When ghosts speak history.
LOGLINE
TEARLESS moves through the haunting spaces of Monkey House, a medical prison established in the 1970s in South Korea to isolate US military comfort women with STDs. Second piece in Gina Kim’s VR trilogy.
SYNOPSIS
TEARLESS is a VR film on US military comfort women that the South Korean government made available to US soldiers stationed in South Korea. Shot on location, the 3D 360 VR film moves through the haunting spaces of Monkey House, a medical prison established by the South Korean government and staffed by the US military in the 1970s to isolate and treat comfort women with STDs. The film depicts a single day based on a real document found on site.
*NOTE: While the term “comfort women” has been associated with the Japanese imperial army’s use of sexual slavery during World War II, the South Korean government has used the term since 1951 to refer to “women who provide comfort service" to the U.S. military. The term is also used by the Korean Supreme Court in its 2022 ruling on the state compensation lawsuit for the Camptown U.S. military Comfort Women.
TREATMENT
Following the Korean War, an average of 25,000 US soldiers per year have resided in the US military bases in South Korea, occupying as much as 17.7 percent of the nation’s habitable land. Concurrently, the Korean and US governments worked together to establish 96 “camp towns” equipped with brothels and clubs around the US bases, which have involved one million women thus far.
In the 1970’s, the Korean government led by a military dictator required camp town women to wear number tags and STD test results on their chests at all times, pressured by the US government to lower the STD rate among their soldiers. Random inspections were held on the streets twice a week to haul suspected carriers away along with those without number tags. The women who were suspected to have STD were locked up in a detainment center and indiscriminately treated with harsh doses of penicillin that resulted in severe side effects and occasional deaths. Some women jumped to their deaths. The detention center was given the name “Monkey House” because people could hear the imprisoned women screaming to be let out like monkeys trapped in a zoo. Although no longer in operation, the Monkey House building still remains to this date.
Tearless is an immersive media project that interweaves elements of experimental documentary and narrative storytelling, while actively incorporating a new medium and technology to further my efforts for utilizing new technology for social justice. Wearing a VR headset, viewers are virtually transported to the immersive environment of Monkey House. Once entering the site, the viewer will be introduced to the multiple rooms of the building such as bedroom, bathroom, dining hall, and treatment room – all of which is communal and bare like those in the military camps. The staged props that emerge slowly in the footage imply what the women had to go through in each room, based on the testimonies from the women as well as a handwritten panel of the daily schedule that was discovered on the site.
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
I first visited Monkey House during the production of BLOODLESS. The building has been relatively untouched like a haunted house on a cursed land in between farm fields and hiking trails. The windows are blocked with barbed wires that were now covered in heavy vines and cobwebs. The door-less communal showers and wooden bunker beds lay there as physical remains of the horror that took place. Perhaps the building remains relatively intact because of the palpable fear and shame that are ingrained in the space. The site is not a memory but a real presence of the past itself.
In 2018, the Seoul High Court ruled that the Korean government was responsible in justifying and facilitating acts of prostitution against the comfort women in the process of operating and managing the camp towns. The ruling also implicated the US government in facilitating prostitution and violating the rights of these women, calling for their response and admission of guilt. The court officially referred to the women as “military comfort women” for the first time, acknowledging that the women were involuntarily and systematically offered up by the government as sex slaves to US soldiers. This is a historical ruling that acknowledged both governments’ unlawful acts and responsibilities for the pain these women suffered.
The nine-decade issue of Korean comfort women for the US military is more important than ever – it is the origin story of the fetishization of and violence against Asian women in the US. These US military comfort women embody the ruins and contradictions of the 20th century, and yet they have received neither reparations nor public recognition. TEARLESS aims to bring forward the experiences of these women while they are still alive. Their voices must be heard, their tears must be felt, and the women who did not survive – the ghosts that haunt the 21st century – deserve a long overdue reckoning.
CAST AND CREDIT
A VR Film by Gina Kim. A Mass Ornament Films, Icon Studio, and Cyan Films Production. In Co-production with Venta VR. Starring Boryeong Kim Produced by Zoe Sua Cho and Gina Kim Written and Directed by Gina Kim Executive Produced by Sam Jeon Associate Produced by Moa Son Director of Photography Hongyeol Park Line Producer Eunsuk Jo Assistant Director Hyeonseung Kim Script Supervisor Moa Son Editor Gina Kim, Moa Son Production Designer Heejung Lee Hair | Makeup Mina Kim Costume Young A Lee VR Cinematographer Alex Lee VR Camera Assistant Douglas Jeon VR Camera Assistant Elon Cheon VR Camera Assistant Kevin Jang Gaffer Honam Jung Grips Jungsuk Kim, Minjung Kim, Jiyoon Park Location Sound Seonghun Kim Art Assistants Sujin Kwon, Jaein Han, Special Effects Daewon Yoon Special Effects Assistant Janghwan Kim Production Assistants Jieun Nam, Minpyo Kwon Production Support Jun Hee Han, Kyunghee Eo, Hansol Seo Sound Design Myunghwan Han, Jiyoung Jeong Stereoscopic Supervisor Jace G Lead Composite Artist Gihyeon Kim
12min, Color, Virtual Reality, 2021.
For sales and distribution please contact
Cyan Films
cyanfilms2013@gmail.com
