위안부 영화와 역사쓰기의 새로운 도전: <귀향>과 <눈길>을 중심으로

Abstract

Films about ‘Comfort Women’ and New Challenge of Historiography-Focusing on <Spirits’ Homecoming> and <Snowy Road> Joo, You-Shin ‘Comfort Women’ issue is going now, wound and sense of debt of us having caught our brain and emotion. Especially, the appearance of two films depicting ‘Comfort Women’ is very nice and inspiring events, and raises not only some problems whether we know well about ‘Comfort Women’ issue or not, but also how possible the representation of it is after ‘Korean-Japanese Agreement about Comfort Women on Dec. 28th’ arousing Korean people’s disappointment and rage. This paper discusses the relationship between ‘old women’ as survivor and ‘young girls’ as image, and between memory and historiography through two films about comfort women. It also examines the problem that how the national cinema has represented body and trauma of suffered women in the tragic history of nation. The starting point is the overlooking that how the process of discourses about comfort women in Korean society has processed for more than the half century, and how dramatic is the appearance of two films about comfort women. Two films establish young girls as female protagonists having the tragic situation and fateful relationship, however, the eyes and intentions of creators and narrative unfolding centered on images of these girls are very different. <Spirits’ Homecoming> focuses on the moment of the pain violating girls’ sexuality and the traces of it on their bodies, at the same time, watches and records them through the voyeuristic gaze and exhibits them explicitly. On the contrary, <Snowy Road> is evaluated as showing new ethics of filmic representation through expressing the tragedy metaphorically instead of exhibiting it physically. The stories of ‘Comfort Women’ in two films didn’t break out the known testimonies, and didn’t show the new possibilities of rewriting women’s history and representing wounds and memories of the victims. In this regards, revising history being negated by Japan through the post-colonial perspective, interpolating women’s history into the national history as something of minorities and the oppressed, and displacing the position of ‘Comfort Women’ issue through the geopolitical frame of Asia must be very important and urgent.