Out to the World, made in 1994, can be placed in two different genres: Korean New Wave and the “Road Movie.” Out to the World packs the politics of a Korean New Wave film exploring the social reality of a nation into the formula of a road movie whose protagonists are vagabonds or social outcasts. In this road movie, the three main characters are a woman, a gay male and male blue collar laborer. Superimposed onto the road under their feet are the social and political conditions of Korea at that time: a US occupation army, the Uruguay Round trade talks, a militarized border between North and South Korea, a strictly controlled mass media and sexism. In the end, these three cannot escape ‘beyond the world’, due to the contradictory, contesting realities of Korean society that are unfolding naked on the road. Unlike other films from the Korean New Wave, Out to the World demonstrates the virtues of black comedy that employs irony and social satire within the road movie formula and introduces a lightened rhetoric that has just escaped from a dark, oppressive reality. Shim Hye-jin, using her real name in the film, exhibits a much different image from her previous ones. Escaping the role of sexual object and instead becoming the funny and daring comrade, Shim removes the mask of woman as the mute, victimized/sacrificed one. This film encourages us to notice that marginalized groups, including women, might be able to gain power in the world of satire, irony, and the rhetoric of ‘lightness’. (Kim Sun-ah)