Left Flank

A South Korean law designed to manage international marriage brokers due to take effect in June 2008 will be too late for Tran Thanh Lan and four South Koreans indicted for human trafficking in The Philippines. But,the two incidents dramatize the consequences, when South Korean men go looking for brides in lesser-developed states.

The business began in the late 1990s by matching South Korean farmers or the physically disabled mostly to ethnic Koreans in China, according to brokers and the Korea Consumer Protection Board. But by 2003, the majority of customers were urban bachelors, and the foreign brides came from a host of countries. The board says 2,000 to 3,000 agencies operate now.

The widespread availability of gender-screening technology since the 1980s has resulted in an overabundance of South Korean males. What is more, South Korea's growing wealth has increased women's educational and employment opportunities, even as it has led to rising divorce rates and plummeting birthrates.

"Nowadays, Korean women have higher standards," said Lee Eun Tae, the owner of Interwedding, an agency that last year matched 400 Korean bachelors with brides from Vietnam, China, the Philippines, Mongolia, Thailand, Cambodia, Uzbekistan and Indonesia. "If a man has only a high school degree, or lives with his mother, or works only at a small- or medium-size company, or is short or older, or lives in the countryside, he'll find it very difficult to marry in Korea."

Critics say the business demeans and takes advantage of poor women. But brokers say they are merely matching the needs of Korean men and foreign women seeking better lives.

"But this business will get more difficult as those countries get richer," said Won Hyun Jae, the owner of i-Bombit, another agency. "Now, even a disabled Korean man can find a Vietnamese bride. But eventually Vietnamese women will ask why they have to go marry a Korean man when life in Vietnam is good."

For now, Vietnam remains a popular source of brides, second only to China. Marriages with Vietnamese women are considered so successful that the local government of at least one city, Yeongcheon, in South Korea's rural southeast, subsidizes marriage tours only to Vietnam.

There are other sides to these stories. Last October, during the Pusan International Film Festival, I also watched Hello, Stranger, in which a North Korean defector helps a Vietnamese guest worker find his Vietnamese girlfriend. Events turn to tragicomedy as he learns, that his only love, who lied when she claimed only to be working, is actually married to a South Korean man, and that his odyssey to ROK to rescue her and marry her was only a miserable failure replete with a bullying, exploitative boss and language barriers.

Whether another layer of bureaucracy can prevent such regrettable incidents is questionable, but at least it's a recognition of sorts, that all is not right. ROK is a a source, transit, and destination country for human trafficking, according to Human Trafficking.

War really is the quintessential human activity, bringing out the best and worst. Assembly pits human excellence against bureaucratic hacks. Much was made in the South Korean press about how the ROK's MK Pictures worked on the Chinese film's innovative war scenes. Although those scenes are impressive, it's misleading to compare Assembly with KangJeGyu Films' Brotherhood of War (Taegukgi in Korean), if only because Assembly is not pacifist screed. Assembly is a bit cartoonish, but it has a big heart.

In 1948, Gu Zidi, Assembly's main character, is a salt-of-the-earth, gruff soldier whose popularity, skill, and luck (he has survived since 1939) is the captain of the 9th Company of a Communist regiment fighting the Nationalist armies. He's handed the regrettable task of holding a position while the regiment retreats. His only order is to hold out until the last man until he hears the bugle call «assembly». But Gu is nearly deaf. Gu takes his orders literally, and accomplishes them, but at the cost of all his soldiers and his own freedom and identity. Fighting a decades-long battle with Communist functionaries who do not have his papers, declining health, and his own guilt, Gu moves from civil war to Korea, sinking from captain to cook.

Actually, one scene from the Korean War, portrays succinctly the symptoms of the intelligence failures the CIA created when it failed to predict the Chinese winter offensive in 1950. Gu volunteers for a detail whose task is to cross into the DPRK and reconnoiter the position of units along a key bridge, to direct artillery fire. In the process, Gu's officer steps on a landmine and is stuck when an American tank lumbers up the road. Disguised as ROK troops, the Chinese officer stands put and Gu responds to the Americans' offer of help with comically indecipherable Korean-like sounds. «We don't know Korean. The Americans know even less.» When the American soldier realizes he cannot help the hapless officer, he runs back to the tank. «He's got bigger worries than we do!» Cunning defeats naivete every time.

Gu then heroically devises a plan, and, although shrapnel lodges in his head and blinds one eye, the officer survives intact. The two remain blood brothers, and the younger officer helps Gu with his project to revisit the issue of his heroic company. In the ensuing years, Gu's unit has disappeared from the official histories, and his men's bodies, originally deployed near a coal mine, are also buried under a mountain of coal. Gu lives long enough to see his company honored and each soldier rewarded with medals. He has also fostered the marriage between one of his soldier's widow and his blood brother.

Still, this is a very one-sided story. The Nationalist and American troops are caricatures, well-endowed troops who always lack the skill and heart to win. Bureaucrats are just short-tempered and lack patience. Gu Zidi is the man, and everyone else is just a little less impressive than him. But, at least in his heart, and at the heart of the film, there is a respect for honor.

The purpose of retrospective film festivals is to relive old debates from a new perspective. However, when the 50 years old conflict, the Korean War is still simmering and distorting ideologies, it's hard to take a new look at a film like Mt. Sahwa. But then, there's just the long shots of what appeared to be central Busan, the harbor and beaches, and the Young-do bridge.

In an American context, where irony and parody are all but necessary even on TV sitcoms, 1969's Mt. Sahwa could actually hold its own. It's one of those movies that plays with a viewer's mind trying to figure out who the bad guy is. Unfortunately, it's soaked in ideological symbolism, but really, unless one is pacifist or communist, it's harmless now (although the Park dictatorship at the time was certainly not). I was pleasantly surprised by this film. A recent Korean movie, Brotherhood of War (Taegukgi Huinallmeo) will play a recurring role in this and the next movie review. The American films, The Guns of Navarone and The Dirty Dozen, also came to mind, because of how seven men come together with an unconventional mission.

There's some confusion in the website blurb: Kim Seung-ho's character was a father, but no father figure. When first we encounter him, his character is a drunk and a brawler, and he is recruited in spite of his almost constant intoxication. Later, we find out he killed his wife's brother during the war for bringing Kim Il-sung's brother to his house for hiding. In a manner, he is the cause of the events in the entire film, and it's unclear if he or his wife can redeem what they did after that day.  The wife, also the mother of their boy, has spent her years as a KPA officer struggling to fulfill her brother's dying wish to protect Kim Il-sung's brother and keep contact with her son whom the Communists have abducted and placed in a Busan orphanage for extortion. Even with her guilt and the extortion, she had more real power over a unit of guerrillas on Mt. Sahwa than any South Korean woman of the time. Other characters cloak themselves as criminals and lowlife, and everyone is carrying around a secret.

Mt. Sahwa is obviously pro-ROK (at one point, a son buries his father in the Taegukgi), but the South Koreans are on the side of motherhood and putting divided families separated by Communist perfidy back together. Those modern Commies just don't know what good in this world: a village in the hills with your family, and all that's traditional, like pure love between young people. Unlike Brotherhood of War, choosing the right side is important, if one wants to be Korean. And, even if you've spent years stewing on the docks in Busan or in exile in Japan, one can still earn a reunion with one's family with the help of those nice ROK soldiers (commanded by the guy in the crew disguised as a knife-fighting con man).

One could also spin an anti-war perspective, where excessive ideology and human evil trample over family life. But, Mt. Sahwa, unlike Brotherhood of War, at least does not argue that the sordid details of an unfortunate life aren't compensable, but require the dross to make the gold appear in its real form. Mt. Sahwa is a more provocative and edifying film for all its propaganda quirks.

So, what do you do after you kill a security guard (but not maliciously)? How about some of the most listless, disconnected sex ever filmed (with what must have been the shallowest, stupidest girl ever seen on film), and then break up with her a few days later? Or, perhaps, do you write a confessional letter to another girl who guessed what you did after a single conversation, and then burn it? What ever happened to getting drunk, or a nice meal?

Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park is a quick stroll around an old theme, about as worn as Hudson and Day: the lone killer. This time it's Alex, a high school skateboarder who's about as distant a sprite as I can remember on film. But, he's got a cute face, even if it's as blank as a cartoon, and girls like him, too. He can obviously lie with the best of them, too, from cops to his girlfriend. And, while we're trying to understand him. his parents are getting divorced. Alex is looking for a ride on the train, and the security guard just tried to pull him off the boxcar. Who would know the guy would take a flip backwards and get split in half by another passing train?

Gratefully, this was only a 90-minute film (and without some of the skateboard sequences, long walks, and a lot of slow motion, it could be shorter). Even scarier than Alex's relief as he burns his confession in a beachside fire, is that he started the confession because of a girl. I guess there's something mawkish about that, perhaps redeeming. For me, it's neither fish nor fowl: not a monster, but certainly no fellow.

What is it about this generation?

Secret Sunshine (which is the English translation of the South Korean town, Miryang) is more than a very thick read. It's a credit to its inspirations. The blend of Kafka, in Before the Law, and Korean culture takes time to develop. This might be one of the few exceptions in long form where narrative time is worthily traded for the essay that worms into one's brain in spite of its brevity. Kafka had a knack for provocative metaphors, but Lee Chang-dong might just have managed to create a film that haunts in its own way.

From the beginning, there was a refreshing earnestness about Lee's characters. Unlike most big budget films on either side of the Pacific, Lee's Koreans acted like the ones I know, not the illusions those Koreans wished to believe about themselves. That is, except for the lead character, Lee Shin-ae. Watching her was like being subjected to a fictive character walking around with a huge sign marked «everyman». Worse, all the other characters want to believe her lies. Her ruse is shattered very early, when she talks about moving to her husband's hometown, only what woman would feel such devotion to a man so stupid he died in a car accident with his mistress? Quickly again, Song Kang-ho (one of my favorite South Korean actors)'s character puts a plague, listing her fictive achievements, on the wall with the intent of luring customers to a piano school, she cannot disagree.

At one point it seems the film is becoming an advertisement for the church, and a deaconess' s insight that there are real things unseen in the world does help Shin-ae. Her son's murderer gives her another chance to submit, but she feels only anger that God would forgive the sinner and grant him peace before she could play her role as saintly mother dispensing forgiveness. Shin-ae sacrifices her son, who is kidnapped and murdered, her reputation in the church and town, and finally her sanity. But, still she refuses to submit. As her mother shrieks at her grandson's funeral, Shin-ae brings only death.

However, Shin-ae reveals the hypocrisy of the Christians in her own community as she painfully gives up her own lies. There's one scene where she furtively replaces the musical backdrop for an outdoor revival with a Korean song, «Lies». In another, a troubled girl, the daughter of the murderer, seeks help from the deaconess, but she is not at her business. The church community is no different from the other townspeople who believe Shin-ae's lies about her musical skills and investments. The deaconess and her husband, whom Shin-ae repays by seducing him, work with Shin-ae very compassionately, but never realize how much the other girl needs help. As bad as she appears, her family and fairweather friends behave even worse.

When one sees a Korean film like this, one can only hope Koreans stop watching the other kinds of lies they watch.

Everything I said last night about my blighted love affair with PIFF was reinforced today. And, I have a name for my problem with the long form movie: self-indulgence.

It's not as if, as a blogger, I don't know about granting myself liberties. Left Flank doesn't have an 800-word limit per post rule. But then, I don't go around whoring for money for my projects. And, judging by my stats counter, many readers have decided to take my advice pre-emptively, and have decided not to access my blog before we disagree about everything. Once in a while, I wonder how to make this blog better, yet few set me straight. Perhaps, directors have the same problem. Lack of, or incompetence in, editing is the serial crime most directors commit in the films featured at PIFF.

Before going on, I would also like to complain again about venues. Walking through an incompletely renovated building, with empty food stalls and floors, is not the way to entice customers to return. Both Jangsan Primus and Daeyoung CGV were more warehouses with fancy new cinemas perched atop them, like strobe lights distracting dancers from how small the dance floor really is. Jangsan Primus was actually a whole lot better looking last year, but the cinema was moved across the street this year.

Today was «Political» Day. First, there was Hello, Stranger about North Korean defectors and illegal workers. I was looking for a little more incisive commentary, but I got platitudes with a few poignant scenes and one good line. The subversion came with the plot, not the dialogue. That two North Koreans, a Vietnamese worker, and a burnt-out detective would interact with nothing else but violence is wholly unrealistic, but what sold it was the South Korean vignettes. A South Korean employer abusing his employee, a man in the backseat of a taxi berating and hitting his wife, and another drunken fare accusing his North Korean driver of stealing his wallet to compensate for his own mistake are examples of South Korean living I've witnessed. «You have no heart!» says our North Korean hero. So, it is endearing when he takes it upon himself, only just graduated from the adjustment class and with only his knowledge of Korean as an advantage, to help his newly found Vietnamese friend find his girlfriend. He's only doing what the South Korean detective and the North Korean taxi driver did for him, just one day at liberty in Seoul. Helping others...now that's subversive!

Of course I wanted more details about defector adjustment, such as how much our hero got from the government. I also wanted to hear more from the North Korean tax driver, ten years in the south, alluding to her hard life and trying to pass on hasty advice to our hero. I've read more derisive commentary form defector testimonies than about anatomy, too. But, if the first drama lacks in specificity, the evening documentary compensated, and overdid it.

Yasukuni, about the controversy surrounding the Japanese Shinto shrine in Tokyo where nationalist prime ministers insist on praying, is not a new film, or so the director, Li Ying, would have it known from his slick flyers. Self-indulgence is a big fault in this film. The camera allows activists and publicity whørëš way too much airtime, especially in the beginning. One compelling personality is Yasukuni Shrine's swordsmith, Kariya Naoharu, but the director lets interviews drag, only to prompt him for little effect. That the geriatric man in his smithy, like Quasimodo in Notre Dame, listens to Emperor Hirohito for fun and can recite a mean poem when not banging out award-winning swords, made him compelling, but not the whole show. The anti-Yasukuni argument suffered from a lack of official comment, suitably skewered by a witty interviewer. The one piece of new information, that successive governments have awarded enshrinement to deceased World War Two veterans without familial permission, to misdirect criticism of the shrine's activities and coopt voters to its cause, is smothered under lengthy video of protests. Certainly, these scenes, particularly the Ayatal activist from Taiwan, were dramatic, but others were just loony.

Overall, what Ampontan argues is still valid in a similar context regarding Imperial Japanese wartime behavior, regardless of one's opinion about Yasukuni.

Hidden behind this narrative is a different picture of Japan, and one that is all the more compelling because it is the truth?the Japanese conduct the most robust and wide-ranging debate on the planet about their role and behavior in the Pacific War, and always have.

It's a shame many would choose sides in a partisan debate, when the issue is really how societies and governments should discuss controversies. I'm always dismayed when pacifist arguments come clothed in the supposition, that agreement would result in peace if only evil men would stop doing what is self-evidently wrong. That topics like Yasukuni are typical, and that rancorous debate is healthy, just seems to horrify people. I wonder more about these closet quietists than I do about all the Yasukuni's in the world.

And, I want about 30 to 40 minutes back, please.