Aloners
おひとりさま族
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A call-centre worker who eats, commutes and sleeps with a screen on, until a neighbour dies alone next door.
Jina is the best performer at a call centre that handles a bank's credit card customers, and the most alone. She eats lunch by herself, rides the bus with her earphones in and falls asleep to the television. Her mother has recently died, she has signed away her share of the inheritance, and she avoids her father's calls, though she still watches him through a camera she once put in her parents' living room to keep an eye on her mother.
Coming home one evening she finds the police at the flat next door. Its owner tells her that the man who lived there died days ago, alone, crushed under a pile of pornographic magazines, and scolds her for not noticing the noise. Jina is shaken: she remembers him showing her a trick with a match and a cigarette in the corridor after he must already have been dead.
At work her manager asks her to train a new hire, Sujin, a clumsy, eager young woman who wants them to have lunch together. Jina keeps her at arm's length until Sujin stops coming in, then throws her things away. A new tenant, Seong-hun, a man with a broken leg, moves into the dead man's flat with his family. Worn down, Jina starts to show the same strain Sujin did. When a regular caller shouts at her and demands her name, she walks out of the building, rings her father and screams at him to apologise to her and to her mother. He hangs up and blocks her number.
The next day she asks for leave and calls Sujin to apologise for how she treated her, and Sujin cries. Seong-hun holds a small memorial for the man who died, with food and wine; Jina watches from the doorway, and afterwards he shows her that the match trick really works. She clears her desk, tells her manager she does not yet know what she will do, and suggests dinner when she does. On the bus her father calls, pretending he never blocked her. She tells him about the camera, and that she will keep checking on him.
Starring
Gong Seung-yeonas Jina
A top call-centre agent who lives entirely alone, grieving her mother and watching her father only through a camera.
Jina’s story
Jina keeps everyone at a distance: lunch alone, earphones in, the television on all night. Her mother has just died, and she ignores her father's calls, though she watches him through the camera in her parents' living room. Learning that her neighbour lay dead for days unnoticed shakes her. She keeps her trainee, Sujin, at arm's length until Sujin stops coming in. Then Jina cracks too: she walks out when a caller shouts at her, and screams at her father to apologise to her and her mother; he blocks her number. The next day she takes leave, calls Sujin to apologise, watches from a doorway as the new neighbour mourns the dead man, and clears her desk. When her father calls, pretending he never blocked her, she tells him about the camera and that she will keep checking on him.
Jeong Da-eunas Sujin
A clumsy, eager new hire whom Jina is made to train, and who cannot bear to be alone.
Sujin’s story
Sujin follows Jina, her trainer, everywhere and asks if they can have lunch together. She falls asleep on her first shift and struggles on the phone. Yet when a regular caller asks whether his card will work in 2002, the year his time machine will take him back to, Sujin leaves the script to ask what he wants to do there, and he says that at last someone believes him. Jina keeps avoiding her, and Sujin stops coming in; her manager says she would not have passed her training anyway, and Jina throws her things away. Later Jina calls to apologise for how cold she was, and Sujin cries.
Seo Hyun-wooas Seong-hun
The new neighbour with a broken leg, who moves into the dead man's flat and holds a memorial for him.
Park Jeong-hakas Jina's father
A newly widowed man whom Jina avoids and watches on camera as he fills his days with his new church.
Why it matters
Aloners is about the loneliness built into ordinary days: the solo lunch, the earphones, the job that is all talk and no conversation. Its director, Hong Sung-eun, has said she began it after a documentary about people dying alone left her frightened and in tears, and the neighbour who lies undiscovered for days is the film's cold centre. It also knows the call centre as a place of emotional labour, where a woman is valued by how many strangers' anger she can absorb in a day. Korean even has a word, nahollo-jok, for people who live, eat and travel alone, and the film does not mock that choice; it asks what isolation costs and who notices. It won Gong Seung-yeon the Blue Dragon award for best new actress and took the Grand Prix at the Osaka Asian Film Festival in 2022. What it leaves open is whether watching over someone, even through a screen, is already a kind of care.