The Journey to OKJU
In One Fine Spring Day, a Korean melodrama, it wasn't the handsome main characters' love that remained most vividly in my memory, but the scene in which the main male character was recording Jeongsun Arirang, sung by an old couple in a mountainous village. At that time whilst seeing the movie, I asked myself why this sound, not the romance, makes me shudder. I was in my 30s. And, as coincidences become inevitability, I came to know the strange village.
Kim Eung-soo
Director
Also Directed by Kim Eung-soo
J is a middle-aged man who runs a small computer store in a small city. One Parents' Day in May, he has a peculiar experience..
Kim Gwang-bae is an over-anxious father. He tags along on his son's school MT trips because he worries about his son. In his eyes, his son is still a mere teenager. Gun-ho died but his soul admitted to the department of psychology at the Woosuk University. To Kim Gwang-bae, his son is alive and he wishes that his son wouldn't grow up because when he does, he has to leave his father's arms forever. Kim wants his son to remain with him no matter how much trouble he causes. However on one hand, he tries to let his son go because he knows he can't keep his son with him forever. In the evening, he returns home with his son still at the MT trip. He accepts that his son is a grown-up now. His son can make it on his own but in his heart, his son will always be a young boy.
Woo-kyeong is a masseuse. His life unfolds on the screen, which is neither to compassion nor peculiarity. He drinks coffee, cooks, makes phone calls, reads books, walks, massages, travels, and views the landscape.
A couple is set in their monotonous life until the husband has a homosexual affair with a young male prostitute. Suspicious of her husband, the wife seeks the truth and eventually ends up in bed with the same young man. Their desire has a new meaning.
Poet Jae-ho no longer can write poetry in reality so he belatedly registered on the cyber world. There, he meets Ju-yeon whom Jae-ho knew before but has not thought of for 15 years. Jae-ho came to the cyber world with high hopes but is having a hard time adjusting. Ju-yeon teaches him the laws, the rules, and the living customs of cyber world. In the process, Jae-ho and Ju-yeon go beyond the everyday talk to discover an important memory that has been pushed out. Curiously, it was a file that was drifting in the sea of the cyber world. It was also Jae-ho himself as well as something to be avoided.
There's a man aged 93 years. He was born in the "City in the water" and lived there all his 90-plus years. You can see him always sitting under the zelkova tree beside the lake. However, he doesn't look at the beautiful lake. Instead, he looks the opposite side, where hills, walls and roads are. There's a quizzical eye of a man, observing him. One year passes. Seasons change. One day, the old man stares at a certain point in the lake, for the first as well as the last time. That was the location where the house he had been born in was. And he happens to get hospitalized soon afterwards. Then the exploration of the 'City in the water' began based on the old man's story.
