Movie about civilian killings at Nogeun-ri to debut

Posted on : 2006-10-26 22:00 KST Modified on : 2006-10-26 22:00 KST

Cows plowing rice farms, children bathing in a nearby stream and elderly men playing chess on a lazy afternoon -- this was life in Nogeun-ri, Yeongdong County, central South Korea, before a nightmarish event occurred in July, 1950.

The incident came without warning on the 31st day of the Korean War. The sky split open as U.S. warplanes appeared and strafed hundreds of villagers walking along a railroad track. They were leaving their homes under a directive from retreating U.S.

soldiers in the advance of North Korean communists.

Survivors, cornered under a railroad bridge at Nogeun-ri, were indiscriminately machine-gunned. Out of about 500 villagers, only 25 remained, the witness and families of the victims say.

Half a century later, the atrocity is being made into a film.

An independent South Korean production company finished shooting the movie, tentatively titled "Small Pond," this week, with its release set for June next year. It is based on the 2000 Pulitzer Prize-winning report by the news agency Associated Press and an autobiographical novel by Jeong Eun-yong, who lost two children, ages 2 and 5, in the incident and told his story to the Associated Press.

After many news reports and documentaries about Nogeun-ri came out, director Lee Sang-woo felt obliged to make a fictional film to tell the story. He wanted to ask the U.S. government whether there was no other way than war, a question still relevant today.

"Writing the scenario, I asked myself what story I have to tell.

This is not going to be about the incident, not the event, but it's going to be about the people. It is going to tell the relationships that people had in the small community and how intimate and beautiful they were, and ask them (the U.S. military) if they knew what they were doing. They were destroying these beautiful human beings," Lee said after shooting the film's last scene in Sunchang, South Jeolla Province, early this week.

A playwright and theater director whose career spans 30 years, Lee is a master of black comedies that deal with the sensitive issues faced by Koreans when they were under military rule. His notable plays include "Chilsu and Mansu," a story of urban laborers struggling in the suppressive climate of the 1980s, and "Bieonso," a gritty portrayal of modern South Korea, characterized by its ideological separation with North Korea, sexism and capitalism. He named his debut movie after a phenomenal song by Kim Min-gi from the 1980s that was banned for its controversial lyrics, which alluded to the ideological division and political chaos in South Korea. Kim let the director use his music without having to pay copyright fees.

"I think this world is like a small pond, an ecosystem where people have to live together," Lee said.

"Small Pond" is unconventional also in the way it was produced.

It's an independent movie backed by a major Korean producer and distributor, MK Pictures. After Myung Film, a precedent of MK Pictures that produced the international hit "Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War," initiated the project in 2003, Lee and his film crew decided to invest their own paychecks and established a one-time production company, Nogeunri Productions. The film's production commenced in May with a budget of 1 billion won (US$1 million) that was funded by MK Pictures.

Lee cast his long-time theater crew for the movie. The actors brought their wives, children and parents to reenact family relationships.

"It was like we were on a picnic. I'm expecting to see the atmosphere of family and comfort we had when the movie comes out," said Kim Roe-ha, whose previous roles include a detective in Bong Joon-ho's "Memories of Murder" and who plays a father in this movie.

"And personally, I will take pride in myself for a long time in the fact that I participated in this film that may never be made if not now," he said.

Moon Sung-keun, another lead actor also known as the son of the renowned peace activist Pastor Moon Ik-hwan, recounted how he was moved by the sincerity of his colleagues. In the scene of the shootings under Nogeun-ri bridge, where about 100 actors ran and huddled together under the railroad trestle and the camera was far away to film the whole crowd, someone behind him was sobbing and struggling to contain her emotions.

"I was just one of the crowd. I was just being there, as the camera wouldn't spot me. But the woman behind me was crying and trying to stop crying. I won't forget how I felt that moment," he said.

The crew travelled far from Nogeun-ri to find filming locations good enough to portray the rural village before the war and modernization, as Nogeun-ri has changed a lot since. The location for the final cut was the mountain village Dowang-maeul in Sunchang County, North Jeolla Province, where mobile phone service doesn't reach, wild persimmons are available for strangers and houses are few and far between.

The accounts of the gruesome Nogeun-ri incident were not acknowledged by the U.S. government until AP broke the story in 1999. After a yearlong joint investigation with Seoul, then-President Bill Clinton expressed his condolences and offered a $1 million monument and a $780,000 scholarship as consolation measures.

None of the measures, however, have been implemented because of Washington's insistence that the monument and scholarship be applied to all South Korean civilians killed in the war, not specifically to the Nogeun-ri victims.

The families of the Nogeun-ri victims turned down the offer.

They say the United States was trying to cover all Koreans involved in the war with this one commemorative project, without efforts to find out the truth of the allegations of a massacre in their village.

Jeon Hye-jin, who plays a mother in the movie, hoped this film can settle the unresolved issues that have been forgotten behind a barrage of news reports.

"On the first day under the bridge, several elderly people came.

And they introduced themselves as survivors and relatives of the victims. They came to greet us, playing their roles. I was very surprised to realize that this was not something of the past," she said.

"Shooting 28 hours straight under the bridge, my heart ached.

It's not just Nogeun-ri, but there are many other massacres that have been covered up over time and compensation. And I hope our movie can help raise the awareness of them," she said.

Sunchang, South Korea, Oct. 26 (Yonhap News)

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