[The Second Take] The Misconception That 'Pamyo' Incites Anti-Japanese Sentiment

Conveying the Essential Religious Attitude of Embracing Everyone's Scars
Anti-Japanese Debates Do Not Aid in Healing

"Leftists are flocking to the film 'Pamyo,' which stirs up anti-Japanese sentiment." This is a post left on social media by Kim Deok-young, director of the film 'The Founding War,' on the 26th. It raises some doubts. 'Pamyo' consistently shows the inherent religious attitude of resolving human life's anguish and seeking the ultimate meaning of life. It embraces the scars of everyone, regardless of generation, gender, nationality, or denomination.

The series of events is manifested through the act of digging up the ground. The client is Park Ji-yong (Kim Jae-cheol), the grandson of a pro-Japanese bureaucrat. He believes that the desecration of the ancestral grave negatively affects the descendants. The geomancer Kim Sang-deok (Choi Min-sik) immediately recognizes it as an evil site (惡地). He refuses to start the work, warning that a great misfortune could occur if handled improperly. However, he changes his mind after a heartfelt plea: "Please save my son."

Park Ji-yong achieves his goal through the hard struggle of Kim Sang-deok and others. The spirit of his grandfather is also freed from suffering. If the intention had been to drive out everything related to Japan, the result should have been the opposite. But director Jang Jae-hyun did not simply depict violence. Instead, he portrayed the grandfather as a pitiful figure who was exploited by the Japanese even after death and abandoned by his descendants. Recognizing this, yet still showing loyalty to Japan, the film evokes even human sympathy.

The spirit resembling an oni (a Japanese demon) appearing in the latter part is similarly exploited after death. The lines urging a northward advance and the explanation that he was beheaded at the Battle of Sekigahara evoke Konishi Yukinaga. He was a daimyo who converted to Catholicism in childhood and received the baptismal name Augustino. He refused seppuku due to his religious beliefs and became a subject of ridicule. It is said that his head was cut off and displayed in a high place, while his body was buried separately.

In 'Pamyo,' the spirit is interred in Daitogu but was dug up during the Japanese colonial period and moved to Goseong, Gangwon Province. Sealed in a coffin with a sword stuck in its spine, it becomes an iron stake. The sorrow and humiliation contained in this prehistory are far from anti-Japanese sentiment. The disappearance of these does not bring peace to the Korean Peninsula. Rather, those who opposed suffer aftereffects. Kim Sang-deok’s wounds do not heal, mortician Go Young-geun (Yoo Hae-jin) cannot focus on funerals, and shaman Lee Hwa-rim (Kim Go-eun) and Buddhist priest Yoon Bong-gil (Lee Do-hyun) are haunted by apparitions. Although the remnants of Japanese colonialism were removed, the national scars remain.

We too cannot avoid continuity within the same land and time. The debate over anti-Japanese or pro-Japanese does not help healing in any way. It only fosters discord and conflict. Director Jang encourages us to remember the painful traces that bind us closely together. This form is not the bloodline connecting the physical and mental worlds of kin. It is the land, a larger unit that connects those of the nation.