Super Kawaii Cute Cat Kaoani

KissDromeda
Entry Owner Linkies Stuffs


Disclaimer

Hi there! 안녕하세요!
This blog is to keep track of my writing (from Oct. '14 onward), saving tips and tricks I find, little rants or raves, and so on. If you don't like it, kindly leave. I am a fangirl and reviewer, so do tend to post on that note as well.

Archive




Tag Board



Credits

Template: DianeeyA
Basecode: Revita | Tsabbita | Azzahra
Others:
© 2014 - All Rights Reserved
Jeju Uprising - "Jiseul" Movie
Saturday, May 23, 2015 | 0 Word(s)

     I haven't been into my Korean culture lately, and though what I'm about to discuss is something from 2013, it still piqued my interest. I was looking through blog posts (half for research, half for my usual curiosity), when I come across a post discussing names; it talked about how to understand even the weirdest of Korean names. An example is:
A girl named “Mae-i-ra” which means “echo” in Hanja form; Hanja form and meaning is very common for Koreans and sometimes – like us Westerners – the Hanja is total bullshit. But that's okay! This one wasn't, but the author gave it directly as an example of “more than three syllable names”.
     So, after that, he discussed the romanization of Korean names. In Western culture, we put the surname last, compared to Koreans. They discussed two popular Korean actors over here: Yujin Kim and Daniel Dae Kim. Of course, I understand how they might want to familiarize Korean names to the Western society by placing their surnames first (we would call them by their surnames otherwise... that's how dumb we can be without proper knowledge).
     But upon reading romanization and whatnot, there was an interesting director he talked about and showed a very intersting poster. Turns out, it was from a film festival held in 2013. The topic? Something so damn interesting that I had to research! How can you ignore it?
      So, here's what I found out after looking up everything revolving around the topic given through the movie; Jeju Uprising/Jeju Massacre. This was an uprising on the Jeju islands, off the coast of Korea. Now, most people see Jeju Island as one of two things – a resort/vacation spot, or the weird culture split from Korea. I only say that because during my early studies of Korea, I saw a lot of talk over how even Koreans say Jeju is very different on terms of Korean stuff. The place has its specific language accent and are a bit odd compared from mainlanders. Understandable. But I have always found Jeju intriguing, despite the strange aura it radiates.
     Back to the Uprising; it was a rebellion in Jeju during 1948 up until May of 1949. It had followed the elections that were held only in South Korea, by national police employed by the US military. Between 14k and 30k civilians were killed fighting between the factions; many places were destroyed on the island as well. It also said that it took nearly 60 years for the Korean government to verbalize an apology in 2006, and, reparations were promised but still not given as of the turn of 2010.
     Japan occupied Korea for 35 years and during the time between WWI and WWII, Japan surrendered, moving out of Korea in '45; then Korea was divided and still hasn't come back together, no matter the terms. That's a brief history. Now, what happened was that in '47, Jeju Koreans went against the election that was started by who was mainly in rule of South Korea: my home of the US, but under the flag of the United Nations. They wanted to separate a southern regime and to “employ its first preseident Syngman Rhee”. Police fired and things started up in an uprising. With the shooting that killed six Koreans, the people of Jeju (calling themselves Jeju chapter of the South Korean Labor Party) attacked up to 12 police stations and things went to a chaotic state. Now, one fact that stood out to me what the fact that after Syngman Rhee declared martial law, an account was given from the time that South Korean soldiers that were sent to fight back against their own on Jeju Island had assaulted villages and took away young men and girls (reminds me of the Holocaust – is that odd?). The young men were executed and the girls were, too, after they had been gangraped over two weeks. Now, there were officially 39, 285 homes demolished and destroyed mainly near Halla Mountains. Of the 400 villages, only 170 remain. People of this time even hid, which spurred the movie and idea of “Jiseul”.
     In October of 2003, President Roh Moohyun apologized, stating, “Due to wrongful decisions of the government, many innocent people of Jeju suffered many casualties and destruction of their homes. To those people who died innocently, I pay respect and pray for their souls.” It was the first official apology since 1948 and for the 1948 massacre.
Fast forward to the Korean War. After all that happened during this time, there were thousands detained on Jeju, sadly enough. They were separated and labeled from A to D, in groups. In 1950, a written order by a senior intelligence officer in the South Korean Navy instructed Jeju's police to “executre all those in groups C and D by firing squad no later than September 6.”
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiseul
     Jiseul was originally made in 2012 over this dramatic uprising and what happened during this struggling time of the people on Jeju. The director is a Jeju Island native, going by O Muel, which, in Korean, is pronounced “Oh Myuhl”. Fun fact: the cast is actually made up of local actors speaking in their native (and pretty different) dialect. “Jiseul” means “potato” in Jeju dialect. O Muel chose it because “potatoes are considered a staple food in many countries, often symbolizing survival and hope.”
The amazing thing about this movie is that this isn't over the entire uprising, but over a forgotten tale of a group of villagers that hid within a cave for 60 days to escape the military attacks. This movie won 3 awards – CGV Movie Collage Award, the Director's Guild of Korea Award for Best Director, and the NETPAC Jury Award. It also won an outstanding World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.


More interesting articles regarding this topic:

In 2008, near Jeju International Airport, a mass grave was discovered, where bodies from the massacre in 1948 were unearthed and recorded. 

Labels: , , , , , ,



OLDERNEWER


Post a Comment