KYURI JEON THE FLESH-WITNESS, 2021

Video, Sound, 13 min 34 sec

The Flesh-Witness bears witness to incomprehensible but ever-present trauma of relentless legacies of U.S. imperialism and its complex entanglement with enforced nationalism. The work weaves military footage and photographs from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) of the captivity and control of prisoners of Korean war by the United Nations Command at Geoje Island POW Camp in the 1950s. As part of the “voluntary” repatriation process, many POWs were forcibly tattooed with anti-communist slogans and symbols on their bodies to demonstrate their ideological views and to return home. Along with hand drawn tracing of these tattoos, the film consists of testimonies from POWs from two Koreas and excerpts from literary reportage work, “Accounts of the Chinese People’s Volunteers POWs” by Jin Daying.