The Pregnant Tree and the Goblin (2019, 115 minutes) by Kim Dongryung, Park Kyoungtae

In a shanty village located next to the US military base in Uijungbu, lives a former US military comfort woman named Park Insun. Living in the village for more than 40 years, Insun feels uneasy after the news announcement of the demolition plan of the military base.

One winter night, Insun discovers the death of her colleague and follows her silent funeral. She is soon spotted by the Death Messengers who came to investigate the wandering ghosts and take them to the afterlife. While the Death Messengers try to make up stories for the ghosts, Insun decides to make her own story to fight back her extinction.

Filmmakers Kim Dongryung and Park Kyoungtae will participate in a post-screening conversation with Shinjae Kim, film curator and critic.

Part of the series Power of Seeing 보는 이의 권력 hosted by the East Asia Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

About the Filmmakers

Kim Dongryung, born in 1977, majored in English literature and film making at KAFA & Paris 8. She started photography and then made shorts and documentaries on the daily lives of the US Military Camp Town since 2004.

Park Kyoungtae, born in 1975. After studying sociology and visual anthropology, he made documentaries on women and children of US military camp town in Korea since 2000. His debut documentary starred Park Insun, a former US comfort woman, and since then he collaborated with her in various films.

In Korean with English subtitles.

Film website: www.koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20190665

We thank the following for their generous co-sponsorship:

The Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

The Cornell Society for the Humanities

Dr. Dolors Armenteras will present her analysis of the patterns and impacts of forest degradation in the Colombian Amazon for more than 20 years. Her presentation will share insights and updates from the remote sensing of forest dynamics and land use patterns following the 2016 peace process in Colombia.

About the Speaker

Dr. Dolors Armenteras is a geographer and biodiversity conservation expert. She is a biologist from the Universitat de Barcelona, holds an MSc in Environmental Forestry from the University of Wales, and a PhD in Geography from King’s College London, UK. Most of her scientific and research work has been developed over the last 20 years in Colombia.

She is currently a Professor of Landscape Ecology at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Before that, she worked in the environmental sector, where she developed the first integrated spatial geographic information system for monitoring Colombian ecosystems and biodiversity in the early 2000s and coordinated the first ecosystem services assessment undertaken in Colombia in 2005. Her experience and knowledge of tropical ecology include work on fire ecology, biodiversity conservation, deforestation, land use changes, and sustainability scenarios.

Co-Sponsors: Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, Department of Natural Resources, Einaudi Center

Eleana Kim (Anthropology, UC Irvine)

This book talk discusses Eleana Kim’s recently published ethnography of the ecologies of the South Korean borderlands, in areas adjacent the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Based on fieldwork with ecologists, environmentalists, and residents who live along the border, this book reframes the Korean DMZ and the national division around more-than-human peace. It also argues that militarized ecologies deserve greater attention in the context of climate crisis and the convergence of militarization and privatization at a planetary scale. BIO: Eleana Kim is a sociocultural anthropologist and professor of anthropology and Asian American Studies at University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Making Peace with Nature: Ecological Encounters along the Korean DMZ (2022) and Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging (2010), both published by Duke University Press. She currently serves as the president of the Society for Cultural Anthropology.

Host Nation by Ko-woon Lee (2016, 116 minutes)

“Do you want to work in Korea?” Thus begins twenty-six-year-old Filipina woman Maria’s two-year journey into the sex industry in South Korea, which mainly caters to American soldiers stationed there.

Host Nation chronicles Maria’s hopes, dreams, and crucial reality for two years to lay bare the legalized system of sex trafficking between South Korea and the Philippines. Maria had long dreamed about escaping from her slum neighborhood in Davao, Philippines, and getting a job abroad and when she was introduced to a talent manager, Madam Yolie, it seemed her dream was about to come true.

Yolie, who operates a training center and a temporary boarding house in Manila for women, has witnessed the ups and downs of the sex industries of neighboring Asian countries and sees the openings in the industry as job opportunities for poor Filipino women.

The documentary follows Maria’s pathway into the South Korean sex industry via the E-6 visa, the so-called “entertainers’ visa,” slowly revealing the vast network of cross-border profit makers who enable sex trafficking, including a talent scout, a manager in Manila, a Korean broker, a Korean club owner and even Korean government agencies.

Part of the series Power of Seeing 보는 이의 권력 hosted by the East Asia Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Film website: www.koreanfilm.or.kr/eng/films/index/filmsView.jsp?movieCd=20164198

In Korean, Tagalog and English with English subtitles.

Generously cosponsored by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and the Cornell Society for the Humanities.

The Woman, the Orphan, and the Tiger by Jane Jin Kaisen & Guston Sondin-Kung (2010, 72 min)

Following a group of international adoptees and other women of the Korean diaspora in their 20s and 30s, the film uncovers how the return of the repressed confronts and destabilizes narratives that have been constructed to silence histories of pain and violence inflicted onto the bodies and lives of women and children.

Film website: janejinkaisen.com/the-woman-the-orphan-and-the-tiger

In English, Korean and Danish with English subtitles

Part of the series Power of Seeing 보는 이의 권력 hosted by the East Asia Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Generously co-sponsored by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and the Cornell Society for the Humanities.

Tour of Duty by Kim Dong-ryung and Park Kyoung-tae (2 hours 30 min. 2012)

There remains only silence in a US military camp town in the northern part of Gyeonggi province which will be pulled down any time soon.

In the town, three women are still living with pains engraved in their bodies. Aunt Bobby who used to make burgers in Seonyu-ri for 30 years; Ms. Insoon Park who used to collect scraps and draw paintings on them in the abandoned narrow alleys of Bbat-bul, Uijeongbu; and Ms. Sungja Ahn who is half-Korean and half-African American. Following the pieces of their memories, the film travels into the forgotten town to reveal the truth left behind.

This documentary by Kim Dong-ryung and Park Kyoung-tae chronicles the lives of three women impacted by the US military presence in South Korea. The Seonyu-ri red light district located at the Paju U.S. military camp town became a well-known site after the Korean War. Now awaiting its fate to be demolished, this film sets out on a trip through time and space in this place where certain memories and people have long departed and others still linger.

In Korean with English subtitles.

Film website: www.dmzdocs.com/eng/addon/00000002/history_film_view.asp?m_idx=101967&Q…

Part of the series Power of Seeing 보는 이의 권력 hosted by the East Asia Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

We thank the generous co-sponsorship of the following:

The Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

The Cornell Society for the Humanities