Issues of Remembrance

‘Peppermint Candy’, directed by Lee Chang Dong, tells the story of Kim Young-ho who kills himself at a school reunion in 1999. The film portrays Kim’s life story by explaining his life story through a reverse chronological narrative. In seven “acts” we are given more and more background information about Kim’s erratic behavior and eventual suicide in the first act. His eventual story is in fact a link to the post Park Chung Hee Korea and the three most important negative events in its history. Hereunder the Kwangju Massacre in 1980, the state instituted interrogation and torture of Korean civilians in the mid 1980s, and the repercussions of the IMF crisis in 1997-98.

As Aaron Han Joon Magnan-park argues in his piece, Kim Young-ho is the “Angelus Novus”, “the angel of our history” who we can apply our own sorrows and our own remembrance (168). His whole life of trying to forget his past has just come back to haunt him, and in such serves as a reminder of how dangerous it is to actually forget. Reminding us of how important it is to not forget these traumas of the past.

There is no denial that Peppermint Candy creates and environment for remembrance and debate over the true nature of Korean history. Visiting Korea last year I did a Political Science course on the Korean financial crisis of 1997. In this 35-student class, constituted of about 75% Korean students and 25% non-korean students, the professor asked the Korean students what relationship they had to the financial crisis. Considering that most of the students were born in 1992-93, I still found it very interesting that none of them knew much about how their family dealt with it. Whether they refused to talk about its hardships because of an inherent threat of loosing ‘face’ or because they really didn’t know it still told me something about how this astounding event in Korean history in forgotten or neglected by many.

In the first act, Kim Young-ho cries out that he wants to go back, as if he wants to go back to change it all. However, the determinism of the story conveys that Kim Young-ho indeed acted on the basis of what he could in the contemporary. Yes, he could have probably done some adjustments to his actions or his choices but in a way he has no way of circumventing the presence of the political surroundings.

            Here is lies, I think, the essence of Peppermint Candy. We can’t change our past, but only our future. Only through the remembrance of these hardships will we be able to change our present and future.  Nevertheless, it is in this dealing with trauma I was scared by the lack of knowledge, or concealment, of the hardships from 1997 by my colleagues at Korea University. Hiding such traumas is dangerous and can lead to a faulty and misinterpreted understanding of history. This is not unique in Korea does absolutely not relate only Korea. However, the failure to remember seems to be a trait Korea will be faced with again in the future. The victory of Park Geun-hye in the recent presidential election seems to be a horrid example of this practice. 

Magnan-Park, Aaron Han Joon. "I\. PEPPERMINT CANDY: THE WILL NOT TO FORGET." New Korean Cinema (2005): 159.