"A Forgotten People: The
Sakhalin Koreans"
"A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans", by
Dai-Sil Kim Gibson. 1995. Distributed by National Asian American
Telecommunications Association (NAATA), 346 Ninth St., 2nd Fl., San Francisco, CA 94103. 16mm
Film, 1/2" Video, Color. 59 min. Sale: $265. Video
Rental: $75. Film Rental: $150.
Reviewed by Stephen Epstein Victoria University of Wellington
During the final years of Korea's
occupation by Japan, over 40,000 Koreans were sent -- many forcibly conscripted -- to work as
laborers on southern Sakhalin Island, then a Japanese territory. When World War II
came to an end, however, and all Sakhalin fell under Soviet rule, political circumstances prevented these
displaced unfortunates from returning to their homeland, and their plight has since been largely ignored by the
outside world. "A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans", a video
written, directed and produced by Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, devotes itself to allowing their moving story to be heard.
The opening sequence pans slowly over the
attractive forested hillsides of Sakhalin, but the beauty of the land belies the horror of the
stories recounted. As a plaintive soundtrack of classical Korean music sets a melancholy mood, we encounter a litany of harrowing tales:
interviewees describe how they were snatched from their families as young men and sent to a distant land to further the imperial Japanese war effort.
Their accounts tell of frequent beatings and appalling living conditions, marked by a meager diet, inadequate shelter, and intense cold; former mine
laborers detail the dangers of their work and the attendant possibilities
of disease, disfigurement, and death. The video captures the recurrent use
of animal similes in the interviewees' self-presentation (e.g. "the Japanese worked us like horses and oxen," "we were like pigs in
one room"), and thus effectively evokes the dehumanization they experienced:
those sent to Sakhalin became, quite literally, beasts of burden. But the editorial presentation suggests an even more fundamental effacement of
their identities: "we've become nameless souls," sighs one
elderly gentleman. The title itself strikes a keynote which recurs several times: the Koreans of
Sakhalin see themselves as exiled from their homes and then abandoned by the world. The voiceover narrative concurs, noting upon more than one
occasion that "no one remembered these people."
The video highlights particularly an
everpresent longing for the land left behind. Again and again we meet people struggling with the
burden of their memories: one miner's daughter describes nostalgically how
she came from a "village with a beautiful river and mountains," from
which she was uprooted, and travelled with her family to a "cold, cold
country." For many, Korea becomes an idealized motherland of the distant past seen in
contrast to the frozen land of their more recent lives. Although the notion of han (often paraphrased as "unrequited resentment or
sorrow"), so central to Korean popular discourse, is never invoked directly in the
production, both the self-presentation of the interviewees and the narrative viewpoint are thoroughly informed by this concept. One Sakhalin
resident relates a friend's deathbed words, which veritably burst with han: "if you ever go back to Korea, tell everyone our story, the story we kept
in our chests." In most cases the self is presented first and
foremost as an ethnic subject, and those interviewed often become, above all, exiled
Koreans. The video fosters the national self-identification by calling forth images of severed families, and thus having recourse to another
essential trope of Korean popular thought, that of a people divided, who have undergone the agony of families torn asunder. The audience is
implicitly reminded that the separations brought about by forced conscriptions to Sakhalin were soon to be replicated on a vastly larger
scale by the partition of the Korean peninsula and the subsequent war between north and south.
A dark shadow cast by Japan and its
responsibility for the continuing predicament of the Koreans of Sakhalin looms over the video.
The overwhelming anger towards the former colonizer felt by the interviewees some fifty years after liberation is more than palpable, and
the narration itself appears to endorse the view that blame for the ongoing sadness of these people lies with the Japanese. Although Japan's forcible
conscription of "comfort women" has begun to command international attention, the plight of the Sakhalin Koreans continues to go largely
unnoticed, and the video can be seen as advocating that the Japanese should offer compensation for their wartime misdeeds.
One area given short shrift by the piece,
however, is the current situation of Koreans in Sakhalin and their relationship with ethnic
Russians. Not until well into the video does one see a Russian face, and at no point are conversations between Koreans and Russians depicted. One
speaker tells of the "racial discrimination" experienced by the
Koreans of Sakhalin, but such discrimination is barely discussed and the dominant
portrayal of the contemporary situation as an exile of continuous mistreatment does not fully jibe either with the occasional images of
Koreans and Russians with arms around one another or other suggestions of camaraderie and references to intermarriage. In one of the few interviews
that tackles these issues head on, a thoughtful young tae kwon do instructor, flanked by two Russian friends, notes that "we consider Russia
to be our motherland. Our parents want us to go [to Korea], but we
don't." Nonetheless, towards the end of the work we find another member of the
younger generation saying "I would like to leave," and the climactic position seems to privilege his voice over the earlier interview. Numerous
questions are raised here but given only cursory treatment.
The video, mournful and elegiac, is
occasionally slow-moving and might not play well in the classroom. Additionally, those looking for a
well-rounded account of the lives of the Sakhalin Koreans in the 1990s and
the complexities that surround settlement of the issue of repatriation may come away dissatisfied. Nonetheless, it may be uncharitable to criticize
the production on these points, since it particularly concerns itself with giving voice to the voiceless and remembering the forgotten. A final
caption before the credits notes that this work is dedicated "to all those forced to toil and suffer far from their homelands." On its own
terms, as a moving tribute to the pain of a people and as an attempt to prevent their
stories from slipping into oblivion, A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans succeeds.
Citation: Epstein, Stephen, Review of Dai-Sil Kim Gibson, A Forgotten People: The
Koreans of Sakhalin
(1995) Korean Studies Review 1999, no. 5
Electronic file: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/korean-studies/files/ksr99-05.htm
[This review first appeared in Western Folklore, 57 (1998): 77-79]
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