Things that Do Us Part is a film that began from the personal experiences of three grandmothers who respectively went through the independence movement around Korea’s liberation in 1945, the 4·3 uprising in Jeju and the life of partisans in Jiri mountain. These are the historic events that took place during and after Japanese Colonization, the rules under the U.S. and Soviets, followed by the division of the Korean peninsula. 70 years have passed since the division. It ha...more

Things that Do Us Part is a film that began from the personal experiences of three grandmothers who respectively went through the independence movement around Korea’s liberation in 1945, the 4·3 uprising in Jeju and the life of partisans in Jiri mountain. These are the historic events that took place during and after Japanese Colonization, the rules under the U.S. and Soviets, followed by the division of the Korean peninsula. 70 years have passed since the division. It has been a time of perpetual torment for some, while others could not even feel any pain ‘like meat in a fridge’ as if the time has stopped. The trauma from Korea’s division keeps inflicting indelible scars on open sores that from the Koreans in both South and North to those who have emigrated to Japan suffer equally. In this film, mountains and valleys where so many were sacrificed become the stages along with places of everyday lives. These stages act as an aisle or ‘gut’- form of exorcism in Korea­ to connect the past and present. If there was a ‘third place’ where the past and present could coexist and the trauma could be healed, it would be where we are standing right now. less