Embodied Reckonings by Elizabeth Son

Author:Elizabeth Son [Son, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press

The Call to Remember: Bongseonhwa (2013–2014)

Based on the 1982 novel Emi Ireumeun Josenppiyeotda [Mother’s Name was Chosun P] by original author and playwright Yoon Jung-mo, Bongseonhwa [Garden Balsam] combines choreographed movements with video projections and voice recordings of survivors’ testimony.115 Unlike the novel, which focuses on the relationship between a survivor and her son, the theatrical adaptation explores how three generations of a Korean family struggle to come to terms with the legacies of a colonial past in which everyone is implicated in perpetuating pain and silence. “Back in 1982 it was right, age-wise, to deal with only two generations,” explained Yoon, but by 2013, when the play was written, “the time called for a third generation.”116

The Seoul Metropolitan Theater Company’s production of Bongseonhwa, directed by Koo Tae-Hwan, premiered at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts on November 15, 2013. It had domestic runs at major theaters and community centers throughout 2014 and toured to the United States in the summer of that year. Bongseonhwa attempts to make the “comfort women” history relevant to contemporary audiences and raises further questions about the promises and limitations of theater as a venue for “comfort women” stories and the pressure to demonstrate facticity onstage when performing “comfort women” histories. Though Bongseonhwa has some predictable plotlines, it differs from other theatrical productions about the “comfort women” in that it directly critiques Korean society for its apathy and silence about the “comfort women.” Bongseonhwa points out the complicity of Koreans in the violence against “comfort women” and the responsibility of Koreans and others to work toward justice for survivors. It also links the violence done to “comfort women” to the structural problem of domestic violence, making the seemingly distant history of sexual slavery under the Japanese military more relevant to contemporary audiences. Bongseonhwa addresses what is often unspoken during activist public events—the efforts of survivors and their kin to reckon with what happened.

Bongseonhwa centers on the relationship between elderly survivor Kim Soonee; her son, Munha; and her granddaughter, Suna. The play moves between scenes of the present, where Munha has a successful career as a dean at a university, and scenes from his childhood and his mother’s time in “comfort stations.” When Suna, who is studying for a master’s degree at her father’s university and is unaware of his and his mother’s history, decides to write her thesis on “comfort women,” the family disapproves. Suna’s interest prompts Munha to reflect on his past. Soonee was kidnapped as a teenager and taken as a military sex slave to the Philippines, where she saved the life of Kwangsu, a young Korean man drafted into the Japanese military. When they returned to South Korea, Kwangsu and Soonee married and had a son, Munha. Kwangsu became a drunkard and verbally and physically abused his wife for having been a “comfort woman.” After Kwangsu’s death, Soonee disappeared from her son’s life and broke off communication with him, fearing that her past would interfere with Munha’s success in life. He married and built an academic career.

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