One important element lost in the translation is the name by which SoRan (SR) called her husband during the massacre scene.

When she and her daughter were dragged to the center of the village, she alternately addressed him in Korean as:

“Yeobo,” which means “Honey” or “Sweetheart,” and
“SeoHee abuji” which means “SeoHee’s father”.

While Netflix translated Yeobo correctly, it eschewed the paedonymic name “SeoHee’s father” and instead, settled for the husband’s actual name of “SeokJung.”

… which I think missed the point.

Referring to him as “SeoHee abuji” is critical because it tied him explicitly to his child and emphasized that he was a father of their daughter before anything else.

Note: In my opinion, SoRan’s primary mission isn’t liberation, but vengeance for her daughter. Independence from the Japanese colonial rule is only secondary. Hence, she tied her daughter’s ribbon to her pistol. She seeks to avenge her daughter’s death by shooting Sato Shinichi because Shinichi was the one who gave the order to execute her daughter.

As for her husband SeokJung, she has a deep-seated anger for him because he had sacrificed their daughter’s life for the pro-independence movement.

Let’s go over SoRan’s monologue. She shares her memories of that day with Philip Yoo.

SR: March 1st, 1919. Not long after the March 1st Movement, I heard the Japanese were burning villages in retaliation. But I didn’t think our village would be one of them. And then…

Three points:

1. I think it never crossed her mind that the Japanese would target her own village because she had no inkling that her husband was one of the organizers of the protest.

2. Because she wasn’t privy to her husband’s political activities, she wasn’t able to devise a contingency plan for their daughter’s safety. When the soldiers hauled her to the village center, she was carrying their daughter. I think if she had known that the Japanese military was going after her husband, she would have hidden their child first.

3. If I were in her shoes, I would have been enraged with my husband for not protecting us from the Japanese reprisal/retaliation. The least he could have done was to give me a forewarning.

Flashback to that fateful day in 1919.

SR: What’s going on? (soldiers grabbing her daughter) No. Please, no. Don’t. (talking to SeoHee) It’s okay, sweetie. (seeing her husband) Honey. SeoHee abuji, what’s going on? Why are they doing this?
Husband: (speaking to the commander) My wife and daughter have nothing to do with it. Please let them go.

Note: her husband was wearing the white hanbok (or minbok). I told you about this in a previous write-up. I said that it was a symbol of resistance against the colonizers and the Japanese were rounding up people who wore them, especially after the March 1st protests.

SR: Yes, there must be some misunderstanding. My husband is just a schoolteacher.

This tells me that she was truly ignorant of the situation. She was unaware that the main proponent of the independence, and organizers of the demonstration were people from the educated class, e.g., students, teachers, and intellectuals. She thought that mentioning that her husband was merely a schoolteacher would absolve her husband from wrongdoing, when in fact his profession implicated him.

Husband: My family has nothing to do with it. Let them go now.
Soldiers: Shut up.

Soldiers beat him up.

Then, the camera rested on a head covered with a field cap with a five-point star, then on hands clasped together on a lap, and finally on black boots on the ground. The boots moved towards her husband.

Remember what I told you about the camera focusing on Shinichi’s black silhouette and his polished shoes as he got off the train in Episode 1? In this scene, the vision of black boots was meant to evoke fear because those boots looked like it would trample and crush anything or anybody in their path.

Then as Shinichi crouched in front of her husband, his face was finally shown to the camera.

Shinichi: (in Korean) Let me ask you again. Tell me who joined you in leading the March 1st protest in this village. Otherwise… (looking at SoRan, then at her child) I’ll kill your daughter.

Ahhhh. So he was a child killer. I wish I could say that I’m shocked by this, but it’s widely known that during WWII, Japanese soldiers brutally murdered infants, toddlers, and children. One of the most atrocious documentations reported that they would throw the babies into the air and stab them with their bayonets.

Fukuda: (in Japanese for the soldiers to understand) It’s the daughter.
Soldiers: (pointing their rifles at the child)
SR: No. Please. Don’t. No. Kill me. Not her. Not my daughter. Please. Please. I’m begging you. (turning to her husband) SeoHee abuji! Yeobo! Tell them something, honey. Honey.
Husband: How many times did I tell you? I did it myself. The protest in this village was all me. I planned it myself.
Shinichi: Tell me. Who’s your accomplice?
SR: Yeobo. (yelling) SeoHee abuji!
Husband: I swear, I did it alone.

Shinichi walked back to his chair and sat down.

Shinichi: (in Japanese) Shoot.
SR: No!

SR tore free from her guard and crawled to her dead daughter.

SR: (sobbing)
Shinichi: This is your last chance. Tell me who else was involved. This time, it’s your wife.
SR: (speaking to her daughter) SeoHee. I’m sorry.

If you visit St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican City, there’s a Michelangelo sculpture called Pieta. It shows Mother Mary cradling the dead Jesus Christ on her lap. Pieta is Italian for pity and the sculpture has become a symbol of a mother’s sorrow, grief, and mourning. SoRan mirrors the Pieta in this moment.

Husband: Na Byeongsun. Choi Manchun. And Kim Pungsan.

When SR heard him surrendering his accomplices’ names, she stopped sobbing and turned to look at him.

To me, this was the moment she began hating him.

Why now? I could think of two reasons.

First, he could have given up these names earlier to save their daughter, but he didn’t. He didn’t want to betray the movement, so he sacrificed his daughter instead. And now, when that sacrifice wasn’t enough and when his wife was threatened, he surrendered.

Sigh. He could have named dead people or invented false names earlier.

Second, his order of priorities as a family man, as “SeoHee abuji”, was messed up. He sacrificed his child but he drew a line at sacrificing his wife. For her, however, she would rather give up her life for her child. She was begging Shinichi to kill her instead of her daughter.

Shinichi: Only three?
Husband: Yes. Now keep your word.

Tsk tsk. Was her husband really this dumb? Did he think he could negotiate with Shinichi? What leverage did he have? Naturally, Shinichi ignored him.

Shinichi: (in Japanese) Set it on fire.

The soldiers lit the cabin on fire.

Husband: This isn’t what you promised! Those people are all innocent. Please, please, put out the fire. Please.

Interesting, right? He didn’t show this level of distress and desperation a moment ago when his daughter’s life was on the line. Now, he was beseeching Shinichi to stop the fire because the people were innocent. Welllll, his daughter was innocent, too.

Shinichi: I don’t think I said I’d spare them.
Husband: (yelling) You fucking monster! (standing up) What did we ever do to deserve this? (getting beaten) We only asked for our country back. We only cried out for independence! But you people…(mouth muffled)
Shinichi: (in Japanese) Take him away!
Husband: You worthless bastard!

Too little, too late. He should have reacted like this when his own flesh and blood was shot.

When he was hauled away, SoRan merely looked stonily at him.

Men who were holed up inside the burning cabin broke through the walls, and the massacre began. Women rushed to the burning cabin to save their husbands; the soldiers shot them. The men rushed out of the burning building and the soldiers shot them one by one. The Koreans were easy, moving targets to the Japanese. They were defenseless against the guns.

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For @ibisfeather who commented that she found it incomprehensible that Korea had 30 years of Japanese occupation, and especially for the non-Americans on the blog —

I know this is a SIMPLIFIED answer because I’m skipping the geopolitics; google can explain that better. Besides, ibisfeather already knows the answers, too….

When we compare the Korean 1919 independence movement with the American revolution that began in 1775, there’s one major difference that’s plain to see in this kdrama’s massacre scene. The US colonies had guns to fight the British.

In 1775, ordinary citizens owned guns for defense and subsistence. Gunsmiths were repairing and producing rifles for the settlements. And long before 1775, militias were already organized to protect settlers against raids by Indian tribes and other enemies. The able-bodied men in the colonies were required to serve in their local militias (similar to the military conscription of the BTS oppas, lol) and they must own their personal firearms.

Though the Brits were a superpower, the American colonists were able to oust them in a relatively short eight years largely because they had guns and militias – firepower and manpower – even back in 1775. The Koreans had neither in 1919.

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For me, these are the reasons this massacre scene is emotionally stirring. As you can see, the dialogue was nothing special.

1. The prelude to SoRan’s narration and flashback

Philip walked down the stairs, spotted the blood-stained carpet in the hallway, then saw SoRan kneeling motionless by the window. She was startled when he called her.

Let’s take a moment to study the “leading lines” in this screen shot.

Leading lines are lines that guide the viewer’s eyes to the main subject of the camera shot. They act like arrows pointing to the focal point. In this shot, the central character is SoRan.

The wooden floor planks formed diagonal lines moving toward SoRan. The vertical lines of the curtain pointed downwards to where the silhouette of SoRan was kneeling. Also, the vertical lines created by the wall plus the vertical lines of the armoire framed her in the center of the camera shot.

In terms of composition, I thought this camera shot was great.

Why?

Because it succeeded in isolating SoRan in her own little world. Because of the leading lines, she looked alone, distant, and lost in time. And when you think about it, she was at that very moment lost in the past, in her memories of her dead child.

But Philip Yoo woke her out of her trance and she began wiping the floor. Hurriedly, he knelt on one knee in front of her and reached for her rag.

PY: Give it to me.
SR: (taking his hand off hers and continuing to wipe the floor)

Interesting reaction, right?

PY: (sighing) I’ll clean up the house. Forget everything for today and get some rest.
SR: No. I need to keep myself busy to forget all these thoughts for a while.

She kept on rubbing around the same area, then she paused.

SR: About SeoHee.
PY: (looking at her because he didn’t know who she was talking about)
SR: The name I called her. Keum SeoHee.
PY: (quiet)
SR: SeoHee was my daughter’s name.
PY: (quiet)

Thank goodness for silent men! Philip knew she was about to reveal an intimate secret about herself and he waited silently.

This is another reason I consider this scene great: the virtual silence. There was no noise except for:

her hard scrubbing which she ended,
the soft flapping of curtains against the breeze,
the faint tweeting of birds outside, and
her solemn voice.

I call this the “pregnant silence” or that moment of quiet in a conversation when a dramatic admission is about to be said. The director did well in using this “pregnant silence” to create tension because the viewers are all ears to hear what SoRan was about to confess.

2. The filming of the massacre

I just want to note that the first casualty was SoRan’s daughter Seohee. But the second and third casualties were village women who ran towards the burning building when the men trapped inside began to break down the walls. Two more men from the crowd were shot dead as they ran towards the fire.

After that, the soldiers gunned down all the men escaping the conflagration. Fukuda looked especially demonic as he shot down a villager with a grin on his face.

I must give the director for choosing to use slow-motion here. For me, slow-motion serves to:

a) stretch the moment so the horror seemed never-ending,
b) intensify our emotion because we were lingering in the shots,
c) make the moment appear surreal…because this kind of abject horror SHOULD not be happening in reality, and
d) and make us empathize with the victims. Our hearts were breaking.

I must also give the musical director credit for the – is this what you call it, Snowflower? – the ostimato in the background. The orchestra kept repeated the same musical phrase (or tune) over and over again as the massacre occurred.

Repeating the same notes functions like a slow-motion, except that a slow-motion is intended for the eyes of viewers while an ostimato is for the ears. In this massacre scene, the repeating tune made the moment appear never-ending, surreal, more horrifying and nightmarish, and heartbreaking.

So, what’s the overall effect of this scene on me?

Well, with the combined repeating background orchestral music AND the repeating camera cuts from the soldiers loading their rifles/firing them to the men fleeing/getting shot, I get the visceral impression that this carnage was performed for Shinichi’s pleasure.

You see, in midst of the mad frenzy, he alone sat unperturbed on his chair. He was like a director watching a dramatic spectacle.

3. The close-up shots of the faces

Close-up shots are very important because they allow:

a) the actor(s) to express a micro-expression that would have otherwise been missed in a wide shot and b) the viewers to empathize or shun the characters.

The director did very well to capture Shinichi’s happy eyes and crooked smile.

Note that Shinichi’s lips were dead center in the camera. Almost imperceptibly, the right side of his mouth moved up. To me, this smirk indicated his satisfaction at the deaths, his contempt for these metaphorical “rats fleeing a sinking ship,” and his sense of superiority because he accomplished his mission to eradicate the protestors without breaking a sweat.

Then the director cut to SoRan’s face.

In contrast to Shinichi’s eyes and smile, SoRan had tears in her eyes and her lips were downturned. Her lips were also centered in the camera. Then she slowly dropped her head to the left as she lowered her eyes, and she bowed her head to look at her dead child in her lap.

To me, these movements indicated her mental exhaustion, psychological defeat, and utter destruction.

Then, the director moved to her child’s face.

The child looked like she was peacefully sleeping. SoRan ran her thumb across her daughter’s temple then she began to moan.

As she moaned, the camera focused on her daughter’s bloodied ribbons.

Her moaning crescendoed into wailing. She pulled her lifeless child closer to her face and hugged her tight.

The camera cut to show the mother-and-child moment against the backdrop the blazing cabin.

To me, this image was a visual metaphor of her state of mind. Her emotions were as intense and raging as the building fire. She was in inferno.

Then the camera focused on SoRan’s wailing face again. The image of face slowly dissolved into a bleak mountain landscape with leafless trees. Smoke rose the burned timbers, and soldiers were walking through the debris, probably making sure there were no survivors or wounded hiding.

The camera focused on a bloodied spot on the ground. We assume it was the spot where SoRan’s husband had his only daughter martyred for the pro-independence cause.

Soran continued her flashback.

SR: We had our daughter after ten years of marriage, and that’s how I lost her.

AND THAT’s WHY she was kneeling motionless on the floor when Philip Yoo came down to the stairs. Most viewers assumed that she was trying to wipe away the blood of ex-husband and to ERASE the past.

But I think that, on a deeper level, I think she was remembering the blood shed by her daughter. In 1919, she couldn’t wash away her daughter’s dried blood on the ground. In the present time, however, she could honor her daughter’s memory. She didn’t want Philip Yoo’s help in cleaning up the bloodstains; she wanted to do it herself as a way to connect with her long-buried past.

4. The comparison

I’ll go over this later when I have time…. 🙂