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A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans. Directed by Dai Sil Kim-Gibson. 1995. 1/2" Video, Color. 59 min. Distributed by National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA), 346 Ninth St., 2nd Fl., San Francisco, CA 94103. 16mm Film. $265. Video Rental: $75. Film Rental: $150.
During the final years of Korea's occupation by Japan, over 40,000 Koreans were sent-many forcibly conscripted-to work as laborers on southern Sakhalin Island, then a Japanese territory. When World War II came to an end, however, and all Sakhalin fell under Soviet rule, political circumstances prevented these displaced unfortunates from returning to their homeland, and their plight has since been largely ignored by the outside world. A Forgotten People: The Sakhalin Koreans, a film written, directed and produced by Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, devotes itself to allowing their moving story to be heard.
The opening sequence pans slowly over the attractive forested hillsides of Sakhalin, but the beauty of the land belies the horror of the stories recounted. As a plaintive soundtrack of classical Korean music sets a melancholy mood, we encounter a litany of harrowing tales: interviewees describe how they were snatched from their families as young men and sent to a distant land to further the imperial Japanese war effort. Their accounts tell of frequent beatings and appalling living conditions, marked by a meager diet, inadequate shelter, and intense cold; former mine laborers detail the dangers of their work and the attendant possibilities of disease, disfigurement, and death. The film captures the recurrent use of animal similes in the interviewees' self-presentation (e.g. "the Japanese worked us like horses...