:: KOREA FOCUS ::

On Aug. 13, just 20 days after it opened, the movie "Remember U 518" (Hwaryeohan Hyuga) hit the five million mark at the box office. Writing instructors are encouraging their students to see the movie together, and politicians with the upcoming presidential election in mind are rushing to see it, too. Many shook their heads when they heard that 10 billion won was being invested in a movie about the Gwangju civil uprising of May 18, 1980. They asked if it was appropriate when emotional wounds from that time remain unhealed, and they asked if it would be possible for the movie to make money.

The second question has been answered by the movie's box office success, but the first question is still being debated. On Aug. 8, I met Kim Ji-hun, 36, director of "Remember U 518," at the Kyunghyang Daily News office. A native of Daegu, he spoke with a strong Gyeongsang province dialect.

Q: The audience response has been good.

A: I thought success would depend on word of mouth. I never thought it would do so well in the early days. The uprising happened 27 years ago, but it seems some people are still living with the pain every day of their lives. They say the teen and 20-something audiences are asking "Is this a true story?" After seeing the movie they are looking up information on the internet and buying books on the subject. People who don't like the movie are saying that it's a "distortion" and that it is "election campaign material." Rather than dealing with political issues, I wanted to talk about the people who lived through the incident, the people that we've forgotten. After all, the democracy that we enjoy today did not come free.

Q: Why did you deal with the Gwangju civil uprising?

A: I first learned about it when I moved from Daegu to Seoul. [Kim is from Hanyang University's Department of Theater and Cinema.] It happened when I was 10 years old, and at the time I thought of it as a "riot." In my childish way, I worried that the country was headed for ruin. When I found out the truth later through videos, books and other materials, I felt terribly ashamed. Not only for not knowing anything, but because I didn't even try to find out the truth. I thought to myself that later, when I had built up some experience, I would make a movie on the subject. In 2004 I began to write the script with Na Hyeon.

Q: How did you research the topic?

A: There are 20,000 pages of eyewitness accounts. I also read collected materials and books, and watched documentaries. Interviews with those who survived the incident were particularly useful. They all asked me to make a movie that a lot of people would see. The truth is the Gwangju civil uprising has up to now been considered the history of Gwangju only. So my motto was to "make May 18 a national issue." The first priority of anyone who makes films for a general audience is to attract as many people as possible. So, rather than cooking up something rare and exotic such as bear trotters, or shark's fin soup, or bird's nest soup, I decided to make something common, like a tasty bowl of noodles.

"Remember U 518" is not the first movie to be made about the Gwangju civil uprising. Others include the independent film "Oh Land of Dreams," and the feature movies "Song of Resurrection," "Petal" and "Peppermint Candy." However, the intellects that appear in these movies do not appear in "Remember U 518." The people that carry the story from beginning to end are the taxi drivers, nurses, gigolos, and other ordinary people who joined the fray on Geumnam-ro, the main street of Gwangju, to look for family members, or because they were angered by the death of a friend, or simply out of excitement. The movie is criticized, however, as lacking insight into the macroscopic conditions of history, and a unique aesthetic perspective from the director.

Q: The movie is not without its disappointments.

A: I've heard a lot of criticism, with people asking why is there no clear director's viewpoint or political color, and why does the movie do no more than recreate what happened in the past? I agree in part, but there are many ways to universalize historical peculiarities. One way is through in-depth discussion and the other is to go out and meet the audiences. If so many people had been thinking about the Gwangju uprising over the past 27 years, I would like to ask what they have achieved in that time. May 18 is not history to be chewed over by the intellects. It is the history of individuals. To move them, people resort to tear-jerking scenes. But May 18 is an incident that cannot be seen without tears. A popular film must find common ground with general audiences. That's the real way to achieve "participatory history."

Q: I heard that you started out to tell the story of Yoon Sang-won.

A: Yoon Sang-won (student leader and spokesman killed in the incident) is a representative figure of the Gwangju uprising. But as I was refining the movie, I found that he did not come alive on the screen as a real person. I think the story came across as being too difficult. Some people said it was because the main character was an intellectual. May 18 was a protest centering on the little man, the ordinary person. I say there are no "men of knowledge" in my movie but there are "intellects." Even the most uneducated person is an intellectual if he or she acts on the truth. In our society, intellect is more important than knowledge.

Q: Even so, it does seem that the movie is too impressionistic. People have pointed out that it is too heavy on the use of melodramatic and comic elements.

A: When I was making the movie, I realized that not all the people who were on Geumnam-ro were there because of politics or ideology. They came because their neighbors, their families had been sacrificed. Among those who remained to the last in front of the government office, there were more ordinary people than intellectuals. During the whole period of the uprising, it is said there was not a single incidence of robbery. This has no precedence in the world. There was merriment, song, and wit in the uprising. This can be seen as the will not to pass on one's sadness to another. There are people who make jokes when terror breaks out. Turning May 18 into melodrama does not tarnish its significance. Historical actuality is in our hands.

Q: The development of the story has been criticized as being too mechanical.

A: It was important to make the movie accessible to the audiences. The structure is the same from Aristotle to Shakespeare: introduction, development, crisis, climax, and conclusion. I may be criticized for not sticking to that structure, but I can't understand why people are saying "Remember U 518" has typified the narrative structure. 

Q: Perhaps it's too early to talk about the Gwangju uprising in a mainstream movie.

A: This brings us back to the question of why I described an historical incident in popular form. But the real pain of the uprising is obliteration and distortion. This is why people's wounds have not healed. The incident has officially been recognized as a "civil uprising" but even so people take no interest. It only attracts attention when some special event is held. Some people still think of it as a riot. "Remember U 518" may have negative aspects but it is better to focus on the greater cause. It has given a proper perspective to people who knew nothing about the uprising or had the wrong perception of it. I believe that in fact we are late in telling the story of Gwangju in film. It made me really happy to get a letter from a young moviegoer who said "I'm glad that I've learned about this history that's new to me." 

Q: You've been accused of exploiting the familiar image of actors such as Ahn Seong-gi and Na Mun-hee.

A: Al Pacino and Robert de Niro also have very strong images. It's like a classical aura. In the movie I tried hard to discover the representative character of every actor. I focused on the representative rather than the typical.

Q: People in their late teens to early twenties now make up the majority of movie audiences. In terms of commercial success, wasn't it a bit risky showing these audiences a movie about the Gwangju uprising?

A: At the theaters you can see three generations of a family coming to see the movie together. I visited 40 to 50 cinemas to greet audiences before the screening, and the age groups were truly diverse. Some people in the audience are over the age of 80. I believe that "Remember U 518" has already achieved universality. I've heard that family meetings are often held after the movie has been seen. That's purely a response from the audience, totally unintended on my part. 

Q: The scene where the first shot is fired on Geumnam-ro is especially memorable. I heard that you edited that part more than 100 times.

A: There are photos and materials on the time before and after the first shot, but there is nothing on the actual moment. There are eyewitness accounts, but memories can differ from person to person. I was glad to have the opportunity to reinterpret the incident as a movie director. I maximized the pain, anger and sadness people felt at the time. I mixed documentary and fiction and added cinematic tension.

Q: The final scene of "imaginary photos" was also memorable.

A: Sin-ae (played by Lee Yo-won) stares at the audience with a gloomy look on her face. Usually when an actor faces the camera, you get that 9 o'clock news feel. But here she is staring subjectively at the audience. At this point I wanted to ask the audience, "Where are we headed?" There was a time when the compass needle was broken, making it difficult to find the way, but even now when the compass is working we are still lost for direction. Through Sin-ae, I wanted to express true feeling to people who have lost their way. Some say that the music in the last scene, "March for Thou," was too conventional, but 60-70 percent of those in their teens and twenties do not know the song. Some people think it is a new song composed for the movie. For people who know the song, I wanted to convey even deeper emotion, and for those who don't know the song I wanted to convey the sentiment of those times.

Q: What do you think is the role of a movie director?

A: A director is a person who makes "beautiful lies." In O. Henry's "The Last Leaf," the artist paints a leaf on the wall for the dying girl. The leaf was a lie but it gave the girl the will to live. Also, I think of the director as a plumber. If emotion flows in, it also has to flow out again. My goal is to pierce the sensibility of a society where understanding is lacking through the stories that the people want to hear.     

* Who is Kim Ji-hun?

Kim was born in Daegu in 1971. He studied theater and cinema at Hanyang University and after graduation gained experience as director on the short film "Greenhouse," and as assistant director on feature films such as "Race" (Jilju) and "Secret" (Bimil). In 2004 he made his first feature film, a comedy titled "Mokpo, Gangsters' Paradise," with actors Cha In-pyo and Jo Jae-hyeon in the lead roles. "Remember U 518" was made from Kim's own ideas and is based on a script that he co-wrote. It is Kim's second feature film.