The lights dimmed in the theater, and I settled into my seat, expecting another masterful thriller from Park Chan-wook. What I got instead was something far more unsettling—a mirror held up to an entire industry, my industry, and a question that has haunted me ever since: "What choice did we have?"
Park's latest film, What Choice Did We Have? (어쩔 수가 없다, 2025), opens with a scene that feels achingly familiar to anyone who has worked in corporate Korea. Man-su, played with devastating restraint by Lee Byung-hun, sits in a sterile conference room as HR delivers the news: after 25 years at a paper manufacturing company, his position has been "restructured." The camera lingers on his face—not in shock, but in a kind of numb recognition. He knew this was coming. We all did.
What follows is a darkly comic descent into desperation. Man-su, unable to accept his obsolescence, begins eliminating his competitors in the job market—literally. But here's the twist that makes Park's film so brutally effective: each person Man-su removes turns out to be just another version of himself. Another middle-aged worker. Another casualty of efficiency. Another person who "had no choice."
By the time the credits rolled, I found myself thinking not about the film's stylized violence or its pitch-black humor, but about the advertising and PR professionals I know who have been quietly disappearing from the industry over the past few years. The ones who were "too expensive." The ones who were "replaced by automation." The ones who, like Man-su, were told the market had simply moved on.
The Illusion of Growth: When Numbers Tell Only Half the Story
Let's talk about what the headlines won't tell you. Yes, Korea's advertising industry is booming. The numbers are impressive: $5.9 billion in digital advertising revenue as of 2024, according to Spherical Insights. Total media advertising spending hit 14 trillion won. Online advertising now commands nearly 70-80% of the total pie, with retail media and performance marketing leading the charge.
But here's what those triumphant press releases don't mention: while the industry grew, the people who built it were quietly shown the door.
The 2024 Advertising Industry Survey reveals a troubling trend that should alarm anyone who cares about the future of creative work. The total number of advertising professionals dropped by 722 people—a 1% decline that might seem modest until you look at where those cuts were made. In creative and production roles, the lifeblood of the industry, companies now average just 2.8 people per business. Let that sink in: fewer than three people to handle all creative work.
This isn't downsizing. This is dismantling.
I've watched this transformation unfold in real-time. Five years ago, a typical agency creative team might include senior copywriters, junior writers, art directors, and interns learning the craft. Today? A single "content creator" armed with AI tools is expected to do it all. The mentorship programs that once nurtured talent have been quietly shelved. The internships that provided entry points for young professionals have been "postponed indefinitely." The middle management positions that represented career progression have simply vanished.
The industry didn't just grow—it metastasized, consuming its own workforce in the process.
The AI Revolution Nobody Asked For
Here's where Park's film becomes uncomfortably prophetic. In one scene, Man-su practices for job interviews, trying to articulate his value in an economy that has already decided he has none. "I have 25 years of experience," he says, his voice cracking slightly. The interviewer, barely looking up from her tablet, responds: "We're looking for someone who can adapt to new technologies."
It's a line that could have been pulled from any advertising agency's HR department in 2024.
The AI transformation of advertising happened with breathtaking speed—too fast for the industry to adapt, too fast for workers to retrain, too fast for anyone to ask whether this was actually what we wanted. AI copywriting tools now generate high-performing ad copy in seconds. Image generation platforms produce thousands of visual concepts before a human designer could even open Photoshop. Video editing software powered by machine learning can cut a 30-second spot faster than you can describe what you want.
The Korea Employment Information Service reports that 41% of large Korean companies have already implemented AI-based automation systems, with adoption rates expected to exceed 70% within five years. In marketing specifically, AI tools can reduce production time and costs by up to 80%.
Eighty percent.
That's not efficiency. That's elimination.
I recently spoke with a creative director at a major Seoul agency who asked to remain anonymous. "We used to have a team of twelve," she told me over coffee in Gangnam. "Now it's just me and two junior staff, and honestly, the juniors spend most of their time feeding prompts into AI tools. I'm not managing people anymore. I'm managing algorithms."
She paused, stirring her americano absently. "And the worst part? The work is... fine. It gets clicks. It drives conversions. But it doesn't mean anything anymore. We used to create campaigns that reflected society, that captured something true about human experience. Now we just optimize for engagement metrics."
This is the quiet tragedy that Park's film captures so well: the moment when craft becomes commodity, when creativity becomes content, when human insight is reduced to data points.
The Language of Inevitability
"I had no choice."
Man-su repeats this phrase throughout the film like a mantra, a justification, a prayer. By the final act, it has transformed from an excuse into something more sinister: the language of the system itself. It's what we tell ourselves when we lay off experienced workers. It's what we say when we replace human creativity with algorithmic efficiency. It's how we rationalize the dismantling of an entire profession.
But here's the question that Park's film forces us to confront: Did we really have no choice?
The advertising industry's embrace of AI wasn't mandated by law. It wasn't required by clients. It was a choice—made by executives, investors, and agency leaders who prioritized short-term cost savings over long-term sustainability. Who valued efficiency over excellence. Who mistook optimization for innovation.
This is what I call Neoliberalism 2.0: the belief that every human function can and should be automated, that every relationship can be reduced to a transaction, that every creative act can be replicated by an algorithm. It's platform capitalism taken to its logical extreme, where humans are not workers but costs to be minimized.
The consequences extend far beyond employment statistics. When advertising loses its human creators, it loses its ability to reflect human experience. Brands no longer converse with the public; they target demographic segments. Campaigns don't tell stories; they trigger behavioral responses. The relationship at the heart of "public relations" has been replaced by algorithmic manipulation.
A Different Choice
In the film's haunting final scene, Man-su looks at his reflection and whispers: "Really, did I have no choice?" It's a question directed not just at himself, but at all of us who have participated in this transformation—whether as perpetrators, victims, or silent witnesses.
For advertising and PR leaders, this moment demands a reckoning. The choice isn't between embracing AI or rejecting it entirely. The choice is about what kind of industry we want to build.
We can choose to view retraining not as a cost but as an investment in resilience. We can choose to treat creativity not as a luxury but as our core identity. We can choose to use AI as a tool that amplifies human insight rather than replaces it.
This means rebuilding the mentorship programs we dismantled. It means creating career pathways for young professionals instead of replacing them with algorithms. It means valuing the intangible qualities—intuition, empathy, cultural understanding—that make advertising an art rather than just a science.
Most importantly, it means asking ourselves: What is advertising for? Is it simply to drive clicks and conversions? Or is it to reflect society back to itself, to capture something true about the human experience, to create meaning in a world increasingly dominated by data?
The Korean advertising industry stands at a crossroads. We can continue down the path of algorithmic efficiency, where humans are merely expensive obstacles to optimization. Or we can choose a different future—one where technology serves creativity rather than supplanting it, where efficiency enhances rather than eliminates human work, where the industry's growth includes rather than excludes the people who built it.
Park Chan-wook's film ends ambiguously, leaving Man-su's fate unresolved. But the question it poses is crystal clear: When we look back at this moment, will we say we had no choice? Or will we admit that we chose this path—and that we could have chosen differently?
The answer will determine not just the future of advertising, but the future of creative work in an age of artificial intelligence. The question isn't whether AI will transform our industry. It already has. The question is whether that transformation will destroy us or liberate us.
And unlike Man-su, we still have time to choose.
About the Author: This article was written by Professor Yoo Seung-chul (유승철), who teaches in the Department of Communication and Media at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. His research focuses on the intersection of technology, media ethics, and creative industries in the age of artificial intelligence.
Original Source: This article is adapted from Professor Yoo's original Korean-language column published in MAD Times (매드타임스), South Korea's leading advertising and marketing industry publication.
Film Reference: Park Chan-wook's What Choice Did We Have? (어쩔 수가 없다, 2025) is currently in theaters.
