Remembering Saemin

For the most part, I agree with Magnan-Park’s article. There is strong evidence of his argument that Yongho is trying to forget his past but the past keeps reminding him of his actions. Magnan-Park focuses on the relationship between the peppermint candies, Sunmin, and the camera, as well as the physical reminder of Yongho’s leg wound. Yongho clearly avoids negative memories, and those that are associated with Sunmin and the life that he could have had. And the physical reminder as Magnan-Park has identified is clearly linked to Sunmin as Yongho did imagine that student at first to be Sunmin.

However I do believe that Magnan-Park brushes away Yongho’s attempt of acknowledging and appreciating the past. We’ve often read articles about the father who was away, and not properly caring for the family, and relating this to Korea as a nation. In this case the father is Yongho, and he ends up failing his family, which results in divorce. However he does have one attempt of rectifying the situation: he tries to go visit Saemin. While Saemin is associated with negative aspect of his life, he does leave his family; it also represents a more positive (in the context of this film) part of his life. The opening scene of the third vignette is of his wife; blissful and pregnant with their daughter. At this point there was no infidelity. When Yongho goes to visit Saemin three days prior to his death, it is the only time that he decides on his own to go to something that will remind him of the negatives of his past. It was Sunmin who asked her husband to go and find Yongho, not Yongho going to find Sunmin. Yongho made the decision to go and find his daughter even though he knew that that meant he had to deal with his ex-wife, and that he probably would not be allowed to see Saemin in the first place, but it does show his effort in appreciating some joy in his life. Yongho does not willfully appreciate and remember the past; his past haunts him. However in the case of Saemin he chooses to remember and take actions that will allow him to intentionally revisit it. He does want the opportunity to be a father, even if it is for a split second under the delusional mind of a man about to commit suicide. This could be the director’s attempt to show that there might have been some attempt by someone in the government to take care of the nation, but someone else could have gotten in the way.