A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans

Western Folklore, Winter 1998 by Epstein, Stephen J

A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans. Directed by Dai Sil Kim-Gibson. 1995. 1/2" Video, Color. 59 min. Distributed by National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA), 346 Ninth St., 2nd Fl., San Francisco, CA 94103. 16mm Film. $265. Video Rental: $75. Film Rental: $150.

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 film 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 film 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 film 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 traveled 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 work 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 film. 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 documentary 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 film 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.