An Interview with Filmmaker David Chung
- Harin Yang
- Sep 27, 2024
- 6 min read
"To discover something about our own history is always fulfilling."
Y. David Chung is a renowned artist and filmmaker recognized for his diverse creative endeavors, including film and video productions, installations, performances, drawings, prints, and public artworks. Chung has held artist-in-residence positions at various institutions such as Duke University, Williams College, Wellesley College, the University of California Berkeley, and the Whitecliffe College of Art and Design in Auckland, New Zealand. He has also been tasked with creating permanent art installations for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority and the New York City Public Art Program. Notably, in 2007, the documentary "The Unreliable People," which he co-directed with Matt Dibble, received the Best Documentary Award from the National Film Board of Canada at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival.
Q. Can you give us a brief overview of "The Unreliable People" and what inspired you to create this documentary?
A. I've been going to Kazakhstan for artistic projects for many years. I'd started noticing some Korean people there, so I'd ask them when they got there, and how they got there, because I knew nothing about them in the beginning. A lot of them told me that their family came to Kazakhstan in 1937. After hearing that from several people, I became very interested in the story. Why did they all come at the same time? What happened then? I really wanted to find out what the incident was, and that's what inspired me to create "The Unreliable People." At first, I was going to make the documentary about their history, but it ended up being a film where everyone talked about the Korean identity. I thought it was quite powerful how they're actually three generations away form Korea, but they still identify as Korean.
"First ethnic cleansing in the 20th century"
Q. For our audience who may not be familiar, could you explain who the Koryo Saram are and their historical background?
A. I first heard that it was a deportation from Primorsky Krai in the Vladivostok area. Then, I heard it's also what scholars consider the first ethnic cleansing in the 20th century. When I began to really investigate the history of Koryo Saram and research it, I found that it's a story that is well known in Russia and kind of known in Korea at that the time. Now, it's very famous, of course, but at the time we were making the film, nobody knew about this story.
Q. Did you encounter any dilemmas in choosing how to tell the story of Koryo Saram?
A. No, I was very surprised interview after interview, that people really wanted to talk about what it was to be a Korean, and what it was to be part of a Korean diaspora away from their homeland. Many of the Koryo Saram had never even been to Korea, but they still held on to their Korean identity. It was very powerful for them to identify as Korean, even though they may have never been there, lost the language, or have even intermarried. And so these were all very interesting components of the story.
Q. What are some key aspects of Koryo Saram culture that you aimed to highlight in your film?
A. One of the things that is really fascinating is the Soviet nationality policies at that time, because the newly formed Soviet Union - as the film points out - was very interested in projecting an image of a diverse nation with many different cultural groups. Yet at the same time, they were implementing this plan of Russianizing people by requiring everyone to read and speak Russian. This came in direct collision with remnants of Korean culture that were being tested, such as Korean language schools, plays in the Korean theater, music, and food as well as Korean customs in weddings or when people are born. There are many different points at which these nationality policies came in direct conflict with what was going on.
Q. Were there any surprising or unexpected discoveries you made about Koryo Saram during the research?
A. One of the big surprises was that there were other ethnic groups that lived with Koryo Saram for many years, and there were some that actually spoke a little bit of Korean. I met some Kurdish families that made Korean food because they lived their entire lives with Koryo Saram on their collective farms. When the collective farms were made, the Soviet Union tried to make them 100% ethnic, such as categorizing people as German, Korean, or other ethnicities. But, in some of the Korean collective farms, there were other ethnic groups mixed in with them, like the Kurds, Chechens, etc. These ethnic groups, as a result, ended up speaking a little bit of Korean, but this was years ago, so there's probably far less of it now. I would go into some homes and meet people from other ethnic groups who cooked Korean food and practiced other Korean customs. Another surprise was the Korean theater, where they had plays that were done in a dialect of Korean called Koryo-mar. This dialect however, is now a dying language as there are fewer and fewer speakers. Many of the people that show up in our documentary that spoke Koryo-mar have passed away.
Q. What were the most rewarding and challenging aspects of making this documentary?
A. The most rewarding thing was just to discover about the history of Koryo Saram and to connect with them. They were really wonderful people, and everyone was so welcoming and treated me like a relative. It was amazing. Just to discover something about our own history is always fulfilling. One things that was a bit challenging though, was that we were only in Kazakhstan for 6 weeks to film the documentary. And so that was a pretty full schedule of of filming every day and traveling around the countryside. Of course, language was also difficult at times. I would speak in a mix of English, my few words of Russian, and some Korean, so it was always a challenge with the communication.
Q. How has creating this film influenced your own perspective on cultural identity and heritage?
A. Before, I thought that being Korean in the United States was like being Korean in the West. And so being Korean in the former Soviet Union in Central Asia was a whole new thing. It was like another dynamic where before I thought everything was kind of dual in nature like Korea and the West, but this revealed to me a whole new way of looking at being Korean, which was Korea and the East, and particularly Russia. There are over 5 million Korean people living outside of Korea. It's a very large percentage of people who are living outside their country. When this deportation happened in Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, it was a few years before the United States was coming to grips with Asian Americans and other ethnic minority populations. So, seeing this from the Soviet side was really fascinating.
"Culture is an idea"
Q. Is there a particular message or theme from the film that you hope the audiences take away?
A. One thing that's very interesting is the idea that a culture can stay with a group of people, even though they're far away from their homeland. Culture is not tied to a place so much; rather, it is an idea. In the Soviet Union they used to have these categories of people for ethnic groups with a homeland and ethnic groups without a homeland. That was a really fascinating designation because it tell us that you can have culture without belonging to a territory like a homeland.
Q. What do you believe is the importance of preserving and sharing the cultural heritage of minority communities like Koryo Saram?
A. I think it's vital for historical reasons. It's very important to know about the story of the Koryo Saram and also the interesting ways in which their dialect and customs have formed and melded. And of course, it's very important to preserve as much as we can of disappearing ethnic minorities.
Reach Chung Online: davchung@umich.edu
Personal Website: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~davchung/
"The Unreliable People:" http://www.koryosaram.net/
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