[Cinementary] Koreans in movies, Koreans in movies

     It would be embarrassing to use the word 'diaspora' in vain.

However, there seems to be something in the diaspora that cannot be lumped together with the terms immigrants, migrants, and migrant communities.

Diaspora is an ancient Greek word combining 'dia' meaning 'beyond' and 'spero' meaning 'to sow'.

Originally, it referred to the Jewish community that lived scattered throughout the Middle East after the Babylonian captivity, but now it refers to immigrants (groups) living in a foreign country, whether voluntarily or unwillingly, political refugees, racial minorities, and migration itself. The meaning of the word has been expanded.

If I had to pick the most famous diaspora film in history, it would probably be “The Godfather.”

This gangster classic about Italian immigrants to the United States is ranked at number two on the American Film Institute's 100 Greatest Movies list, and both first and second won Academy Awards.

The most recent Diaspora film to win Best Picture (although it's a bit difficult to categorize it as a definitive Diaspora film) is 2019's "Green Book."

In the 1960s, in the United States, where black and white discrimination was evident, the image of a proud Italian immigrant (community) hired by a black pianist to drive and do chores is clearly shown. 

The multiverse movie starring Yeo Ji-kyung, which recently surpassed 300,000 viewers and became the best word-of-mouth box office hit of the year, “

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“At Once” is also a movie dealing with the life of the diaspora.

Yang Ji-kyung, a Malaysian Chinese who started her movie life as an action actress in Hong Kong, is living a diaspora life through several stages herself (Malaysia-UK-Hong Kong-USA) 

  . He is an immigrant who immigrated to the United States and ran a laundromat.

After getting married against her father's disapproval, she came to the United States and settled down, but the real Evelyn (let's name it 'Universe 1') is a middle-aged woman in crisis who has nothing to do with Evelyn in other parallel universes. .

She is not perfectly accustomed to American life and English, so she is beaten by the tax authorities, and her daughter, who is Asian in appearance but is close to a Westerner on the inside and speaks perfect English, is upset just like her daughter. 

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     Diaspora have their own loneliness, their own troubles, and their own identity.

A borderline that belongs to neither this side nor that side.

They are probably the ones who understand the emotions of 'The Ugly Duckling' the best.

In the United States, a country of immigrants, the history of diaspora films is long and diaspora is part of their culture, but there have been few Hollywood films dealing with the Korean diaspora.

Since there were no Korean roles, it was not uncommon for Korean actors to even play Chinese or Japanese roles.

But in recent years a change has taken place.

“Minari” by A24, a renowned independent art film house, is the story of Korean immigrants in the 1980s, and “Pachinko” by Apple TV is the story of Zainichi set in Japan and the United States.

“Pachinko” is also a drama series based on the New York Times bestseller by immigrant writer Lee Min-jin, so it can be said that now in the United States, through books and movies, Koreans are beginning to be proudly evaluated as a diaspora that makes up American society.

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     In the midst of this, two Korean diaspora films currently showing in theaters are attracting attention.

“CHOSEN” is the story of Korean American politicians in the United States.

When I heard the news of the release of this movie, the first thing that caught my eye was the credit called 'Director Jeon-seok'.

It is because I watched his previous work “Jeronimo (2019)” with emotion.

(To be precise, I saw “Finding Jeronimo,” an abbreviated version of “Jeronimo,” as a KBS Liberation Day special documentary.)  

“Jeronimo” is a second-generation Cuban Korean who tried to unite the Korean community in Cuba into one community. It is a work about the life of Im In-jo.

He participated in the Cuban Revolution as a motive of Fidel Castro and law school in Havana, and later served as the deputy minister of industry in the Cuban government (the minister at the time was Che Guevara!).

Jeronimo, who did not listen to his father's advice and learn Korean, realizes his identity as a Korean after visiting Korea in his later years and devotes himself to founding the Korean Association in Cuba.

To be honest, “Chosun” was not as moving as “Jeronimo”, but it was a movie that informed the context of the Korean diaspora in America, or Korean Americans, that I thought I knew roughly.

First of all, this film reminded us that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the LA riots.

The LA riots, which caused enormous physical and psychological damage to the Korean community, also served as an opportunity for Koreans to awaken politically.

During the riots, while Koreatown was the target of indiscriminate attacks by black people, the American police only guarded the wealthy American village and left Koreatown unattended.

Korean stores were burned and looted.

The (Korean) vigilantes seen in Batman movies were formed, and Korean men who had served in the military held guns on the roof of the building and confronted the rioters.

(The background of the LA riots is not simple, and there are many backgrounds for the Korean community to be targeted.) The LA riots awakened Koreans to the need for political representation.

A new era in the history of Korean immigrants to the United States, which began in 1903 as a laborer immigrating to a sugarcane plantation in Hawaii, began.

In “The First Election,” director Jeon Jeon-seok follows the 2020 election campaign of Korean-American congressmen who were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in this US midterm election (one to a third term, and three to a re-election).

However, the main character of this film is Democratic Party candidate David Kim, who is taking his first step into politics.

The son of a pastor who immigrated to the United States, he is an unknown politician and LGBTQ. He's the Democratic nominee.

The 34th district of LA, where he ran, is where Koreatown is located, but there has never been a Korean-American lawmaker because the majority are Hispanic, the same diaspora.

Although he is a second-generation Korean-American lawyer who speaks Korean fluently, unlike his father, he is practically American. For some reason, he tries to enter politics. The film follows his challenge from the perspective of the diaspora.

The most impressive scene in this movie is the lion's roar of funny journalist Lee Kyung-won (93) right after the movie starts.

He was the first Korean to be a reporter for a major American daily newspaper (Sacramento Union) and the only Korean selected among 500 journalists who shone in the 20th century.

“The 4.29 (Korean-American term for the LA riots) proved it to us.

Only the children of the 4.29 victims jumped into the scene of the riots to help their parents.

You were the only ones who could protect your parents.

You must remember that!

This is the only message I want to give you guys.

You have to forge your own destiny your own way.

(Waving a newspaper about the struggles of Koreans during the LA riots) Thirty thousand Korean Americans protested.

It was the largest march in America.

Your parents who can't even speak a word of goddamn English!

I was born again in that moment.

That's when I became a Korean American."

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     Another Korean diaspora film hanging in theaters is “Soup and Ideology”.

The director, Yang Young-hee, came from a Jochongryeon-affiliated family.

Director Yang, who has told the story of his family by making “Dear Pyongyang (2006)” and “Goodbye Pyongyang (2011),” is a South Korean national who was denied entry to North Korea where his brother's family is located because of these films.

In other words, it is a case of a unique diaspora that is Korean by nationality but has both a Japanese identity and an identity of 'two Koreans'.

(In addition, she married a Japanese man who plays a supporting role in “Soup and Ideology”)

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Director Yang created “soup and ideology” by recording his mother, who did not belong to either side and always longed for her country, through video for 10 years.

The great power of documentary films is the accumulation of time.

It is regrettable to see director Yang's mother, who was a nice and well-groomed old woman at the beginning of the film, suffer from Alzheimer's disease in the second half of the film and even her mind goes back and forth.

Her mother, Kang Jeong-hee, was born in Osaka, but went to her parents' hometown, Jeju, to avoid US bombing during World War II. They were even engaged there, but when their blood relatives, neighbors, and fiancé were killed in the April 3 Incident in 1948, they smuggled their younger siblings back to Japan. do.

For her many years since then, her 4.3 has been a no-brainer for her mother, even for her daughter.

She met and married her husband, who was active in Jochongryeon in Japan, and sent her three sons, younger brother, and parents to North Korea.

Yang said at the press conference.

She said, “She has a hard time attaching herself to the country she grew up in (Japan) and went through 4.3 even when she went to her parents’ hometown, Jeju Island…

Really my mother wanted to have a hometown all her life, she wanted to have a homeland but she didn't have it...

(feeds crying) So she said that she believed in North Korea so much, so I think she understood her mother's heart a little bit.

After that, while her mother went to North Korea, she had a lot of dissatisfaction while watching the reality of North Korea.

(Omitted) Her mother sent a lot of her family to North Korea like hostages.

She can't live resentful of North Korea, and she has no choice but to support her family sent to North Korea.

She lived that way, but (making her film) changed my perspective on her mother's life.”

  The life of Kang Jeong-hee, who lived through the first sentence of “Pachinko,” which says, “History ruined us, but it doesn’t matter,” makes my heart sober.

Her husband, who died first, said to director Yang that she should never marry a Japanese, but Kang Jung-hee, who opened her heart by boiling chicken soup to her Japanese son-in-law brought by her daughter, went to Jeju because of the trauma she suffered during the 4.3, even in a democratized world where the 4.3 was reevaluated. I am afraid to go to Korea.

Compared to Kang Jeong-hee's miserable life, the film overall is not dark, but this part was a tragedy.

The soup of “Soup and Ideology” is boiled chicken.

Chicken soup boiled with plenty of whole garlic is like soul food to the diaspora Jeonghee Kang's family.

“You are what You eat.”

For Kang Jeong-hee, the homeland was neither a Jeju nightmare nor a picture of Kim Il-sung and his son hanging in the house.

The motherland was chicken soup. 

     What diaspora films can tell us is the story of the borderline.

Neither 100% this side nor 100% that side, they are the other within us and us within the other.

So we can see ourselves better through them.

Unlike Jeronimo Lim, who was one of the leaders who led Cuba after the Cuban Revolution, and his father Im Cheon-taek (Patriot Governor), who supported the independence movement, Jeronimo, who was completely assimilated into Cuban society, realized his Korean identity in his later years and came to establish a Korean association in Cuba. exert one's strength

This is part of the last letter he wrote to his children. 

“Koreans in Cuba have fully assimilated into Cuban society.

We are one with them.

But our roots are eternal.

Undeniable, they will always be with us.”