The Smell

The Parks repeatedly comment that the Kims share a distinctive smell — the smell of the subway, of cheap soap, of poverty. This detail is the film's cruelest observation: class is inscribed on the body in ways that no amount of performance can disguise. It is the one thing the Kims cannot fake.

The smell cannot be washed off because it is not really about hygiene. It is about what wealth can sense about poverty that the poor cannot sense about themselves. The Kims can imitate wealth's behavior, manners, and language. They cannot imitate its ease.