SILENCE BROKEN,fraud korean american,Dai Sil Kim-Gibson
SILENCE BROKEN trailer, Documentary on Korean Comfort Women
http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/review_kaffny_round-up_the_boat_silence_broken_comfort_women_psychohydrogra
KAFFNY Review Round-Up: 'The Boat,' 'Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women,' 'Psychohydrography' BY CHRISTOPHER BELL | 3月 17, 2011 10:28 午前 "Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women" Nobody ever said war brought the best out of any society, but it's easy to forget specific atrocities -- which makes it that much easier for countries to sweep them under the rug. During World War II, the Japanese military took "comfort women," which were young virgins of (and possibly not limited to) Dutch, British, and Korean descent to provide sexual relief to soldiers. Dutch and British women were immediately compensated after the war, but the Koreans were not -- and here, decades later, the now-elderly women talk about their disturbing past and the country's reluctance to admit to wrong-doing. The crudely preserved nature of the film stock gives it a distinct aura, feeling like a once-buried relic. Dai Sil Kim-Gibson frames interviews with the women who tell all -- one mentioning she was even forced to eat human flesh -- but also speaks to professors, historians, and former soldiers who all deny their confessions. Of course the subject is already enraging, but the director refuses to settle there and goes the extra mile, moving her camera from interviewee to other objects/people in single, uninterrupted shots. Useless b-roll it isn't, as the way she uses it suggests something deeper. A woman cutting fruit or a group of Japanese men walking down the street during an ex-soldier's interview is given increased importance in this aesthetic choice, leading to even more questions. Why are people silenced? What makes us human and what distracts us from our morals? None are answered, which makes things even more chilling. Kim-Gibson proves you can make an affecting, important documentary without the attention-seeking antics of a Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock. This is one that can't be forgotten. [A] http://iamkoreanamerican.com/2011/03/14/dai-sil-kim-gibson/
Dai Sil Kim-Gibson I was born in 1938. New York, NY* (Longer description below my "Own Words") My name card says, “writer/filmmaker.” So I must be that. I am a north Korea born American who crossed the 38th parallel on foot in the winter of 1945 with my family. I was told that we had to leave our home to look for democracy in south Korea. It was from Seoul that I came to the United States in 1962 as a foreign student on F1 visa. Back then, there weren’t too many Koreans. So we were almost a rarity to look at. I had no intentions of spending the rest of my life here but Park Chung Hee military regime brought me back to the States after spending a summer in 1970 in Seoul. I was to chicken to choose to stay in Korea and protest at the risk of being thrown to prison. Further, I could have become a top 5 % wealthy intellectual, representing Korea at international conferences, etc., as a woman with a Ph.D in religion and a year of teaching at a prestigious Women’s Ivy League, Mount Holyoke College. None of these sound impressive now since there are so many Ph.Ds but back then a very few women were America educated Ph.Ds and could speak English distinguishing Rs and Ls. Well, if I was too afraid to protest, I had delicate conscience to enjoy luxurious living when there was so much poverty. So I hauled my arse back to Mount Holyoke College where they had left my position open. Thus far I was flippant about my stay in the States but I believe that I was destined to live here since I met Don, my late husband and built our life together. We were true soul mates and coming from different backgrounds as a day and night, we felt like as if we were “shoulder friends,” friends who grew up together. I have not been faithful to Korean dictum that one should learn “to dig one well.” I had three careers in my life –college teaching (I also did some high school teaching at Ewha), federal and state bureaucrat and finally a filmmaker/writer. With the loving support of Don, I was able to make some films. And this year the Korean American Film Festival in New York (KAFFNY) is presenting retrospective of my films. I have mixed feelings about it. All this commotion around me makes me feel uncomfortable. I’m used to asking the questions and presenting people’s stories; I don’t like being the subject, which is one of the reasons why you rarely hear my voice or see me in my films. But I am glad that they are showing my films since they deal with neglected and forgotten people and issues that need to be brought back –racism, war time sexual slavery, forced labor, migration, etc. Check for more information at kaffny.com Thanks for reading my rambling. *Longer description of my location: I live in northern Manhattan, close to the Cloisters, Medieval branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and on the hill over-looking the Hudson River and Palisades Park in New Jersey. Most fantastic and beautiful river view. The rich folks on the East side think they have a good river view but theirs is chicken shit in comparison with what we have here. I make our neighborhood sound like a wealthy area. Actually, my late husband and I moved into this area in late 2002 because we could not afford a place in Harlem where we had first looked. The apartments in this area, now entitled Hudson Heights, were cheaper than those in Harlem then but now the secret is out and everybody is moving in! http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2011/feature-articles/on-reality-and-imagination-an-interview-with-documentarian-dai-sil-kim-gibson/http://koreaweb.ws/ks/ksr/ksr00-07.htm Korean Studies Internet Discussion List KOREAN STUDIES REVIEW Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women. A book and film. BOOK: Parkersburg, Iowa: Mid-Prairie Books. ISBN 0-931209-88-9. 1999. 212 pages. $15.00 (paperback). FILM: 35 mm (88 minutes; $85.00 + $15.00, rental), or video (57 minutes; $265.00 + $15.00, purchase). Ho-ho-Kus, NJ: Dai Sil Productions. 1999. Reviewed by Keith Howard SOAS, University of London Before and during the Pacific War, up to 200,000 women were coerced by the Japanese to serve the imperial troops in military brothels in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and elsewhere. According to most accounts, the majority of the women were Koreans, typically teenagers, and most were taken from families, schools, and friends in Korea either by force or on the promise of work in factories or for Japanese families. The euphemism 'comfort women', taken from the Japanese jugun ianfu, might better be rendered as 'military sex slaves', as the title of the Korean umbrella organisation that has sought to publicise the issue through the 1990s indicates: the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. Kim-Gibson, along with most other authors and editors publishing on the subject in English, have chosen to keep the familiarity of 'comfort women'. Kim-Gibson's book positions herself within the narrative. Hence, between the testimonies of surviving 'comfort women' whom she has interviewed, we have accounts of her struggling with police in China to be allowed to interview two surviving women, several chapters of history, comments relating her reactions and emotions as she is told about what happened to her informants, and five poems. These latter, translated from the Korean by Kim-Gibson, are by Yun Tongju (1917-1945), who, born as the eldest of four children in Yanji, China, died in Fukuoka prison after being arrested for promoting Korean independence. The 'comfort women' Kim-Gibson talks with are referred to as 'grandmas'. The author explains this as follows: "I call them grandmas because it is a Korean custom to so refer to any woman old enough to have grandchildren. More importantly, I call them grandmas because I feel as if they are my own grandmas" (page 11). This close association is a recurring feature throughout the book, and while the author insists she does not embellish the testimonies and can disengage herself from the accounts, she admits intellectual and emotional attachment, to the extent that she accepts her responses may not be objective. Indeed, she accepts a "double subjectivity", first because of her own depth of emotion, and second since in her writing she consciously positions herself in the story. This may be acceptable in a post-modern world, but it leaves me wary. I am unsure how to treat the following comment: "Feeling the power of the [comfort women's] stories as a common experience, I made composite characters but the stories are theirs, not fiction" (page 10). I am also surprised that published oral accounts are largely dismissed. The footnotes contain references to a number of Korean accounts, but no English-language accounts except for a couple of translations of articles from Korean Council members. The text states that most accounts are "primarily summaries of interviews conducted by scholars or journalists In the name of objectivity and scholarship, much of their stories are refined, hence taking away the raw pain and feelings from their stories. They have largely become issues, numbers, things, and objects of studies, not full blooded human beings" (page 9; grammar as published in the text). This is surely disingenuous, since there has been a considerable amount written on the issue, which ought not be avoided or dismissed without a more considered positioning. Since 1991, members of the Council have collected testimonies of surviving women, publishing several volumes; nineteen of these testimonies in translation, formed the basis of a book I edited and annotated in 1995, True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women (London: Cassell)-I am, then, obliged to argue this point in defence of my own work. Excerpts of accounts appeared in George Hick's slightly journalistic and sensationalist book, The Comfort Women (St Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 1995). A number of other English publications exist, starting with the papers in Korean and Korean American Studies Bulletin 5.2/3 (Fall/Winter 1994), and including Chungmoo Choi's excellent edited volume, The Comfort Women: Colonialism, War, and Sex, published as Positions: East Asian Cultures Critique 5/1 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997). There is also a North Korean volume, admittedly with abbreviated testimonies, and containing the standard disgust at the Japanese imperialists in each of its 40 accounts: Downtrod Women's Cry: Indictment against Japanese Imperialists' War Crimes (Pyongyang: Committee on Measures for Compensation to Former Korean Comfort Women for Japanese Army and Pacific War Victims, 1995). None of this need matter, since this is not meant as an academic text. The 'comfort women' issue remains unresolved. It is perhaps the greatest tragedy that remains from the period when Korea suffered as a colony of Japan. It is appalling that the Japanese government, while making apologies, still maintains a stance of distance, refusing to accept that the setting up and running of military brothels was authorised by the state, and insisting that a civilian fund alone be developed to pay compensation to victims. It is appalling that governments in the region, including those of Korea and China, have sought to prevent the issue coming to the surface. Kim-Gibson does a worthy job at showing the reader the different dimensions in the issue. She has conducted extensive research, over an eight year period, working with scholars and activists, interviewing official spokesmen, seeking out surviving women, and comparing the documentation and testimonies available throughout East Asia. And yet I still find myself critical of the style of writing; surely, it does matter. A good editor could have spotted the all too common lapses in grammar, or the mis-spelling of place names (eg, Langoon, "Batavia, then known as Jakarta", Malaya). Romanisation is curious, explained in the preliminary notes in terms of "I did my own transliteration as closely as they sound without following the most common practice of using the McCune-Reischauer system". Everyone reading this will know something of the debate currently raging about romanisation, but some consistency is needed if we are to know where Chung Yang Li is (Ch'ôngnyangni?), or Dae Gu or Choong Chung. To summarise: there is a tremendous amount in this book. Kim-Gibson has coaxed detailed testimonies from many women, and records them, sometimes in massive chunks, and at other times juxtaposing elements cut from each to develop specific ideas. She carefully adds commentary, the interviewer observing her own reactions, documenting her own emotions. The historical account, apart from squashing the entire Japanese colonial period into a single, oppressive whole, is thorough and enlightening. The focus on the lives of the women before and after their wartime experiences-a focus largely missing from other published accounts-is illuminating, both to show the reader that these were, indeed, ordinary girls at the outset of their ordeal, and to demonstrate the nightmare faced everyday since 1945 by those who survived. And so, to the film. I have only the video to review. Moving, affecting, harrowing, powerful, overwhelming; these and other adjectives are often repeated in the many reviews that have appeared since the film was released. The video includes 36 minutes of personal testimonies from former Korean comfort women. Many are filmed in close up. One bares her back to reveal an appalling injury and botched operation sustained as she was forced to 'serve' the Japanese military; another lies in a hospital bed, with tubes in her nose to help her breathe, and laments the fact that she has forgotten how to speak Korean. She holds the hand of the interviewer. Elsewhere, tears flow. Several Japanese apologists appear, lamely mouthing denials (who are these apologists? Are they representative?); a Japanese soldier, and a Japanese teacher, argue that the practice was just as the suffering Korean women relate. The present is pictured through Seoul's high rise apartments, through rice fields and wild flowers blooming in the countryside, and as trains rumble past. The past is dramatically recreated in a series of short scenes, the most vivid of which accompanies the voice of a former comfort woman, remembering how she fainted as she watched Japanese soldiers use a sword to slit a pregnant woman from chest to womb. These vignettes, performed by actors, enhance the tales. The testimonies themselves are always compelling. One former comfort woman describes how she and others were forced to bayonet Chinese civilians. Another remembers eating human flesh. We hear how the women were duped into leaving home, how they were introduced to their new lives of servitude, lives which would gradually spiral downwards as venereal disease and more took its toll until death arrived. The testimonies are interspersed with snippets of archival film, still black and white photographs relating specifically to comfort women, and footage of marching soldiers and the war dead. Some of those interviewed point to documents that illustrate-perhaps prove-something of what happened. There are, though, too few documents; this is one reason why many Japanese can continue to deny the dreadfulness of what comfort women endured. One scholar points out that the Japanese military would have destroyed anything that might have implicated them in an offence punishable by court martial; a Western military historian tells us that, in order to ensure the rebuilding of Japan, the Americans themselves destroyed masses of documentation, some of which he saw. And the film ends with the deaths of two of the comfort women who we have seen and heard. Throughout, suitably haunting music by the Korean-American composer Donald Sur provides a background. The project began in November 1992. Kim-Gibson received a Rockefeller Fellowship that enabled her to travel to Korea, Japan and China to assemble material, work with women's groups, scholars and human rights activists, and to attend public demonstrations and private assembly meetings. Co-produced with Charles Burnett, the film is sub-titled in English throughout. It has won Kim-Gibson an Asian-American Media Award. It was screened on PBS in the United States on 18 May 2000, and has been screened at festivals and film centres in San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, Portland, New York, Denver, Philadelphia, Pusan, Seoul, at the Smithsonian, and at Vassar College, the University of Wisconsin, and Hampshire College, Amherst. The list, doubtless, is by now longer than that I have been able to assemble. This is actually the fifth film from Kim-Gibson; previously, and amongst others, she has written, directed, and produced documentaries about the 1992 Los Angeles troubles, looking at the perspective of Korean women shopkeepers, and about the Korean labourers moved to Sakhalin by the Japanese who then found themselves caught within the Soviet Union for 50 years (see http://koreaweb.ws/ks/ksr/ksr99-05.htm). The first English-language documentary that I know of to deal with the comfort woman issue was prepared by the BBC in early 1992. Initially designed to explore Japanese war crimes, the documentary famously allowed official Japanese government spokesmen to damn themselves: one is unable to answer a question, and is pictured sitting in silence for almost two minutes. By June 1992, this documentary had reached Pyongyang, and choice segments were being shown, with suitable voice-overs, every evening on TV. This, of course, came after a number of Asian films, the first of which was probably Imamura Shohei's Karayuki-san (Foreign-Bound Women) from the late 1970s, in which the director travelled to Malaysia and then accompanied a former comfort woman back to Japan. In 1979, the director Yamatani Tetsuo showed the life of a Korean former comfort woman, Pae Ponggi, in his Okinawa no harumoni. In 1986, Imamura produced a feature film, Zegen, about a comfort station. Perhaps most significant, and appearing as the first Korean former comfort women were coming forward to register their past in public statements, the Korean documentary Chôngshindae arirang, by Pak Sunam, appeared in 1991. What makes Silence Broken any different from previous films? Certainly, Kim-Gibson has benefited from the research done by the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, and by other scholars and individuals, but she is also an accomplished filmmaker, able to weave her story together, seamlessly mixing testimonies with contemporary and historical footage. To do so, she uses far more sources for information, and features in-depth testimonies from a greater number of women, moving between these as she develops specific points, than earlier films. She also builds her argument across a broad geographical area, utilising interviews and footage from Japan and China as well as Korea, unlike in earlier documentaries. And, she unrelentingly hammers home her message from beginning to end. It is this last that leaves an indelible memory for reviewers. Kim-Gibson's film, then, is not just impressive, but vital. it is a valuable tool for all of us teaching Korean Studies. As an accompanying document to the film, the book adds substance to the visual images and verbal statements. In this respect, it is of considerable importance. But, as an academic document-and here I am assuming that many who read this review will be seeking to discover its usefulness in teaching-the book is, unfortunately, flawed; I would hope that the points I have raised above will be considered if a revised edition is printed. Citation: Howard, Keith 2000 Review of Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women (2000) Korean Studies Review 2000, no. 7 http://koreaweb.ws/ks/ksr/ksr00-07.htm 'Silence Broken'
在米同胞女性映画監督キム・デシル氏（６２）が製作した従軍慰安婦記録映画「沈黙の声（Ｓｉｌｅｎｃｅ Ｂｒｏｋｅｎ）」が２１日、韓米日関係者１００人余が参加した中、米議会下院ビルで上映された。 この映画は、第２次世界大戦当時に日本軍の従軍慰安婦として連行された故キム・ハンスンさんなど被害者らと日本軍の募兵官の証言が含まれている。 映画は００年に公営放送ＰＢＳを通じて放映され、ジョージタウンなど米国の数カ所の大学では紹介されたが、議会で上映されたのは初めて。 ９０分を２０分分量にしたこの映画で、キム・ハンスンさんが「（当時）一日の間にも何度も死のうと考えたが、日本の蛮行を必ず後世の歴史として残すという精神で生きてきた」と話すと、観客の中には目に涙を浮かべる人もいた。 映画の上映は、１３日の下院国際関係委員会で従軍慰安婦決議案７５９号の採択を主導したレイン・エバンズ議員（民主）が、全体会議通過を目的に同僚議員らの協調を求めるために用意した。
キム監督はあいさつの言葉で「従軍慰安婦徴発は道徳的な罪だっただけでなく、日本政府によって合法的に行なわれた犯罪だっただけに、日本政府が文書を通じて謝罪しなければならない」と主張した。 キム氏はまた「その間、慰安婦問題を傍観してきた韓国政府に最も大きな責任がある」とも述べた。 エバンズ議員はパーキンソン病で体が不自由であるにもかかわらず、映画上映と討論会が進行された１時間半の間、席に座り続けた。 エバンズ議員は「２０万人の幼い韓国女性が日本軍に連行されて性の奴隷となり、拷問を受けるなど、言葉では言い表せないほどの苦痛を受けたが、日本は公式謝罪をしていない」と非難した。 日系のマイク・ホンダ下院議員（民主）は「日本軍は誰もが怒りを抱くような蛮行をした」とし「下院は決議案を通過させ、日本政府に強力なメッセージを伝える義務がある」と述べた。 徐玉子（ソ・オクジャ）ワシントン挺身隊問題対策委員会会長は参加者らに対し、「決議案が１１月７日の中間選挙以前に通過するよう議員らに手紙を送り、電話もかけてほしい」と注文した。
Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women [ペーパーバック] D. Kim-Gibson (著)
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful Silence Broken: an Epiphany, May 16, 2001 By Yoona Lee This review is from: Silence Broken : Korean Comfort Women (Paperback) Long-suppressed by the Japanese government and often overlooked by historians, the Korean comfort women's story emerges at last. Activist, film maker and writer Dai Sil Kim-Gibson has tackled the monumental task of exposing these Korean comfort women's stories to the public. With empathetic probing and years of patient interviews, Kim-Gibson succeeds in opening up these women whose lives have been pockmarked by the brutality of their surroundings. Their oral history is moving testament to the human's stubborn will to survive. Elucidating and inspiring, this book is a must-read. 15 of 25 people found the following review helpful well-researched, but poorly written, April 11, 2001 By A Customer This review is from: Silence Broken : Korean Comfort Women (Paperback) Kim-Gibson is able to gather the testimonies of many former Korean comfort women - not an easy task. Generally, the content of the book seemed to be excellent, but the writing was, at times, laughable. Kim-Gibson includes comments about her own feelings during her interviews of former comfort women, such as "Relieved, I handed her a piece of Kleenex in silence." Such irrelevant comments take away from the credibility of the book. They make it read almost like a cheap novel. If the writing had been cleaner, without having to listen to Kim-Gibson's experience (since this is, after all, supposed to be a book about the comfort women's experiences), it might have been a great contribution to the literature on comfort women. 10 of 11 people found the following review helpful 5.0 out of 5 stars Fighting Tears, June 7, 2004 By K.W. Lee, Korean American Journalists Association - See all my reviews This review is from: Silence Broken : Korean Comfort Women (Paperback) Some say that we wretched Koreans--the poeple of Hahn (everlasting woe)--have run out of tears. But to my wonderment, I found myself fighting tears as I turned the pages of Dai Sil Kim-Gibson's Silence Broken. Destiny has willed this poet-philosopher-filmmaker to tell the stories of the ultimate Hahn for posterity. 9 of 11 people found the following review helpful 5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!, November 1, 2001 By gi-in an (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews This review is from: Silence Broken : Korean Comfort Women (Paperback) Ms. Kim-Gibson thoughtfully personalizes the stories of comfort-women. http://sensesofcinema.com/2011/feature-articles/on-reality-and-imagination-an-interview-with-documentarian-dai-sil-kim-gibson/
I first learned about your work through the “comfort women” film Silence Broken, but I think A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans may be your most successful, that is, beautiful, film. http://www.soutokufu.com/warehouse/main.cgi?mode=thr&no=3423. Silence Broken 刺青 ◆1mDQNBpTa2 - 2012/01/19(Thu) 15:08 ID:Wib4YPqg No.116 SILENCE BROKEN: KOREAN COMFORT WOMEN (´-`).。oO(旧日本軍に性奴隷にされた鮮人のドキュメンタリー作品らしいのですが） http://www.tower.com/silence-broken-korean-comfort-women-dvd/wapi/117163401 (´-`).。oO(使われてる写真の女性達が手にしてる袋） (´∀`).。oO(慰問袋なんですよｗ） (´-`).。oO(出征先に送られてきた慰問袋を部隊で纏めて） (´-`).。oO(近隣の学校などに配った話は良く聞きますし） (´-`).。oO(私も旧軍の御爺さんから、その時撮った記念写真を見せてもらった事が有るので） (´-`).。oO(もしやと思ったんです） (´-`).。oO(善意の写真を悪意で使ってまで、日本を貶める行為は） (´-`).。oO(正に「恩を仇で返す」行為そのもの！） (´-`).。oO(つかこれ、慰問の【慰】の字に反応しちゃったのかな？ｗ） - Count.79 (Last.2011/11/26 01:21) -
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