The Seashore Village (1965), directed by Kim Soo-yong
Review of The Seashore Village / 갯마을 (1965), directed by Kim Soo-yong
The video above is the full movie, which can be seen for free on YouTube via the Korean Classic Film channel. It is available with English subtitles.
I stumbled on this book through a list of classic Korean films to watch. This came out in 1965, a decade after the closure of the Korean War, and seemed right up my alley.
I’ve been very interested about traditional life in Korea nowadays, and how Korea became the quote-on-quote modernized country that we know today. I’ve even been watching dramas in which the setting isn’t Seoul (currently that consists of Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha and It’s Okay not to be Okay) because I’ve been so fascinated with the countryside of Korea.
The Seashore Village truly is a classic. We get these absolutely beautiful shots of the characters, as well as a pretty solid plot line.
I’ve been watching so many Korean movies from the 1960s ever since I took a contemporary Korean cinema class in college. And they’re so good! People think that only Korean film from, say, the 2000s and up is only good quality, but there' are some real gems if you go back in time. Truly underrated cinema scene despite the mass censorship going on.
I’ve said a lot, so let’s dive into this review!
Content
The Seashore Village takes place in the countryside of the Korea in the 1960s, which is a true blast from the past. A lot of the houses are in a traditional style, the women go around wearing hanbok in their daily lives, and it’s an absolute treat to see these idyllic scenes of what life used to be like.
There’s a true sense of community, too, as everyone seems to know each other and the men and women have set jobs that they tend to (the women more domestic work, while the men go out and fish).
But there is also a bane to this, as the people on the island are complacent. Their lives begin and end with the island, even if life seems to be better outside of it. This creates a bubble of sorts, one in which there are set standards in how things should be done and how people should act.
Our main character is Hae-soon, who has just been married. She loses her husband at the start of the film, as there has been a storm during a fish trip. This is where I’m surprised it got past the censorships of the time, since they were pretty strict.
This film is an exploration of Hae-soon’s sexuality, as she has caught the eye of a local coal miner and doesn’t succumb to the life that is expected of a widow at the time. As wee see other windows hide in their loneliness, we begin to see how it clearly is in almost everyone here. Loneliness is a special form of an epidemic, even in communities seemingly perfect.
This is particularly shown in the relationship between Hae-soon and her mother-in-law; although the MIL is grieving her son’s death, she is split between allowing this new relationship to continue or allow her daughter-in-law’s happiness. As mentioned before, Hae-soon is going outside of the standard by allowing herself to indulge in this new relationship. She is a widow and must act as such.
But this shows the underbelly of the community—one man tries to take advantage of her and her situation. There’s also an obvious imbalance of men to women in this village, as they’re adhering to the traditional values in which women could not get remarried or seek out a new man in the case their husband dies.
This is the situation Hae-soon is stuck in, especially because she has been married young and her husband died almost immediately after the marriage. There’s no hope out, which leads to tendencies that the women are craving sex. The widows, despite the fact they are clearly much older, are delegated to the fact that they, too, have desire, are older, and they cannot do much about it.
Overall Thoughts
This is a very interesting film to watch. It was adapted from a novel and clearly has this sense of literary quality to it from the cinematography, which give us wide, sweeping shots of the ocean and of the village, and can almost be seen as poetic at times.
The film depicts an era that has been long gone, one that may not even exist anymore in modern Korea. Even the island itself is starting to change, even if the occupants aren’t aware of it.
All in all, I recommend looking at this movie as a time capsule, one in which offers a pretty good story to it. Come on, it’s free. Totally worth a shot.
