptoms often reveal themselves here," she explains, pointing at a messy black figure in the corner of the painting. "Look here. Da-song painted this unusual shape, right?" Mrs. Park looks to where she is pointing, and is startled when she notices a similar shape in the same location in Da-song's painting hanging on the kitchen wall. "I've stared at that painting at every meal. But I had no idea," Mrs. Park pleads with tears in her eyes, her failure as a mother on display for all to see. "This is all a black box into Da-song's mind," Ki-jung says calmly. "Would you like to open that box with me, Madame?" She explains that Da-song will require four two-hour sessions per week and that because this was art therapy and not simply tutoring, her charges would be higher. Mrs. Park tearfully agrees to her terms.

Over lunch at a buffet restaurant to celebrate their new-found employment, the siblings discuss their good fortune. "What did you do to that woman yesterday?" Ki-woo asks. "She was freaking out. Saying she was so moved, you put her in shock." Ki-jung laughs. "I don't know!" she says. "I googled 'art therapy' and ad-libbed the rest. Then suddenly she's weeping."

Answer: Chauffeur

Ki-jung gets a lift from the Parks' young, attractive driver at the end of her first lesson, and picks up a slightly sleazy vibe from him. She leaves something behind under the passenger seat of the car, and later tells Ki-woo that she "set a trap in the Benz". Over lunch, Ki-jung asks her father if he drove a lot of Benzes when he worked as a driver. "Not then, but I did when I worked as a valet," Ki-taek explains. "We're moving to the next stage already?" Ki-woo remarks, impressed by his sister.

Mr. Park is riding in the back seat of his Mercedes reading some papers when he drops a page on the floor of the car. As he leans forward to retrieve it, he notices something sticking out from under the seat in front. He picks it up. It is Ki-jung's underwear. Mr. Park stares at his driver. That night, Mr. Park confides in his wife at home. They conclude that their driver must be some sort of sexual deviant, and resolve to make up some excuse to terminate his employment. Ki-jung is there for a lesson with Da-song, and overhears everything. When Mrs. Park walks Ki-jung out, she asks if there was anything odd about her previous interaction with the driver. "No," Ki-jung says innocently. "Did something happen with him?" Mrs. Park explains that he won't be working for them anymore, but refuses to provide details other than that there was "a slightly shameful incident". "I'm surprised. He was so gentlemanly and cool," Ki-jung remarks. Mrs. Park chides Ki-jung for being young and innocent, before adding that they did like the idea of having a "young, hip driver". "But isn't an older driver better?" Ki-jung says. "My father's brother had a driver just like that. Mr. Kim. He was so congenial and nice, I used to call him Uncle when I was young." Ki-jung conveniently reveals that Mr. Kim might be available now that her relatives have relocated to Chicago. Mrs. Park falls for the bait, and asks Ki-jung to set up a meeting with Mr. Park. "I only trust someone recommended by a person I know well. But if you've known him so long, I'd feel much more at ease," she says to Ki-jung. "This chain of recommendations is best. How should I describe it? A belt of trust?" Ki-taek takes a meeting with Mr. Park and impresses him with his driving skills and demeanor. He is hired.

Answer: Peach

Before working for the Parks, Moon-gwang was the housekeeper for the home's previous occupants - the well-known architect Namgoong, who designed and built the house for his family. When Mr. Namgoong moved to France, he recommended that the Parks hire Moon-gwang. "So she survived a change of ownership," Chung-sook observes. "She won't give up good job easily," Ki-woo adds. This will require some planning.

Ki-woo discovers from Da-hye that peaches are a "forbidden fruit" in their house because they provoke a violent allergic reaction in Moon-gwang. He collects the fuzz off the skin of a peach with a razor blade and plants some on Moon-gwang, prompting a coughing fit that sends her to the nearest emergency room. Ki-taek is there lying in wait, and snaps a selfie with Moon-gwang in the background. He then shares his concerns with Mrs. Park when she drives her to the supermarket, telling her that he overheard Moon-gwang talking when he was at the hospital for his annual medical checkup, and that she had been diagnosed with active tuberculosis. Ki-taek messages his daughter when he's a few minutes away from the house, so that Ki-jung can plant more peach fuzz on the unsuspecting housekeeper. Ki-taek and a horrified Mrs. Park arrive home just in time to see Moon-gwang coughing violently into a napkin, which she throws into the trash. Ki-taek puts the groceries down on the kitchen counter and reaches down into the trash and empties the contents of a hot sauce packet in it. He picks up the red-stained napkin and shows it to Mrs. Park, who blacks out. Moon-gwang is dismissed on some pretext supplied by Mrs. Park so as not to betray Ki-taek's confidence, which leaves the way open for Chung-sook to be hired as the Parks' new housekeeper.

The Kims improve their situation through subterfuge and at the expense of their predecessors - a metaphor for the ultra-competitive South Korean society as a whole, where (as Ki-taek explains) a single job opening for a security guard attracts applications from 500 university graduates.

Answer: Their smell

With the entire Kim family now working in some capacity in the house, it doesn't take long for the astute Da-song to pick up on something. One day, when Ki-taek arrives at the house with Mr. Park, Da-song smells something on Ki-taek's jacket and then runs over to Chung-sook to sniff her clothes. "It's the same! They smell the same!" he declares loudly. When Mrs. Park tells him to go upstairs for his lesson with Ki-jung, he remarks that she has the same smell as well. Back home, the Kims discuss whether they need to do separate loads of laundry for each family member now, when Ki-jung points out that it wouldn't help. "It's the semi-basement smell. We need to leave this home to lose the smell," she says, as Chung-sook begins smelling her clothes self-consciously.

Mr. Park also complains about Ki-taek having a distinctive smell to his wife, who claims not to know what he is talking about. "Really? You must have smelled it. That smell that wafts through the car, how to describe it?" he asks. "Like an old radish? No - you know when you boil a rag? It smells like that." Mr. Park is quick to point out Ki-taek's virtues - he knows his place and never "crosses the line" with him. "But that smell crosses the line. It powers through right into the back seat," he adds. When Mrs. Park asks how bad the smell is, Mr. Park is even more blunt. "I don't know. It's hard to describe. But you sometimes smell it on the subway," he says. "People who ride the subway have a special smell." Mr. Park highlights the film's themes of elitism and class division by complaining, quite literally, about the stench of the common man.

Answer: Her husband

The Kims make themselves at home in the Parks' absence, with Ki-woo sunning himself in the yard, while Ki-jung enjoys a soak in the bathtub. That evening, the entire Kim family camp out in the living room eating the Parks' food and drinking their alcohol, as rain begins to fall outside. Their revelry is interrupted by the doorbell. Chung-sook hurries over to the security panel and sees that it is Moon-gwang. "I'm very sorry to call on you so late," she pleads on the monitor. "It's just that I forgot something in the basement under the kitchen. When I left, they pushed me out so quickly. Would you let me in?" Chung-sook relents and lets Moon-gwang in but when she takes too long in the basement, Chung-sook goes down to investigate to find Moon-gwang straining against the space between the wall and the jar cabinet, trying to push it aside. Chung-sook helps by removing a grilling plate that was wedged under the cabinet, which rolls aside effortlessly to reveal a dark metal door. Moon-gwang slides the door open and hurries down the dark stairwell behind it. "Honey?" she screams, as Chung-sook follows her down into a cavernous underground bunker to find the former housekeeper tending to a man lying on a cot. This is Geun-sae, her husband, who has been living there for over four years. Moon-gwang explains that she moved her husband into the bunker during the period after Mr. Namgoong moved out and before the Parks moved in to shield him from loansharks. "Many rich houses have secret bunkers, where you can hide in case North Korea attacks, or if creditors break in. But it seems Mr. Namgoong was a bit embarrassed about this, because he never mentioned it to Mr. Park's family. So only I know about it," she explains to Chung-sook. The deception was foreshadowed earlier in the film, when Mrs. Park remarked that Moon-gwang knew the house better than her, and when Mr. Park observed that although she was a good housekeeper, her one weak point was that she "ate enough for two".

Moon-gwang pleads with Chung-sook when the latter threatens to call the police, offering a monthly payment for her to keep their secret and to leave food for Geun-sae once a week. The tables turn on the Kims when Ki-taek, Ki-woo and Ki-jung all stumble accidentally into the bunker after tripping from the stairwell where they had been eavesdropping. Moon-gwang quickly realizes that they are all related and blackmails them with a threat to expose their deception by sending an incriminating video that she recorded on her phone to the Parks. The group moves upstairs to the living room, where a fight breaks out when the Kims see a chance to wrestle the mobile phone from Moon-gwang's hands. The six brawling interlopers are interrupted by a sound - the living room phone is ringing. It is the Parks, calling to say that they will be home in eight minutes.

Answer: Torrential rain

With the camping trip a washout due to the heavy rain, the Parks have decided to return home. Chung-sook is put to the task of making a pot of "ram-don" (jjappaguri) for Da-song, while the rest of her family get to work cleaning up the mess in the living room and squirreling a restrained Geun-sae and Moon-gwang away in the underground bunker. They are barely able to return the house to some semblance of order when the Parks enter the house. Moon-gwang manages to escape from Ki-taek and runs up the stairs from the basement, calling out for Mrs. Park, but is stopped by Chung-sook who delivers a flying kick that sends her hurtling back down the stairs into the basement, where she hits her head against a wall.

Ki-taek, Ki-jung and Ki-woo end up hiding under the living room coffee table, where they are trapped when Da-song decides to sleep in a tepee in the front yard, with his parents watching nearby from the living room sofa. The trio make their escape at the earliest chance they get, but by then it is the middle of the night and they have to run down to their neighborhood in the torrential rain. And as if the indignities they suffered that evening were not enough, they return home to find their street and their semi-basement apartment flooded with a mixture of rain and sewage water. As the Kims struggle to salvage their belongings from the water, back in the bunker, we see a helpless Geun-sae struggle against his restraints as he watches his wife, Moon-gwang, slowly succumb to her injuries. Ki-taek, Ki-jung and Ki-woo spend the night in a gymnasium with hundreds of other people displaced by the flood waters, and Ki-woo falls asleep clutching the scholar's rock, which he had retrieved from the waters in their apartment. "It keeps clinging to me," he explains to his father.

Answer: Ki-taek kills Mrs. Park with the scholar's rock.

The Kims all have to show up at the Parks' the next day, despite the misfortunes of the previous night. Ki-taek has to drive Mrs. Park around to pick up provisions for the party, all the while enduring having to hear her describe the rain as "a blessing" for giving them a blue sky today and washing away all the pollution. Ki-woo and Ki-jung are both worried about the housekeeper and her husband in the bunker, but Mrs. Park recruits Ki-jung to bring out the birthday cake for Da-song, so Ki-woo takes matters into his own hands when he takes the scholar's rock that he had brought with him and goes down into the bunker alone.

Geun-sae, mad with grief and rage over the death of Moon-gwang, has broken free of his restraints and uses them to fashion a noose, which he uses on Ki-woo. After a brief struggle in the bunker, Ki-woo breaks free and runs up to the basement, with Geun-sae on his tail. Ki-woo stumbles just as he passes the jar cabinet, and Geun-sae takes the opportunity to smash his head in with the scholar's rock. He moves the cabinet back in position covering the door to the bunker and walks upstairs towards the sound of the party, picking up a kitchen knife along the way. Ki-jung is walking the cake over to the birthday boy when she hears a commotion behind her, and turns just in time to see Geun-sae charging at her with the knife. She shoves the cake in his face as he plunges the knife into her chest. Da-song falls to the ground in a seizure as Chung-sook charges Geun-sae with an axe. As the pair grapple on the grass, Mr. Park picks up Da-song, while Ki-taek rushes over to Ki-jung and tries to stop the bleeding. Through the crowd of party guests running for their lives, Ki-taek sees Ki-woo being carried out of the house on Da-hye's back. Mr. Park yells at Ki-taek to throw him the car keys so that they can bring Da-song to the hospital. Ki-taek complies, but the keys land under Chung-sook and Geun-sae, who are still locked in a vicious struggle. Chung-sook grabs a meat skewer and plunges it into Geun-sae's side, wounding him fatally. When Mr. Park bends down to retrieve the car keys from under Geun-sae, he recoils in disgust at the smell of the dying man. Ki-taek notices this, and in a moment of unbridled resentment picks up the knife and stabs Mr. Park in the chest. Ki-taek takes in the pandemonium around him for a moment, before sprinting through the yard and down the pathway that leads to the street below.

Answer: The bunker

We learn that Ki-woo and his mother were sentenced to probation for their crimes, and we see them visiting Ki-jung's urn at the columbarium. Ki-woo starts to spy on the Parks' former house from the top of a hill. One night, Ki-woo witnesses something strange - the light at the entrance of the house begins blinking on and off in deliberate intervals. Excited, Ki-woo begins recording the series of signals, and starts deciphering the message being transmitted in Morse code. It is a letter from Ki-taek to his son in which we learn what Ki-taek did after he killed Mr. Park. "Even now, what happened that day doesn't seem real. It feels like a dream, and yet it doesn't. That day as I went out the gate, I suddenly knew where I needed to go," Ki-taek says. In a flashback, we see Ki-taek as he exits the house and sees the street still crowded with guests from the party. He runs into the garage and back inside the house, where he enters the kitchen and proceeds quietly down to the basement and seals himself inside the bunker. We see Ki-taek rationing what little food he was able to steal before the Parks moved out, and we learn that with the house empty he was able to surface and bury Moon-gwang in the garden. After a German family moves into the house, Ki-taek survives by creeping out of the bunker at night to steal food and water.

Ki-woo runs home with a renewed sense of purpose. He sits at the kitchen table and begins writing a letter to his father. "Dad, today I made a plan," Ki-woo narrates. "I'm going to earn money. A lot of it. University, a career, marriage - those are all fine, but first I'll earn money. When I have money, I'll buy that house." We see Ki-woo, looking sharp in a turtleneck and blazer, meeting a pair of property agents at the house. "On the day we move in, Mom and I will be in the yard because the sunshine is so nice there," Ki-woo continues. "All you'll need to do is walk up the stairs." We see Ki-woo and Chung-sook standing in the yard, as Ki-taek emerges from his self-imposed imprisonment in the basement to reunite with his family. The scene fades slowly to black, before returning to the Kims' semi-basement apartment. Outside on the street, snow is falling. The film ends as it began, with the camera tracking slowly down to Ki-woo sitting at home as we hear him read the closing lines of his letter. "Take care until then. So long."

The song over the end credits is "A Glass of Soju", performed by Choi Woo-sik, the actor who portrays Ki-woo in the film. In the song, he sings of how he labors to make money, and drinks a glass of soju at the end of each day (excerpts from the translated lyrics):

"Everyday I burn myself out
Till my muscles reduce to ash
Working day and night
Yet I clench them again
My two tough calloused hands
...
Bitter is the soju that overflows
To moisten the dirt under my nails
My red, swollen right cheek
At long last caressed by rain."