> Interviews

Until the Stones Speak
Kim Kyung-man (Director)

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Impetus for the film

Hata Takeshi (HT): The Jeju Island April 3rd Incident (Jeju Uprising) taken up in this film, Until the Stones Speak, was a topic in Yang Yonghi’s recent Soup and Ideology (2021, YIDFF 2021), and the incident has become especially well known in Japan among people interested in documentary film. In addition, Director Kim Seon, who is making a work that entwines the history of his kin’s experience of the April 3rd Incident, as well as of his personal and ancestral ties to Jeju Island, had just before participated in our Yamagata Documentary Dojo workshop. In the past this incident was not well known in Japan. However, if one thinks about it, after 1948, when the incident occurred, in Japan we had the Red Purge in which the Communist Party was similarly targeted, just as how in the United States the storms of McCarthyism were also brewing. Among these, I believe that the April 3rd Incident on Jeju Island can be said to be a particularly severe outbreak of violence. Could you please share the impetus by which you encountered this theme and chose to make a film about it?

Kim Kyung-man (KK): I too only became aware of the incident in my thirties. Before, a vague sense that “there was an incident then in which a lot of people died” was all that I knew, but as I did research for a documentary that would address the history, I became aware that this incident was, in actuality, extremely devastating. I happen to be from Seoul, but even so I came to be interested in the April 3rd Incident, as I believed it to be a topic whose importance is not limited to Jeju Island.

In the history of Korea of this period, there were a number of other similar tragedies. All over, police would arrest and torture people, murdering many of their victims. Afterward, with the Korean War, there were a large number of similar events, so many so that, if anything, it became difficult to find a place where such a massacre had not occurred. In the 1960s Korea sent troops to the Vietnam War, but there as well the Korean army repeated incidents like the April 3rd Incident. In the 1980 Gwangju Uprising the military again used force to suppress the masses. Beginning in the late 1940s, whenever popular struggle began, the government repeatedly responded ruthlessly. This past has yet to be reckoned with, and if anything, the state continued to justify it, which is why these massacres reoccurred. As such, the April 3rd Incident is a departure point for contemporary Korean history, making it a tremendously important event.

In truth, the incident has a close tie with Japan. In the very first scene, there is a cave, which was dug out by the people of Jeju Island in forced labor during the Japanese colonial regime. Japan, at that time, was implementing similar policies on Jeju Island as it did in Okinawa, so there were many such caves and bases. If not for how the war ended up going, Jeju Island might have suffered a similar fate as Okinawa.

Further, even after being liberated from Japan, the fact that Korea was placed under United States’ military rule for three years is important. US military officers controlled everything, even adjudicating trials. The national universities likewise fell under military jurisdiction. Those who had been members of the ruling class under Japanese rule were directly promoted to the police and military forces. This was a way of suppressing those with leanings toward communism. The troops would burn down villages and massacre people in much the same manner that the Japanese Imperial Army had operated in Manchuria and throughout the Korean Peninsula. The prison Park Chun-ok is in in the film was a detention center in which as many as 100 people could be crammed into a single room, a standard practice from Japan’s colonial period. The methods by which the Korean government at the time would manage popular movements were an exact copy of those used by Japan. This is a fact that I definitely want Japanese people to know.

HT: Japan not only left a big scar on Korean society during the occupation, but also after the withdrawal. Speaking in terms of the meaning of Jeju Island’s relationship with Japan, at the time there was a direct ferry between Jeju and Osaka and, as you stated just now, Japan’s policies in Jeju were similar to Japan’s policies in Okinawa; I have heard that, even when compared with the Korean Peninsula, Osaka was the easiest metropolis to reach from Jeju during that period. I live in Osaka now, and there are many Zainichi Koreans in Osaka who herald from Jeju, including many who leaned on their relatives here for transit to Osaka to flee after the April 3rd Incident.

KK: It is said that at the time it was easier to go to Japan from Jeju than to Busan. The long relationship between Jeju and Japan from before Japan’s withdrawal was a very harsh one, in which Jeju Island had its political considerations and, above all, a need to survive. As a result, people began to travel to Japan for low-wage labor, and they had the opportunity to come in contact with socialist ideas, which many people in Japan held. After the war, as they returned to Jeju Island to begin activism at home, the April 3rd Incident soon followed and scores of people ultimately fled Jeju again.

HT: As an example of one such person, there is Yang Yonghi’s mother in her film Soup and Ideology. I feel that there is a need for us who live in Japan to accept this event as our own. Not as if it is some old tale from some island in a neighboring country but rather as a trauma that friends who live just next door still struggle with today.

KK: I agree.

Production in Korea

HT: Similarly, there are examples of massacres of those branded communists in Indonesia from around 1965 onward, tragedies made better known globally through the release of the film The Act of Killing (2012, YIDFF 2013); now, in Indonesia, younger generations have begun to investigate their history anew and write about it, as well as organize exhibitions and produce films, but in Korea how are events like the April 3rd Incident and the many other like massacres being addressed in discourse?

KK: What’s happening in Indonesia is ideal, isn’t it? In Korea, for the longest time, discussion of the April 3rd Incident would result in punishment. However, as the years pass, there has been some movement in the hearts of people as the violence becomes more distant; it has finally grown possible to discuss such massacres in Korean civil society, cultivating opportunities for that history to be reflected upon anew. My experience was to discover the April 3rd Incident upon investigating the problems of contemporary Korean society. The point of departure for me was doubt as to the soundness of today’s world system. My impetus was a dissonance I felt in our society, in which people avoid accepting facts as facts, instead believing their own myths.

There has been a great deal of honest survey and research about the April 3rd Incident in the past and present. There have been so many instances of undeniable proof unearthed. Yet, our society at this time is very happy, so it has been difficult to direct consciousness into the past. It must be that the difficulty of surviving in today’s society has turned people’s eyes towards this history. Why is it so hard to live today?

HT: In this film you don’t interview people directly, but rather there are people of the younger generation who gather testimonies, with the film structured around recording their work. It seems to me that, as there are many who listen, conversation can flow easily.

KK: These activities are carried out by the group Jeju Islanders' Solidarity for Jeju 4.3. They are conducting listening sessions with people who were pursued and imprisoned at the time of the April 3rd Incident. Moreover, they had as their goal obtaining retrial based on these testimonies. As a result, audiovisual evidence for court submission became very important; thus, I was contacted. I had also wanted to make a film about the uprising, and I met them while recording lectures and other events. In making the film, there was a time in which I was at a loss as to who to interview, so I was very happy to hear their proposal.

In addition, as I listened to the testimonies of the elderly women who had formerly been imprisoned, I grew sure that, in simply connecting documentary footage with their oral histories, the film would sufficiently communicate the history to audiences such that they could empathize. So, I did not do any more interviews. It was powerful enough to record the conversations. The idea became to combine the force of the testimonies with the abundant natural beauty of Jeju Island.

Contrasting nature and testimony

HT: The landscape shots are beyond fantastic. A central reason that this film transcends being merely about testimony and is a work of art lies in how almost too beautiful it is, and in the contrast between the extremely harsh natural Jeju scenery and how confidential the testimonies of these elderly woman feel, as if we are listening to them just in the spot where they lie down to sleep each night.

KK: Listening to these women speak is, as one would expect, very heavy and severe, so many things that I would not have been able to personally withstand. This is why, from the start, I had it in mind to incorporate nature footage. While shooting the film, I had to think about what it means to be a human being. In meditating on how such cruel events can befall a person, I began to harbor doubts about humans themselves. However, I felt that there is a big difference between human cruelty beyond the bounds of comprehension and the brutality that nature harbors. Nature’s brutality is somehow acceptable, somehow understandable, I feel. Thus, I opted to display their contrasts.

There was also the thought that this particular nature is also a witness of the April 3rd Incident. The incident was not only about the violence and massacre by the state, but also, there is the side of the people’s resistance that can be seen. With nature, there is the matter of the intensity of winter, and the powerful life forces born as the seasons change. Of course, I took much care in portraying this seasonality. The uprising actually occurred in spring, while the scorched-earth campaign was mostly confined to winter.

Moreover, before in Korea there had been many resistance movements, a great number of individuals who knew the means of such resistance, and I feel that recently people with that kind of experience are gradually diminishing in number. In Japan, a similar phenomenon might have emerged long before it did in Korea. In the film we shot Korean firs on Jeju Island’s Hallasan Mountain; supposedly, there used to be many more of them. However, numerous trees have fallen with climate change. And as society has evolved to this point by the apparent life forces of people with the power to resist, the potential of such individuals becomes important in the process of civilization. Bonds between person and person, a certain tolerance, an open-mindedness that should be in society has of late grown weaker, I believe. I am very concerned about this. This cannot only be a problem in Korea. For instance, in Korea there was an age in which there were no such things as random killings. Still, they have recently begun to take place. I have no idea why.

HT: It is the same in Japan. Yet, in this film, while there is this biting, severe portion, it seems as if the feelings of the elderly women change with the presence of all of their listeners, that there are numerous moments of heartfelt connections depicted. For example, in the middle of the film there is an elderly woman from Anjareum district in Gashi-ri village, is there not? In the beginning her daughter says she doesn’t think she will say anything at all, but as she begins to speak, gradually memories bubble up and gush forth. That scene—in which moments of the past are continuously captured—does not have as many of those natural images that otherwise cut in here and there. So more than the content of the testimony, in that scene the audiences are made to cinematically encounter those unfurling, miraculous recollections. When I saw that scene, I understood that the listener movement was not only about the trial and the politics, but also about providing time for memories to be spoken, that in doing so it had come to mean a great deal for these elderly women. Separate from success or failure at court, this activism is very important to those involved, and I felt hope in seeing it.

Is there a reason that all testimonies given are by women?

KK: To tell you the truth, I have recorded testimonies of over twenty people to date. Each one is a considerably heavy conversation, so I thought it would be impossible to take all of them and tie them into a single work. I decided to separate the project. First, as the initial film, I chose the five elderly women who appear this time, the thought being to introduce the April 3rd Incident such that those who knew nothing about it would also be drawn to watch and learn. Their conversations are very lively, the distinctions between their five personalities clear, so first I wanted to commemorate them in a film.

HT: So will this work continue as a series?

KK: I cannot say concretely yet, but it does seem certain that I will make at least one more.

HT: I look forward to it. In the 1990s Director Byun Young-joo’s Murmuring (1995, YIDFF 1995) had a long-run screening at the cinema where I worked.The elderly women in Nanum house really drew you in despite—or perhaps precisely because of—having had such harsh experiences. Your film reminded me of them.

KK: I have also been deeply moved by how they have endured so much past pain and agree with the assessment that there is a great deal of hope that comes from that.

HT: I likewise observe that there are many films that position survivors of horrible experiences as their main characters, as they all are truly wonderful human beings. We are not making films to critique society by showcasing someone else’s trauma, but rather to display in cinematic form the lives of those who deserve our respect as human beings; in that process, we employ cameras and microphones to record with great difficulty a few instances to impart upon audiences, which is what I believe to be our main purpose in making films. I admire the elderly men and women who feature in these films and always wish I could be like them.

KK: Well, nevertheless, the safest bet is not experiencing trauma, is it not?

Compiled by Hata Takeshi
Translated by Kyle Hecht

Photography: Murakami Yuki / Video: Kusunose Kaori / Interpreter: Suzuki Natsuko / 2023-10-07