Frank YJ Cho

In a historical context, Korean nationalism seems necessary as an effort to control what it could within the context of a complex weave of Korean traditions. It was obvious there was a need to rebuild a nation that had suffered decades of humiliation by foreign powers. Nationalism has often been a convenient and effective political tool, mostly for ruling classes. The primary tactic of early nationalists during a period of colonial occupation was to struggle for national independence. Furthermore, since the nationalists were once the victims of imperialist aggression, nationalism generally assumes the character of anti-imperialism. However, nationalism often became a hegemonic ideology of the ruling elite and deprived it into a tool of authoritarianism. Conservatives used the concept of nationalism as a façade for their class interests and evinced concern for anti-feudal democratic reforms.[1]

[1] Porteux, Jonson. Police, Paramilitaries, Nationalists and Gangsters: The Processes of State Building in Korea. Michigan: University of Michigan Press

[2] Seo, Joong-Seok. Korean Nationalism Betrayed. Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2007. 

In my own self-deprecating fashion, I expected the film would not go as well as I had planned. Consequently, I determined that the production would be concept-driven and its development would involve a progression of improvisations. As new scenes were developed, the following scenes had to be modified, and the ending was changed many, many times. The film is quite different from its original synopsis and storyboard. My MFA project mimicked life itself, involving problems in previous productions that could not be changed, and improvisations at the moment to keep moving toward a future goal.

The scenes were created carefully, but the time to edit and perfect each was very limited. My work at one moment would have to be a continuation of the scenes already developed, so it would bring that segment of the process to a conclusion, as it was planned or not. It kept me engaged in a literal experimental process that included a significant exploration of the media, and in particular how it helped to shape evolving concepts and stories. There were many improvisations in detail to include more recent references. Since the storyboard was created, an abundance of absurd political events has occurred. For example, I have included the tiki torch scene in my film as a reference to the 2017 white nationalists’ march in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Tiki torches now have a significantly different cultural meaning than they did when I began my project, and I wanted to keep my film relevant by incorporating these up-to-date references.

I created a world based on my emotional memory of childhood. A memory that has always stuck with me from my past is the presence of dust. It was dusty, it was always dusty. In towns, bulldozers created dust while skinning out vegetation to build roads and bridges. There was dust while excavators carved through mountains to build highways. Trucks created layers of dust while carrying construction materials. It was the time for dust, the middle of rebuilding a nation’s infrastructure.

In schools, it was a different time; we didn’t have turf or green fields, there was always yellow dirt and sand. All the activities on the field created dust. Even the propaganda film crew built a big, black canopy in the middle of the naked, dusty field to host hundreds of children for the propaganda film viewing. The dust field became a ground zero of horror. Even so, as I moved to higher grades, the dust was everywhere. On the dust field, teachers used corporal punishment, there were school fights and gang fights, and it became a mixture of dust and blood. The image of blood drops giving rise to dust on the dry dirt ground is still ingrained in my mind. The slow progress of dirt soaking in the blood is an image that still fills me with regret toward meaningless anger and violence. It was a time of dust, horror, and blood.

One of the references I used is the Japanese animation Sailor Moon (1991). I remember it as an animated series on TV when I was a child. I initially dismissed it as too girly of an animation; yet I remember its sparkling, high pitch machine-tone sound effects having a profound impact on me. These sound effects would perfectly fit for a scene discussing the underground LGBTQ culture in Korea, the mysterious culture that is simply ignored by traditional Korean beliefs.

This community has been denied and ignored in the Korean traditional patriarchal culture. It is a shame, a part of my guilt that I did not recognize these human rights issues until 2007 when I befriended a Korean in the US who had a different sexual orientation than me. It was a cultural taboo in Korea. Our cultural and traditional beliefs denied their existence and pushed them into an underground culture. This calls to mind a relevant line from Thomas Grey’s poetry, “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.” I was a happy idiot in his hell, after all.