Educational Media Reviews Online

This documentary by Korean filmmaker Jeong-hyun Mun tracks a complex family history spanning from the period of Japanese colonialism through the aftermath of the Korean War to the present. The film illustrates how war and conflict impact communities by forcing new political alliances and ideologies that shape societies, specifically the social and political formations of the Korean nation state. Mun’s family history, as presented by testimonials of many relatives, unveils conflicts of class, personal tragedies and displacement, in North Korea and Japan, providing a glimpse of narratives of many contemporary Korean families.

The main figure in the film is Mun’s grandmother, the matriarch Sun-rae Park who is very ill and hospitalized. Mun tracks the history of her family by interviewing relatives and people in Naju, South Jeollo Province. The three villages that made up Naju were divided during the post World War II period, with landowning villages Jeongdae and Sangdae embracing leftist ideologies and working class Pungdong on the right, preserving the division imposed by class structure from the feudal era. Mun’s maternal grandfather, Yeon-gyun Na, from Sangdae, fought for independence from the Japanese and became a communist. His alignment with the North during the Korean War led him to prison where he was tortured during the chaotic years of the 1950s.

As the family fortunes declined, Sun-Rae Park emerged as the one who held the family together. She raised the young children, while coping with her husband who became increasingly abusive and alcohol dependant after his release from prison. The film in many ways is a tribute to this stoic dignified matriarch, and Mun gives prominence to her human qualities as someone who suffered in silence and kept secrets to herself, including the identity of the person who assassinated her brother. Mun weaves through a complex narrative and detailed captioning of the interviewees keeps his complicated family tree clear. In this process, he learns that his grand uncle was shot to death by a policeman who was a family friend, as he was going to the authorities to give himself up. The camera captures emotional scenes when family members learn about this secret for the first time. However, it seems too simplistic to attribute this example just to the goodness of her heart. In reality, during this difficult time when she faced discrimination as a member of communist family, most likely she had little choice but to keep this secret to herself in order to maintain cordial relationships with fellow villagers and insure safety and survival for her family.

Although sentiments might have mellowed over the years, the testimonials suggest that animosity along ideology lines at the time of Korean War still linger in contemporary Korean society. As an example of guilt by association, one’s past affiliation with communism can negatively impact relationships, especially in steps leading to arranged marriages. The revelation of a communist in the family can still break commitments that otherwise would continue. Mun also suggests that political activists who sided with North Korea and fled the country still have no access to Korean visas to visit family and relatives. This feeling is expressed by the Yeon-gyn Na’s younger nephew based in Japan. Due to his political affiliation with the North, his father fled Korea and continued his activism with the Pro-North Korean Residents League in Japan. His family, while keeping strong ties with North Korea, still cannot visit Korea to meet relatives or to pay respects to Sun-Rae Park.

The film also uses interesting ink-on-paper illustrations inserted between segments that provide dramatic effect. The family photos and film footages add intimacy. Overall the narrative is smooth throughout. The camera captures bucolic Jeollo villages and the abandoned Na family house in Sangdae. The scenes in Japan with Mun’s relatives speaking Korean mixed with Japanese phrases and utterances add a transnational dimension to the documentary. The visual contrast and differences between these locations highlight the complex issues that Koreans from the North and the South must resolve in order to face the future with confidence.