The narrator writes a letter to the ghost of his grandfather wondering if his recurring childhood nightmare of rusted metallic image is related to the family history. After running a scrap metal factory in Tokyo during World War II, his grandfatherended up in Cheonggyecheon of Seoul where rundown small scale metal workshops still exist amidst the gentrifying city. Drawing clues from fragments of dreams and myths relating to the metal, the film reveals the secret alchemy of third world modernity in Cheonggyecheon where these obsolete hand labors still survive. The film attempts to reveal how we shape the metal through techniques such as sand casting and milling machines, only to find out that metals had already shaped us into beings of an industrial society instead.

Every Korean citizen has a resident registration number. There are, however, people who get discriminated by this number. It is North Korean defectors who are not welcomed in Korea though they are the same people with South Koreans. They crossed the border or the ocean with desperate will to survive instead of ideology or the national system. What do they face in reality of South Korea? They should trample on or be trampled by each other so as to survive in the middle of another survival competition. They must think that winter of South Korea is cold and achromatic. They also should get on with the actual surroundings in South Korea. A North Korean defector, Jeon Seung-cheol works at a karaoke with showy posters right in the middle of desolate city of Seoul without a hint of heat. As he feels awfully lonely and stuffy, his dreams go against his expectation too simply. In order to recover his dreams, he has to use a crisis of his friend, which I wanted to show you the meaning of survival in this society. They should become thoroughly alone so as to get rid of the title of ‘North Korean defector.’ It is not merely those who are solitary in the society. In this film, I wanted to project a number of people who crouch on the floor, as there are more and more skyscrapers.

2010 제15회 부산국제영화제