Byun Young-joo
| Byun Young-joo | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 20, 1966 South Korea |
| Education |
Ewha Womans University - Law Chung-Ang University Graduate School of Advanced Imaging Science, Multimedia and Film |
| Occupation | Film director |
| Korean name | |
| Hangul | 변영주 |
| Hanja | 邊永姝 |
| Revised Romanization | Byeon Yeong-ju |
| McCune–Reischauer | Pyŏn Yŏngju |
Byun Young-joo (born December 20, 1966) is a South Korean film director. Her films explore issues of women's rights and human rights.
Byun Young-joo graduated with a Law degree from Ewha Womans University and did her graduate studies at the Department of Theater and Film at Chung-Ang University.
She is a founding member of the women's feminist film collective "Bariteo," which was established in 1989. She worked as a cinematographer on Even Little Grass Has Its Own Name (Kim So-young, 1989), a short film about gender discrimination at work, and My Children (Doe Sung-hee, 1990), a documentary film about childcare in a poor neighborhood. Her first documentary Women Being in Asia (1993) centers on the sex trade in Asia, particularly the sex tourism of Jeju Island.
Byun is best known for her trilogy documenting the present and past lives of "comfort women" who were abducted and forced into sexual servitude by the Japanese army in World War II. Byun's efforts have lent a significant push to the women's demands for a formal apology and compensation from the Japanese government. At the same time, the films have drawn praise for their aesthetic and emotional power.
The first film in this series, entitled The Murmuring (1995), has become one of the most acclaimed documentaries in Korea's history, the first of its kind to receive a theater release in the country. Byun states that when she first contacted a group of comfort women and asked if she could film them, they refused emphatically. It was only after living together with them for one year that the director gained their trust and permission to make a film. This first documentary portrays the women leading their weekly protests at the Japanese embassy and fighting to overcome the sense of shame that has been planted within them and reinforced by an uncaring public.
Habitual Sadness (1997) was initiated at the request of the women, who asked that Byun film the last days of a group member who had been diagnosed with cancer. In this film the women are seen gaining self-confidence, eventually moving behind the camera themselves to utilize the medium of film as a means of both protest and healing. In the final chapter My Own Breathing (1999), a new character is introduced, a woman who was taken forcibly into service at 14 years old. As heart-rending as the accounts of forced prostitution may be, by focusing on their present, Byun filmed details that reveal the humor and personality of these women who survive years after the wreckage of their youth. In this manner the documentaries lead the audience to see the crimes as much more than tragic abstractions, but instead witness the effect it has had on these women's lives.
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