Nobody left the stage after the stage lights were turned off.:
Heros and heroines in a documentary and their life after it.
DO Sang-hee Editor
I wondered if you still cry on the road, do not skip meals, and your blind child is grow well. People say the world has become much better. Eight people in ten say they believe in their president. So I wanted to ask after you if you are living well. I met 4 persons of the documentaries shown in the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival ranging from Min-gi Gwon, a welder of a shipyard in <Still and All, 2015> and Seung-hee in <Slice Room, 2015>, the story of the people in the slice room village in Dongja-dong to Jeong-ae Mun, the disabled activist in <Thirty-four, on the road, 2015> and Eo-jin Nam in <Home Sweet Home, 2015> that describes a transmission tower struggle in Miryang. On the contrary, these people asked after the world. They told me that the documentaries which shot themselves ended but pain of the world is still ongoing and they are not fine.
Hope that you understand temporary employees, the shadow behind light.
Min-gi Gwon(51) was a welder of a shipyard. When Director Yeong-jo Kim whom he got to know through a friend asked him to help him shoot a movie about stories of the people under the Yeongdo bridge, he was willing to comply with his request. Thanks to him, Mr. Min-gi got to keep the last moment of his welder life in the shipyard in <Still and All>(The 8th DMZ International Documentary Film Festival) forever. When he was 19 years old, his father passed away. He became a head of household. He immediately threw his school uniform and boo bag under the Yeongdo bridge. And he held a soldering iron in his hand. He said, “I am tired of the temporary position life” about the reason that he stopped welding work that has done for more than 30 years since then. 90% of welders in Korean shipyards is temporary employees. They live on their salary which is lower than that of permanent employees and in anxiety that they can get given the chop any time throughout their lifetime. He smiled saying, “We(Welders) tell the joke ‘we go to Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., Ltd. and get off work from the Hyundai Shipbuilding Yard’.”Min-gi Gwon(51) was a welder of a shipyard. When Director Yeong-jo Kim whom he got to know through a friend asked him to help him shoot a movie about stories of the people under the Yeongdo bridge, he was willing to comply with his request. Thanks to him, Mr. Min-gi got to keep the last moment of his welder life in the shipyard in <Still and All>(The 8th DMZ International Documentary Film Festival) forever. When he was 19 years old, his father passed away. He became a head of household. He immediately threw his school uniform and boo bag under the Yeongdo bridge. And he held a soldering iron in his hand. He said, “I am tired of the temporary position life” about the reason that he stopped welding work that has done for more than 30 years since then. 90% of welders in Korean shipyards is temporary employees. They live on their salary which is lower than that of permanent employees and in anxiety that they can get given the chop any time throughout their lifetime. He smiled saying, “We(Welders) tell the joke ‘we go to Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., Ltd. and get off work from the Hyundai Shipbuilding Yard’.”
Mr. Min-gi has worked for three years as a permanent cleaner who belongs to a gu office after he did the film. When an interviewer ask the last question to him in the interview of open recruitment for cleaners, he answered, “I would like to work as a permanent employee only once in my life.” He has played saxophone that appeared in the movie still now thanks to his free time which has increased. He got to have new hobbies of scuba diving and making pottery by hand. He is satisfied with his present life, but his friends and juniors who are doing welding work every day except rainy days weight upon his mind. He said, “Korea has yielded the top position to another country because of the recent risk of the shipyards, but I hope that you will recognize hard work of temporary workers in shipyard, the shadow behind light, and they will have time to spare.”
I am ‘Seung-hee Oh’ before I became ‘Yu-ri’s mom’.
Ms Seung-hee Oh(31) lived in a slice room village. She did not suddenly shoot a film. First, Director Yun-hyeok Song who lived in a slice room village in Dongja-dong got to be a friend of Mr. Il-soo who is a spouse of Ms Seung-hee. The couple who started to live together is naturally included in <Slice Room>(The 8th DMZ International Documentary Film Festival). While the film was made for more than 3 years, ‘Yu-ri’ came to them and they got to have a rental house.
The rental house’s facilities is good. However, Ms Seung-hee more misses the neighbors of the slice room village who were affectionate. She is now active in a disabled women’s institute. Ms Seung-hee who has a problem in her legs started to be interested in policies for the disabled since she experienced that some friends received personal assistant support for the disabled and she could not when she was a high school student. Her interest led her to look at several problems in society. These days, she is active as a keeper of Gwanghwmun Driveway Disable Person Site-in, attends 2030 Meeting to Talk about Disabled Person’s Sexuality, or spends her time making fruit liquor that will be sold in the Korea Queer Culture Festival several months later.
Ms Seung-hee has many worries about raising a child as a disabled woman after Yu-ri was born. She suffered from serious depression feeling oppressed about being responsible for three persons when she was first married and she is still depressed. She should be responsible for Mr. Ilsu who is blind, herself who gradually leads to blindness due to optic atrophy, and Yu-ri who is rapidly growing. Seoul provides the service to assist activities of disable persons and the ‘Home helper service’ that helps disable persons to raise their children(160 households). However, a disable person cannot receive both of benefits for now. She just receives the ‘Home Helper’ service to raise a child for maximum 70 hours per month. So her wish is to receive both of them as the two types of services are combined with each other.
She tries to find herself, saying, “I am very happy that I am a mom of Yu-ri. But, I am also Seung-hee, am I?” She is happy when she is active in groups for women’s rights and is on internet television that the process to make fruit liquor is introduced and communicates with subscribers. She would like to lead a group for disabled persons.
“Disabled persons also suffer from difficulties like they cannot broadcast shows on the internet in their houses because of crying babies even though they want to do as it is difficult to go out. I would like to be a person who helps them. I can create a childcare center or take care of babies in the center.”
Planning to travel to India s the delight of my life.
Ae-rin Mun(38) is still on the road. I met Directors Seon-hee Lee and Byeong-cheol Kim in Seongbuk Disabled Self-support Center who I was active 4 years ago. She was in <Thirty-four, on the road>(The 7th DMZ International Documentary Film Festival) with Ms Jin-hee her own age who is her friend and went to the center together. Ms Ae-rin told me that they write, wear make-up, have dates, agonize about self-reliance, and fight on the road as they are in the movie. She said, “That’s us. We are disabled persons, women, and activists. The worries, the complex worries which are not only our problems, are shown in it without injustice to anyone.”
Ms Ae-rin was somewhat tired of her struggles when the film was made. She greatly reduced her scepticism by activists’ response to the movie. She said, “Activists in Jeju told me that the move is very helpful for being active in regions in the conversation time with audience of the Disabled Peoples’ Human Rights Film Festival. I got to know that my story can support various people who watched it in several regions.” She is usually active in Gwanghwamun Underground Site-in and the National Solidarity for Abolishing Disability Discrimination, the national unit chronosystem. “The people watching the movie sometimes asked me a question, ‘Are you still on the road? I am here not to be ashamed of myself about it. Now, it’s <Thirty-four, on the road>, isn’t it?”
When Ms Ae-rin shot the film, she has kept independent living, not her parent’s house or the facilities. I do not have nightmares but I have light sleeps and wake up very often. Her health is low because of her activities for more than 10 years. Nevertheless, I gained strength when each disabled person around her participates in activities and each citizen sympathizes with the abolition and deinstitutionalization of the disability rating system and the support obligation rule.[1] She said, “Nevertheless, I am exhausted. I have never go on a trip or get enough rest while living on the road. I will soon go on a trip for myself with my colleague. These days, I endure things imagining what to do in India.”
If all the things are solved, I will be out of work in Miryang.
Mr. Eo-jin Nam(22) is now a “Miryang man”. He watched the news on October 2013 when he was living in Cheongdo as a high school second-year student. Policemen was subduing grandmothers and grandfathers in Miryang. He immediately ran to them. And he has lived on the dirt road in Miryang. He built the Number 101 Site-in on a mountain behind Yonghwa Village, Danjang-myeon which was supposed to be the site of a transmission tower with other people and has waited for policemen for 4 months. There were electric power and water. He carried water bottles on his back. Director Ryeon who was in the Site-in with them recorded their life in Mr. Eo-jin Nam(22) is now a “Miryang man”. He watched the news on October 2013 when he was living in Cheongdo as a high school second-year student. Policemen was subduing grandmothers and grandfathers in Miryang. He immediately ran to them. And he has lived on the dirt road in Miryang. He built the Number 101 Site-in on a mountain behind Yonghwa Village, Danjang-myeon which was supposed to be the site of a transmission tower with other people and has waited for policemen for 4 months. There were electric power and water. He carried water bottles on his back. Director Ryeon who was in the Site-in with them recorded their life in <Home Sweet Home>(The 7th DMZ International Documentary Film Festival) that smoke went up when they make rice. It has been three years since the vicarious administrative execution when the movie was made. Now, he is an activist in the executive office of the Miryang Transmission Tower Opposition Countermeasure Committee (Hereafter, the Countermeasure Committee).
He stood in front of the Seoul Sejong Center for the Performing Arts holding ‘Miryang residents’ 4 requests’[2] with the senior citizens in Miryang on June 11, 2017 when it’s the third anniversary of the vicarious administrative execution. Among the requests, the dream that Mr. Eo-jin most wants to make is the restoration of the village community. The residents who participated in the campaign to oppose the installation of the transmission tower were reduced from 2,000 households to 150 households for 12 years of the Miryang Transmission Tower Struggle. The main cause is money and valuables undiscriminatingly distributed by Korea Electric Power Corporation. He said, ” The residents who agree to the installation of the transmission tower leave the residents who disagree to it out in the cold, saying, “Why did not you receive money even though it’s all done?”. So they cannot visit the Village Hall. The village was shattered because of the transmission tower.” Korea Electric Power Corporation said that it is not responsible for the division of the community. He said, “I don’t think that I can leave Miryang before the senior citizens will pass away.” He wants Miryang and the nation to admit that the residents who disagree to the installation of the transmission tower are victims of state violence and the heros and heroines of the enucleation and anti-transmission tower campaign. So it’s because their past life is not denied any more. I asked him a last question about his individual wish, not Miryang. He answered, “I will be out of work in Miryang as all the things related to the transmission tower will well be solved.”
The cameras that filmed Min-gi Gwon, Seung-hee Oh, Ae-rin Mun, and Eo-jin Nam were turned off. Their fights and pain are currently in progress. The temporary workers who were fired in Hyundai Mipo Dockyard Co., Ltd. in Ulsan have held a sit-in for more than 70 days to abolish temporary positions. A press to urge the abolishment of the disability rating system was held in front of First Street of Gwanghwamun on July 3. The enucleation and anti-transmission tower expedition of the senior citizens in Miryang was established on 4 to eliminate Shin-Gori Numbers 5 & 6. The stage lights were turned off, but actually, nothing ends. this is why movies and documentaries continue to be made even though they cannot contain all the things, isn’t it?
[1] The disability rating system는 is the system to support the welfare services by classifying disability into 1 to 6 classes and making distinctions, the support obligation rule is the system that disable persons do not receive basic living costs or do receive less if the persons who are responsible for supporting them including their spouses, parents, or children have incomes above certain criteria. Many disabled persons have urged respectively the abolishment of he disability rating system and the support obligation rule because of the problems of grading themselves and ambiguity of the criteria for classification and creating dead zones of poverty and passing down poverty to their children. President Jae-in Moon pledged to abolish the disability rating system and the support obligation rule by stages when he was a candidate for the presidency. For independent living after deinstitutionalization, Ms Ae-rin Mun said, “People still recognize that disable persons are the people that they should take care of and who should live being separated from them. However, it’s prejudice. We can be independent as much as we like.”
[2] <Miryang residents’ 4 requests>
1. Apology for the violent suppression in the 6.11 vicarious administrative execution and punishment of the persons in charge
2. Audit of Korea Electric Power Corporation related to the destruction of the village community by it, punishment of the persons in charge, official apology, and establishment of plant to restore the village community
3. Revision of the unjust law of energy (Electric Source Development Promotion Act/Transmission tower and resident law/Electric utility law)
4. Promise to announce the cancelation of Shingori Numbers 5 & 6 immediately, close old nuclear power plants immediately, and tear down the transmission line in Miryang.