The House from The Attorney

Before filming, there was a vacant house here. For The Attorney, released in two thousand thirteen, it was transformed into the home of Choi Soon-ae, the owner of a cheap eatery, and her son, the student Park Jin-woo. That is why guidebooks give this one spot two names: “Jin-woo’s house” and “the house from The Attorney.”

Soon-ae seeks help from Song Woo-seok, a successful tax lawyer preparing to take on a lucrative client—a major construction company. She turns to him specifically because she had once fed the poor student Song Woo-seok on credit and forgiven him for an unpaid meal. Now her son has been detained in a political case. At first, Song Woo-seok agrees only to accompany the mother to a visit: taking on a full defense could cost him his career.

In the visiting room, Jin-woo repeats his confession, but Soon-ae and the lawyer notice marks of beating on his body. The young man confessed because he was tortured. After that, in a scene filmed here, Song Woo-seok spends the night on the steps outside Soon-ae’s house. In the morning, he decides to take the case. The words on the wall—“This must not be. I will take it on. I will be a defender.”—convey this turning point, although in the film the character voices his decision only in the next conversation with another lawyer.

Song Woo-seok gives up safe work for the trial. In court, Jin-woo describes how a confession was beaten out of him, but the defense does not secure his release: the young man is sentenced to three years, with the possibility of release after two years without an appeal. For Song Woo-seok, this trial becomes the beginning of a different legal practice. In the finale, when Song Woo-seok himself is put on trial in nineteen eighty-seven, ninety-nine of Busan’s one hundred forty-two lawyers come to defend their colleague. This is a fictional story inspired by the real Burim case; Jin-woo and the night on these steps belong to the screenplay, not to the records of that trial.

In its first thirty-three days, the film drew ten million viewers, and visitors began coming to the vacant house. Its owner gave it to the district rent-free for five years, and officials set up the village information center inside. At the end of two thousand twenty, the agreement could not be extended, and the district center closed. What remained were the steps, the white wall, and the words after which the fictional Song Woo-seok first called himself Jin-woo’s defender.