FLU Movie reaction piece: Within the Korean drama “FLU,” specific class topics pertaining infectious

disease were addressed in the film, as they coincided with the plot of the film, which focused on the
catastrophic effects of a rampant and mutant bacteria in a large urban Korean city known as Bundang
(though it was of course dramatized). In analyzing the infectious disease in the film, it was identified to
be a mutated form of a particular avian flu, a strain identified in the film as H5N1. The disease mutated
to an extremely virulent strain after containment in a cargo container of sickly immigrants being
smuggled in to the country. Since the disease killed the majority of humans it came into contact, the
primary reservoirs, or organism capable of carrying and spreading the disease and surviving, were rats
and birds. However, one example of a human reservoir in the film was the character Monssai. Identified
as one of the immigrants who escaped from the container and was infected while in the cargo hold as
the disease was mutating, he fled into the Bundang metropolitan area, and spread the disease, but not
dying from it. He can also be described as a type of “patient zero,” as he is the first known case not
succumb to the disease and yet still remain symptomatic and surviving. The virus itself was transmitted
indirectly as an air-born pathogen. Coughing or sneezing caused infected particles from bodily mucosal
membranes to be dispersed in to the surrounding environment…