Violence is a tool used by those who hold relative power when they believe their objectives are being obstructed. It begins with persuasion; when that fails, information is manipulated, this manipulation fuels conflict, and once tensions sharpen, collective violence is eventually provoked. Regardless of whether the instigators succeed, what remains within the targeted community is a lasting trauma in which everyone becomes both perpetrator and victim.
MY NAME follows a woman suffering from trauma after losing the memories of her own childhood, embarking on a journey through time to recover her identity. As she travels into the past with her psychiatrist, her son begins, almost unknowingly, to be drawn into the power struggles of his classmates after a violent new student transfers to his school. While he is gradually pulled into the web of school violence, the woman reaches the end of her long-buried memories – only to be confronted with horrific, indiscriminate collective brutality.
That violence is the so-called April 3rd Incident (1948), a tragedy whose very name Korea still struggles to define, even eighty years later, under the lingering shadow of the Red Complex.
In the epilogue of Lee Byunghan’s “New America in Question” he writes: “Modern history is, in truth, American history. And American history is, by itself, world history.” And John Dower begins “The Violent American Century” with this observation: “Traditionally, American-style warfare has emphasized the three D’s: defeat, destroy, devastate.”
This film is a prayer for all the victims of the April 3rd Incident, their surviving families, and even the perpetrators.
Chung Ji-young
