Sea, Star, Woman

Mer étoile femme

My mother left our home in Korea when I was 7 years old. I lived as if our father’s new wife was our real mother. My first name changed, we moved, I enrolled in a new school. My mother was a fallen woman never to be talked about. I could only stare at holes cut out of family photos, knowing it was her. Years later, now a filmmaker in France, I suddenly started having vertigo attacks that prevented me from working - my brain was deleting one of my eyes’ two images instead of merging them. As my world span, my thoughts returned to the blind spot in my existence: my mother. I learnt my father accused her of adultery, a crime in Korea until 2015. Sentenced to 8 months in jail, with no support from her family, she had to resign as a teacher and didn’t own a place to live. What was it like to be stamped an ill-reputed woman and shunned by 90’s Korean society?