"Gold Teeth and the Curse of This Town"

Something that I found very interesting is that in both movies, there is some kind of tooth extraction, and in both instances, the extraction ages the character or is supposed to. In Stray Bullet, the man seems to become older once he gets his rotten tooth pulled, and the taxi drivers even bully him and call him “old man.” In Old Boy, when Oh Dae Su pulls out all of the man’s teeth with a hammer, he says, “With each tooth I pull out, you will age one year.” This motif of aging also extends into the name Evergreen, as in a tree who’s leaves never die. The hypnotist also says that the monster half of Oh Dae Su will take 70 steps, each step being a year, until it dies. The name of the film itself echoes it as well. Does the concept of aging and/or tooth extraction have a certain connotation in Korean film, or is it just a coincidence that both films we screened use it? Does aging tie into the concept of damaged bodies and therefore the waning of masculinity?