YIDFF 2025 Closing Film
The Voices of the Silenced
- JAPAN, KOREA / 2025 / Japanese, English, Korean / Color / DCP / 148 min
Directors: Park Soo-nam, Park Maeui
Photography: Otsu Koshiro, Hoshino Kin-ichi, Teruya Shinji, Park Maeui, Kim Im-man, Kim Myeong-yoon
Editing, Producers: Park Maeui, Mun Jeonghyun
16mm Film Digital Restoration Support: Yasui Yoshio
Appearances: Jeon Dong-rye, Kim Jeong-soon, Seo Jeong-woo, Kim Seong-soo, Hirano Nobuto
Producer: Park Soo-nam
Production Companies: Harbin Film, Song of Arirang Production Committee
Source: Park Soo-nam
Park Soo-nam, a second-generation Zainichi Korean, has been making 16mm films for about 40 years. Her daughter, director Park Maeui, takes up the colossal task of restoring them, embarking on a journey back through her mother’s life story to define it anew. She also turns the camera on her mother, listening attentively to sensitive stories about filming, asking about ways of making films for the next generation, and at times, colliding head-on with her. Their personal conversations intertwine with stories of the silenced hidden away in history and their resolute collaboration gains layer upon layer of brilliance.
[Director’s Statement] In 1958, after my homeland—liberated with Japan’s defeat—was divided into North and South by the Cold War, the Komatsugawa Incident came as a shock to me. A female high school student was murdered, and the person arrested for the crime was a young man named Ri Chin’u—18 at the time. He was a second-generation Zainichi Korean who used the Japanese name Kaneko Shizuo. Seeing something of myself in him, I began to participate in a campaign calling for his death sentence to be commuted, but the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon), where I worked as a reporter, advised me to distance myself from any involvement with the incident. I did not heed this advice and was expelled from the association, coming to be regarded by North Korea as an opposition figure. In 1964, after the execution of Ri Chin’u, I sought to study abroad in South Korea, but the Korean government (under Park Chung-hee) demanded loyalty to the nation. I refused, so I was denied entry. Thus began my journey to find where I belonged, to find my own identity. I went to Hiroshima, then to the battlefields in Okinawa. I learned about Korean victims of the atomic bomb, “comfort women” who were taken to the front lines, Uchinanchu (Okinawans) forced to commit mass suicide (gyokusai). My post-war journey to shine light on the darkness of suppressed histories and to record these people and restore their existence also became a journey to restore myself. (Park Soo-nam)
This film began with the digitization and restoration of 100,000 feet (about 50 hours) of 16mm film and audio tape that my mother gathered in Japan and South Korea between 1985 and 1991 for two different film projects. From this footage that had remained unreleased for over 30 years, we first restored testimonial material from first-generation Zainichi Koreans who had been taken to Gunkanjima, an island of Nagasaki, for forced labor. We then relied on my mother’s memory to go about understanding the experiences of each victim of Japan’s colonial rule and war of aggression. The discrimination and other existential issues raised by the Komatsugawa Incident are things that concern me as a third-generation Zainichi Korean and that call into question the state of Japanese society, where discrimination against Koreans has continued from the Great Kanto Earthquake a century ago up until today. At a moment when distortions of history and exclusionary sentiment are running rampant, I hope we will all listen carefully to the voices of the silenced. (Park Maeui)
Park Soo-nam
Born in 1935, a second-generation Zainichi Korean. She was a participant in the campaign to commute the sentence of the second-generation Zainichi Korean juvenile defendant in the Komatsugawa Incident. Later, she made her directorial debut with The Other Hiroshima: Korean A-bomb Victims Tell Their Story (1986), which documented Korean victims of the atomic bomb. Her films include Song of Arirang: Voices from Okinawa (1991), Nuchigafu: Life Is a Treasure, “Gyokusai” Stories in the Battle of Okinawa (2012, YIDFF 2013), and The Silence (2017).
Park Maeui
Born in 1968, a third-generation Zainichi Korean and the eldest daughter of Park Soo-nam. She served as assistant director on Nuchigafu: Life Is a Treasure, “Gyokusai” Stories in the Battle of Okinawa (2012, YIDFF 2013). On The Silence (2017), she served as editor and producer. She restores and archives a range of moving images and organizes independent screenings.