South Korea, 1998. While the country moves closer towards democracy, Young-oak remains at odds with his female-connotated name while attending a boy’s school where the air is thick with testosterone. The young man is struggling to fit in and find a new name among corrupt teachers and the teenagers’ violent power games, which are as subtle as they are extreme. Behind his mother Jeong-sun’s seemingly unflappable exterior, a past long repressed is reemerging, which she is reluctant to face. Yet confrontation is unavoidable – and it leads back to the national tragedy surrounding the Jeju Uprising of April 3, 1948. With suspense effects and a form of reenactment which distorts the meaning of the images, South Korea’s left-wing directorial icon Chung Ji-young channels the violent state of his country (past and present) into an identity drama. At different points in life, mother and son are both looking for their place within a society of taboos and fixed roles. Traumas come to the surface, the silenced and the repressed. At the end is the documentary image of a monument – as a sign of political topicality.
