A Blocked Funeral And The Unforgiving Islanders

Once upon a time, there was an island that did not allow a dead body to be buried on its soil. Arguably, the dead body lost its former power of unaliving others. There was no forgiveness to be given, only revenge was waiting. But the islanders had no way of taking it. They were too meek, too powerless.

The famous phrase, The Hangman Also Dies, turned into a reality quite early in the story. It began when the hangman was already dead. Dust finally settled, slightly.

In a time when too many people around the world are experiencing the same urge, it is perhaps imperative to return to the story, and take a look at it again. ‘Cuz many people are living the preamble of the story right now as we speak, as we empty the sugar sachet in our coffee cups and lock our arms together with our lovers.

Revolution is the greatest act of love. And out of all countries, Korea perhaps has never forgotten that truth.

The worldwide, oversimplified binary of South vs. North Korea unravels very fast when you delve into the works of Korea’s greatest artists. It has always been the case, throughout the ages after 1945—the year of Japan’s exit. It has been the case in the 2020s just as it was in the 1990s.

The story I am talking about is a historical fiction that heavily draws upon the Gwangju massacre. It is Park Kwang-su’s 1993 venture, To the Starry Island/그 섬에 가고싶다 (Geu seome gagosipda).

When Korea was the Global South

The pictures of the island and its village are too familiar to people across Asia, to the point it almost loses a specific geolocation. This is the first striking thing about the film.

This was a Korea that wasn’t all about the hi-tech hustle and bustle of Seoul. Very few consumers of pop culture have ever seen a Korea like this, or can even fathom. This is a Korea without the pink glasses on. And it existed not so long ago, just a few years before Hallyu.

It wasn’t the upper Asia that day, it was just like the rest of it. And only in the Global South could dictators kill people mercilessly.

This wasn’t the only thing South Korea back then shared with its Asian kins. It also shared the myth that says people become a star in the sky once they die. Different versions of the myth exist, but most are consistent about becoming a star.

And that’s how it became a starry island.

‘You Can’t Beat Up Your Wife Like She’s Some Drum’

And despite all this, most of the film is not about the massacre. It is about women, and their different modes of surviving.

Like the rest of Asia, patriarchy (although it is global and nowhere just Asian) is at its peak in the island. A woman gets beaten up every now and then by her husband. She offers food to her dead father and the husband jumps on her. Everyone wonders, ‘why beat up your wife like she’s some drum?’

Another woman arrives from Jeju, after being widowed. She has only one way to make ends meet—offer her body to the menfolk of the isle.

Another woman has a disabled daughter at home, and a husband rumored to be a ‘gigolo’ who simply abandons her. The daughter dies. The woman rows a boat all by herself, perhaps exhibiting her Korean female villager’s physical strength, in the dead of the night—to cross the sea. When she arrives at her fugitive husband’s door, she throws burning charcoal on his bed. Wishing to burn him down, perhaps, along with his new fiancée.

Ultimately, she is declared insane after losing her daughter, the husband returns and takes her away to drop at a mental asylum and people learn later that she has drowned.

When he returns again, villagers beat him up. He leaves the island humiliated with his new wife.

Not a Film Written By A Woman, But…

And the woman who was seeing her dead father and getting thrashed black-and-blue as a reward had become a shaman. She was now seeing many spirits. And when the spirit of her husband’s father commanded her to attack her husband, she did not hesitate.

In every other world, this would be a world of superstitions. But this was how a woman simply decided to survive, by weaponising the same traditions that forced her into submission against her captors and overlords. The womenfolk in the village were cheering her on.

Korea is lucky to have a bunch of not-so-wrong religions. This patriarchal violence is pervasive across cultures and religions. Koreans did not have to be cherrypicked to be subjected to the civiliser’s bombs because of what they believed.

The womenfolk knew how to make ends meet. Whether by selling their bodies, when it was the last thing they could monetise, or by turning into a shaman who summons spirits.

However, the patriarchal God still claimed its victims. The husband of the dead wife with a dead daughter returned to the island—along with the South Korean military.

It is not a film written by a woman, but… the director did not compromise. He decided to show it all, everything that happened next.

The Massacre at the Highschool Yard

By now, another wave of Korean war was supposedly breaking out. Or the excuse of it, something the South Korean politicians always loved.

The massively uninformed, right-wing world probably expects South Koreans, and out of all, their artists—to simply foam at the mouth with the same propaganda. As if Koreans can forget how uselessly people died, without a reason.

The fantasy of fighting a monster in the North is so popular that it effectively rendered the monster at home a ‘lesser evil’.

On this island, things were much simpler. The South Korean military was on the loose. They needed a victim to show they were actually doing something. They needed to bring back some severed heads of ‘the communists’ to their king. The islanders became a random victim.

A very simple story unfolded next. The military pretended to be North Korean to chalk out some targets. The scared people thought they were from the South and started singing ‘Hurray to South Korea’ first, but swiftly changed it to ‘Hurray to the glorious communists’.

Soon enough, they started telling on their own neighbors and classifying them as class enemies—everyone had scores to settle. Especially the widow who was called a whore by everyone. The unfortunate rows of land and house owners were forced to sit on the other side of the rope, while another side became the safe zone, with ‘red comrades’.

Very soon, arrived the husband thrashed by the villagers, and the flag switched on the flagpole—from red to South Korean. And the safe zone turned blood red.

But the Hangman Also Dies

Years later, the little boy who witnessed it all has become a Seoul poet. It is quite a strange piece of information. Because it is absolutely hard to imagine one can survive being a poet by profession in a metropolitan in today’s times.

The shaman lady grew old, too. She finally asks the boat carrying the dead body of the man who caused the massacre of the entire village, why he had to return. She says she understands even animals crave their birthplace when they are dying. But the island was not ready to accept him.

The boat was rocking strangely. And soon, it caught fire on the water. Until the body turned into ash. The shaman was singing to the wind. Perhaps, she was only accountable to the wind by now.

The Cinematography and the Director

Park Kwang-su is rather a big name in Korean art. He was one of the pioneers of new wave cinema in Korea, long before Hallyu. And it is so self-evident why.

Especially the closeups of the film, on the faces of the Seoul poet and the shaman, the frames of the sea, the waves, the people taking a swim—everything is breathtaking. Yoo Young-gil is officially credited as the cinematographer.

Moon Sung-keun is amongst the cast still active in the industry. Shim Hye-jin, who played a girl with stunted growth of maturity, is also regarded as a veteran actress. It was her wedding night in the film, where womenfolk of the village poked their fingers on the screen door to put their eyes on to see how the old man she was forced to marry rapes her. He did not manage to do it, but the women forced him to return for another try.

Scenes like this speak volumes of the suppressed sexuality of the village women. Their last sexual entertainment was peeking through the hole to watch others having sex, secretly.

And above it all, this is the sexual politics of a male director who is so attuned to what women face. Just as much as it is against the tyrants who rule others with fear of imaginary monsters.

In South Korea, this monster was the North Korean communists. Elsewhere, it changes names, races, religions and identities. But this is how Asia is largely ruled to this day.

And a Starry Island…

And South Korea today still did not make it. Yoon Suk-yeol was ousted in 2025. The memory is still fresh. Despite Hallyu, BTS and its inscription, K-pop, global fandom and everything, they are still fighting.

And that is what makes the film somewhat unskippable, if you’re an Asian.

But one doesn’t have to be, to stand with people. Because it is nowhere like only Asians have nightmares and everyone else on earth is doing just fine.

The imperial boomerang always returns to the imperial core. If Asians face it today, Europeans will tomorrow. And that is exactly what we are witnessing now, from France to Germany to Italy, mostly everywhere.

Only that, this time, people of the world are really together. And we have a stronger chance to phase it all out than ever before.

This time, everyone seems willing to take decision-making into their own hands. It is no longer the politicians anymore, least of all in Europe. It is the people who will decide next, what kind of star they wish to be.