Hyon-Joo’s Everyday Life

Forever the Moment (Uri saengae choego-ui sungan (The Best Moment of Our Lives), 우리 생애 최고의 순간, 2008)

Director: Lim Soon-Rye (Im Sun-rye, Yim Soonrye)

These cultural backgrounds might be helpful to appreciate Forever The Moment better.

1. Handball is not a popular sport in Korea. Right, this is not that surprising. It’s not a popular sport in many countries. You probably have not heard about this sport at all until now. Because of unpopularity, handball players in Korea have difficulties in pursuing their dreams. The professional league is little more than a name. While players in European countries or neighbor country Japan are improving their skills, some Korean players have to worry about their living.

2. The Olympic Games is a big deal in Korea, and it’s such an honor for athletes to make it to the national team for the Olympics. Koreans love to get together for such international sports events and root for Korean teams. Koreans are usually fond of the story where main characters overcome their obstacles and achieve their goals.

3. In Korea, ajumma*, married woman, is not appreciated much. As the society accepts younger beautiful single women more kindly, ajumma is often not respected and even mocked as unattractive, indelicate, selfish and rude. Because of this deep-rooted cultural prejudice, ajumma usually has a tougher time in searching for what they want in their lives.

The director Lim Soon-Rye tells us these ajumma handball players’ struggles to make it the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics. Based on the true story of the actual team that went to Athens in 2004, the director focuses on development of characters and their feelings rather than making it a glamorous sports movie.

After a few twists, three main protagonists, Han Mi-suk (Mun So-ri), Kim Hye-kyeong (Kim Jeong-eun), and Song Jeong-ran (Kim Ji-yeong) re-unite in the national team to rekindle the glory of the gold medal of the Barceloana Olympic Games. However, the team with many younger players are not well-disciplined and the team’s new coach, Ahn Seung-pil (Eom Tae-woong), a former handball star, is trying European training methods when they have only a month to go to the Olympics.

The conflicts get worse when the younger players and the coaches disregard these so-called “over-the-hill” players (by their age). To make it worse, Mi-suk, who is one of the best players in Korean handball history and yet has had tough financial hardships because her husband’s debt, can’t take the despair of broken pride any more and leaves the team.

After lively depicting their bittersweet life stories, the director Lim draws all the players to reconcile with solid and heart-warming motif and make them head to Athens as a united team.

Outstanding acting of Mun So-ri and Kim Jeong-eun adds more strength and credibility to this movie. It’s very impressive that Kim Jeong-eun has successfully changed her romantic comedy girl image with such imposing performance. Kim Ji-yeong’s prominent performance as a fun firecracker is indispensable in the movie. Her thick Kyeongsangdo dialect throws harmless humor. I enjoyed it very much! Unfortunately, it seems that this has not been successfully translated in English subtitles.

This movie may not have the best handball game on the screen, but it’s filled with emotional flows of frustration, contempt, courage, humor, forgiveness, sympathy, determination, and hope as we see in our everyday lives as well as in many sports games. Lim Soon-rye has also succeeded in sending a message to Koreans, who tend to pay attention to things for a while when they’re in highlight, but forget about them soon. If we want the handball sport to be the top of the world, people should support it as well as the government should make their efforts to make the league thriving.

- The total number of admissions of this movie in Korea was 4,044,543.

I was never a big fan of Choi Jin Sil, but I admired her when she got her children’s custody after her painful divorce. I gave her big claps - quietly in my mind - when she succeeded in changing her kids’ last name to hers because I know how tough it is to make it done in Korea. She might not have had a grand intention to achieve something in Korean women’s equalization movement, but at least she did her best not to follow unjust social conventions and she made it!

I was also delighted when I heard that she made a successful comeback on a very popular TV series as a divorced single working mom because basically what it meant was that she disapproved of an unreasonable trend in Korea’s entertainment world. As easily assumed, actresses’ popularity are most likely judged by their beauty and youth rather than their acting skills and talent. Actresses’ expectancy is a lot shorter than actors’ because of this unfair objectification of actresses in a patriarchal society like Korea. She took the rougher road and she made it again!

Even with all these positive and strong images of hers, neither I was a fan of hers nor bothered to watch her big comeback show when it was so popular in Korea. (The most popular ones are ‘Rose Life’ and ‘My Last Scandal (The Last Scandal of My Life)’ since her comeback.) ‘My Love, My Bride’ (1990) was the only movie that I saw years ago that she stared in. I don’t remember much about her acting - that was her early stage of acting - but she definitely left an impression of a cute and angry bride.

With no doubt, I’d agree that she was one of the biggest stars or more “naturally” - yes, she was everywhere on commercials and TV series, but cheerfully and happily, not disagreeably - a “national actress” even to me, who had no more than neutral opinion about her.

It was absolutely such a shocking news to me as it was, I believe, to most Koreans. I know it was not only because she was one of the cutest ones, not only because she was a “national actor” loved by so many Koreans, not only because she had been around for twenty years, but also because she always got up again after heartbreaking hardships and sent the message to people not to give up on life. I know her life no more than an average Korean would know, but my thought is that she was a kind of person who wanted to be true and sincere to everything just as her name represents. Jin Sil means truth in Korean!

I only imagine how lonely she must have felt at the last moment. How hopeless the world must have looked to her. Maybe that smaller hill she confronted seemed too much after she had used up so much of her strength to get over all those hard and steep mountains of her life. I only imagine. I can only imagine, with my share of loneliness and despair, how desperate one can get and feel the death is the only straw to pull for hope.

It’s only natural that so many Koreans are shaken by her death. Her death might have them ask themselves the very question: is life just vain, and is there hope left, especially in this developed but humanly disappointing time?

That’s happening to me. I find it difficult to get over her death and its impact is slow and steady. It’s still blur to me. In reality, I don’t have close Korean friends to talk about it, who would understand how appalling it is. But in my own world, it’s because I’ve been trying naively to avoid the concept of death. I still haven’t got used the idea that my mentor, my uncle doesn’t exist in this world any more. Everything about death is still enigmatic and fearful to face.

What does death bring to us (ones who are left) and to them (ones who left)?

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BTW, I happened to read an article from Time regarding Choi Jin Sil’s Suicide. I couldn’t help frowning upon at the sentence “… an apparent suicide, she has become a symbol of the difficulties women face in this deeply conservative yet technologically savvy society”, unpleased with inaccuracy in interpreting her death, yet I have to agree that it’s a shame Korean society is still heavily patriarchal, people judge others with double standards, so living as a single divorced mom is enormously challenging.

I hope the Korean government will establish practical laws to support single working moms as well as come up with a constitutionally-legitimate regulation law regarding ak-peul (evil-comments, source of false rumors on the Internet, allegedly the direct reason of her suicide). Most importantly, Koreans should change their point of view.

Peace to her in the other world….

Most time I go to the sand dune with co-workers, but from time to time I like to go there alone. It’s usually one of those days that I feel a little depressed about the world and life, but also sometimes I go there alone to prove that I’m recharged with love.

When I’m down for whatever reasons, every step I take at the sand dune reminds me of general difficulties of human being’s life as well as my own hardships and confusions about life.

In Korean, there is this expression, “chew loneliness as you chew sand grains“. As sane as I am, I won’t chew sand grains with an excuse of its easy accessibility at the sand dune, but I do feel that every step feels like chewing sand grains. Well, each step forwards you up to the dune, but you also sink in the dune a third of the step at the same time. Climbing the sand dune ten times without any break totally feels like the hardships of my own life especially when I’m pessimistic about life. I’d almost believe if one deceived me saying ‘lonely’ and ’sinking’ have the same root in their pedigree.

Hasn’t everyone questioned about artists and their longing for loneliness? I’m one of those who think it’s true, at least true for some artists. Ok, I’m not really an artist, so let’s level down to an ordinary human being’s life. When a person feels lonely, I believe, sometimes they are just genuinely lonely. Maybe they are actually coming close to life than to death or darkness of life. That’s the kind of loneliness I feel at the sand dune.

I wonder how my body and my mind would feel if I climb up the sand dune alone at night. Of course, I wouldn’t dare to do it as a law-abiding citizen since Manhattan Beach Sand Dune Park is closed at night.

Although I find myself often down these days, sometimes I go there with feelings of love. I go there alone simply to test my unyielding temper! As much as it has practical benefits – I believe it’s a very good cardio workout if done without break – it is favoring for my mentality, too.

Where would I find such a good chance where I can challenge myself enough, yet not worrying about failure too much? Right, I can just go running for two hours. But with the sand dune, it’s fun to conquer the end!

Tomorrow, my husband and I will watch W., go to the sand dune, compete each other, and finish at Veggie Grill with their delicious veggie burger and fried yam. It will be a fun and refreshing!