206: The Documentary Film on Excavating the Remains of Korean War Massacre Victims

This film is the story of people who dig the land. This is the story of people looking for human bones in the ground. It is a story of people trying to remember something that does not disappear from the bones. It’s about a war that hasn’t ended yet. In celebration of the month of war, the 70th anniversary of the Armistice Agreement, a documentary film titled, will be released in theaters across the country on the 21st of this month. Numbered titles are unfamiliar. 206 refers to the number of bones in the human body. However, the remains in the film do not have all 206 bones. In many cases, it is difficult to tell who is who because many of them have been corroded and disappeared, or their bodies are entangled with each other. This is the scene of the excavation site of the remains of victims of civilian massacres during the Korean War. From Seolhwasan Mountain in Baebang-eup, Asan-si in 2018 to Gollyeongol Valley in Nangwol-dong, Daejeon in 2021, six scenes are shown on the screen. Director Heo Chul-nyeong (37) first picked up a shovel and a hoe as a volunteer, and later picked up a camera. The film was submitted to the 26th Busan International Film Festival in 2021 and received the BIFF Mecenat Award, which corresponds to the documentary grand prize. I met Director Heo on the 1st at his office in the DMC Advanced Industrial Center in Mapo-gu, Seoul.

The film begins with a narration in the form of a letter to a grandmother. Tell Me Granny (1928-2019) was the starting point in the film’s journey to the site of her massacre. Director Huh, who made his debut in 2010 with , co-directed the omnibus documentary , in 2014, and the person he met at that time was Grandma. On the last day of ten days spent with her grandmother, who was in the middle of the campaign against the transmission tower in Miryang, she asks, “What is your wish?” Unexpectedly, the answer comes back, not “I want you to pull out the transmission tower,” but “I want to write.” When I write a diary, I have so many things to say that it fills a room, but I said that I was blind. I wanted to leave her grandmother as an unforgettable person. He moved his residence to a gosiwon near Sangdong-myeon, Milyang-si, Gyeongsangnam-do for two years and six months. That’s how we complete 2017. Tell me the story of her husband who did not return to her after the war in 1950, when her grandmother went out to report that she had been educated as a member of the Press Confederation. One day right after the 4.19 Revolution in 1960, he hears from the police about excavation of a burial site where her husband may have been buried, and goes to the site. It was Gomtijae in Cheongdo-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do. The countless remains piled up were indescribably horrifying. Among them, after seeing a skull staring into the sky with a nail stuck in the top of her head and hanging from an earthen wall, the grandmother felt dizzy and fearful and escaped as if she were running away. In an interview that began with a question about the struggles of transmission towers, she never dreamed of hearing about the Korean War massacres of civilians. “When her grandmother looked at her from a distance or smoked a cigarette, she felt very empty and deeply sad,” she said. I, she, imagined that there was a massacre at the source of sorrow, and decided to see it for myself.”

After the 1st Truth and Reconciliation Committee (Truth and Reconciliation Committee) was disbanded in 2010, in 2014, a joint investigation team was organized to uncover the remains of civilian massacres during the Korean War. Director Huh participated as a volunteer in the joint investigation team from the excavation site of Myeongseok-myeon, Myeongseok-myeon, Gyeongsangnam-do in 2017, and filmed from Seolhwasan Mountain, Baebang-eup, Asan-si in 2018. “At Mt. Snow, the families of the suspected collaborators were executed. It was all women and children. It was emotionally difficult.” In the movie, there is a dream testimony scene of a member who was excavating remains at Snowflake Mountain. An elderly man whom he has never seen before approaches and says, “You are pregnant.” A few days later, he finds a vertebrae hanging from the stump of a tree root. It was the bones of a baby carried on its mother’s back. Was it the struggle of the soul to find oneself? Along with the remains of several massacre sites, a diverse group of characters appear in the film. Park Seon-joo, an expert in remains excavation and professor emeritus at Chungbuk National University who also served as the head of the Armed Forces Remains Excavation Team; Ahn Gyeong-ho and Hong Su-jeong, former truth and reconciliation commission investigators; Their special dedication harmonized and made the excavation of the remains possible. Director Heo said, “During the filming period, I thought about how to make people see this problem as a problem of the present rather than the past.” “Younger friends are too far from the war, and older generations tend to frame it. ‘Aren’t they really leftists? Why don’t you dig up the right wing dead?’ while doing it. I hope both generations have something to gain from movies.”

The original title was Just. At the last minute, the editor-in-chief suggested that it would be nice to have a subtitle. ‘doesn’t go away’. what will disappear “The pain of the survivors does not go away. Even though it cracks and breaks, the remains themselves do not disappear. And those who don’t want to forget the tragedy… .” Director Heo’s next film is a documentary about migrant workers in Nepal who write poetry. The title is . It is said that it is a work that tries to reflect on the harsh reality of labor in Korea through their beautiful poetry. Reporter Koh Kyung-tae [email protected]