Park Soonam

Place of birth: Japan
Fame for: Directing
Also known as: Pak Sunam, Park Soo-nam

Biography

Born in 1935 in JAPAN, Park is the author of The Collected Letters of Lee Jin-woo, and Crime, Death, and Love, two collections of correspondence between her and the defendant in the Komatsugawa High School female student murder case (1958) . After 1965, she began visiting Hiroshima and investigating the actual conditions of Korean hibakusha (Atomic-bomb survivors). In 1973, she published Korea, Hiroshima, Half-Japanese, a collection of testimony from Korean hibakusha. In 1986, she released the documentary film The Other Hiroshima: Korean A-bomb Victims Tell Their Story, which protested the actual conditions of North and South Korean hibakusha. It was shown independently throughout Japan, causing a sensation. She completed the sequel Song of Arirang: Voices from Okinawa in 1991. Her documentary films are made with the historical testimonies by the Korean atomic bomb survivors, Korean civilian workers and "comfort women" who were forcibly taken to Okinawa during the war by the military.