Performing recalcitrance: film The Pregnant Tree and the Goblin (2019) beyond social death of sexual violence in the United States military camp-town, South Korea

ABSTRACT

The Pregnant Tree and the Goblin (2019) is a fantasy-documentary film directed by Kim Dong-ryung and Park Kyoung-tae. The film narrates the story of Park In-sun, a former sex worker in the United States military camp-town in South Korea. This paper closely analyzes four key scenes from the film – interview, field visit, revenge, and recalcitrance – to present two arguments. Firstly, the film illustrates the infliction of secondary violence by academia. I specifically examine scenes involving scholar figures’ interviews and field visits to disentangle the politics of knowledge production in the posthumous memorialisation. Secondly, this paper expands the sociocultural meaning of death, considering it as the starting point for imagining new ways of memorialising past violence. To achieve this, I demonstrate how the film’s brilliant delivery of creative and performative re-enactment of survivors’ dream images proposes recalcitrance as a generative analytical concept for memorialising difficult histories.

KEYWORDS:

• US camptown
• Korean documentary film
• military sex worker
• Cold War
• memorialisation
• trauma

Acknowledgments

I thank the editors of this Special Issue Kaylee Alexander and Jessica Orzulak, the anonymous reviewers, the editors of Mortality, and the filmmakers Kim Dong-ryung and Park Kyoung-tae. This essay is an expanded version of a paper delivered at the Graduate Scholars Colloquium in the Department of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies at Duke University, titled ‘Imaging Rape: Film The Pregnant Tree and the Goblin (2019)’ in March 2022. I am grateful to Anna M. Storti and Lin S. Li for detailed comments, and to the other reviewers Yun Emily Wang, Kathi Weeks, Sunhay You, Jieun Cho, Jasmine Magaña, Brittany Forniotis, Tania Rispoli, Jaeyeon Yoo, Mariko Azuma, and Douglas Gabriel for the rich exchange of ideas.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For a discussion of the directors’ previous film on the United States military violence, see Kim (2017).

2. Durebang was established in March 1986 with the goal of assisting marginalised and oppressed women in camptowns to regain self-worth and lead healthful lives. Durebang has worked with women of various backgrounds who face different challenges within the camptowns and with American soldiers. See Durebang. (n.d.). Durebang. http://durebang.org/.

3. The taste is based on classism and evaluation. See Bourdieu (1984). Sarah Ahmed also wrote, ‘To be affected by something is to evaluate that thing. Evaluations are expressed in how bodies turn toward things’. Edmund Husserl in Ideas stated, ‘Within the joy we are “intentionally” (with feeling intentions) turned toward the joy-Object as such in the mode of affective “interest”’. See Ahmed (2010, p. 14).

4. According to Sianne Ngai, for ‘interesting’ to function as a legitimate analytical category, it always requires a comparison with a non-aesthetic category, whether real or imagined. Among the three aesthetic categories, Ngai writes that interesting is about circulation, discursive aesthetics, indexical of bourgeois public sphere, and coolness. See Ngai (2012).

5. Personal communication with directors Kim Dong-ryung and Park Kyoung-tae, July 2022.

6. Yun Geum-i was a victim of brutal rape and murder by the American soldier Kenneth Markle on 28 October 1992. Yun Geum-i was a 26-year old woman prostitute working at a club in Dongdu’chon, the U.S. military camp-town. On 14 April 1993, Markle was ultimately convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison, but his sentence would later be reduced by the Korean court to 15 years. Markle’s father appealed to the court that his son is guilty of manslaughter but not of murder. Markle was quietly released to avoid the anti-US groups’ attention and returned to the United States in 2006. See Kelly Smith Tunney, “Father of U.S. Soldier Convicted of Murder Blasts Investigation,” AP News (1993); https://apnews.com/article/ae5931f8f14ddd75930b173518f35adb.

7. Personal communication with directors Kim Dong-ryung and Park Kyoung-tae, May 2023. Filmmaker Park Kyoung-tae produced Me and The Owl (2003), a documentary film about women in the military camp-town, and There is (2005), a film about mixed race people from the military camp-town. Park wrote a Master’s thesis in Sociology at Dongguk University about ‘Making a Pure Mother’ by mixed race people from military camp-towns. He is currently examining the ways of combining documentary production and research from the perspectives of sociology of visual communication and visual anthropology. The films Tour of Duty (2012) and The Pregnant Tree and the Goblin (2019) were born out from this process of cooperating with on-site subjects. Kim Dong-ryung graduated from the Department of English Language and Literature at Ewha Womans University and studied film direction at the Korean Academy of Film Arts. Since 2004, Kim has been working on documentaries and various visual art that consider space and people in the United States military camp-town. After American Alley (2009), the first feature film completed in a direct cinematic method, Kim completed Tour of Duty and The Pregnant Tree and the Goblin by actively intervening in the site. Kim is experimenting with various methods of storytelling based on documentaries and fables.

8. See marie claire Korea, (2022); https://www.marieclairekorea.com/culture/2022/01/the-pregnant-tree-and-the-goblin/.

9. Personal communication with directors Kim Dong-ryung and Park Kyoung-tae, July 2022.

10. For the purpose of preserving the ‘theoretical integrity of social death’, Králová limited the concept’s appliance to ‘the most extreme circumstances, in which the majority of all its facets are severely compromised and/or lost’. Králová suggested that social death be recognised as the antithesis of well-being. While simultaneously stating that recognising social death as the antithesis of well-being is ‘open to challenge as no complete conceptual framework of social death is yet available to allow comparison with well-being’, Králová called for future studies that could demarcate between well-being, severally compromised well-being, and social death.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Janet B. Chiang Grant in the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute at Duke University.

Notes on contributors

SaeHim Park

SaeHim Park is a doctoral candidate in Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke University with certificates in Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies, East Asian Studies, College Teaching, and Information Studies + Science. Her research focuses on contemporary visual and material culture of representing historical gender-based violence in East Asia and the Asia-Pacific regions.