Thoughts on Our School

Although I am neither a Korean nor Japanese, this film reminds me a lot of the memory from primary, middle and high school while I was in China. Perhaps East Asian countries share similarities in their education systems, I feel really connected and associated with the first half of the movie which is mainly about the school routine, singing contest and dormitory life that many people might get bored with. Different from Western schools, in the school we always have classmates who we grow up along with in the same classroom or even in the same dorm. Therefore we identify not only with the school as a whole, but also with a smaller unit as a class. The school events are supposed to bring class spirit to everybody and help them to formulate their collective interests although it might contradict with the individual ones. When other students are busy organizing their graduation trip to North Korea, Numsoon and Guiyong are muted and look disappointed since they have to stay and practice weight lifting. (I always wonder why East Asian people are so good at weight lifting. For example China; and a female weightlifter just got the first gold medal for North Korea recently. But I feel like practicing weight lifting is not initiated by the individual in most of the cases, and that’s why Western people are not big fans of it whereas countries like China and North Korea are able to produce athletes within their institutionalized sport systems)

Despite the specific nostalgia aspect of my take on this documentary movie, I also feel puzzled and unresolved about its discussion of Korean national identity. Teachers are trying so hard to preserve and install the Korean cultural identity into the minds of new generation, which not necessarily belongs to the Communist North or Democratic South. The sense of belonging is subjected, but is mediated through the objective reality where the feeling emerges from. It’s no doubt that the graduation trip cascades the imagination with the reality, yet going back again seems to be an impossibility according the escalated tension between North Korean and Japan. Hence, will these students continue feeling attached to their fatherland or this feeling will be slowly worn away after their graduation from Korean school? The beginning of the movie has a short introduction on the history of Korean school in Japan. “After the liberation of Korea from Japan colonial rule, the first thing Korean immigrants in Japan did was to build “school”, so when their children went back to Korea, they would not face difficulties.” What does it mean by going back? Do the Korean immigrants just want to go back and visit or actually migrate back to Korea? During the BBQ scene, an older female says that she would like to go visit her homeland South Korea as well as her fatherland North Korea. Maybe it’s due to the translation, but I don’t really understand the differences between homeland and fatherland.