Reconstruction 8.3 (2008)


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The Structure of Hong Sangsoo's The Power of Kangwon Province / Marshall Deutelbaum

 

Abstract: In Hong Sangsoo's second film, The Power of Kangwon Province (Gang-wondo-ui him, 1998), two former lovers, unbeknownst to one another, travel simultaneously from Seoul to the resort area of Kangwon, spending the week-end there without ever meeting. The film begins with the woman's visit to Kangwon Province by train, her return to Seoul, and her sudden return trip to Kangwon Province to see a man she met there during her earlier trip. At the end of her second visit—much to the surprise of first-time viewers--Hong disrupts the chronology that has been established to begin the events solely involving the woman's former lover. This portion of the narrative begins some time before his trip to Kangwon Province and leads to his decision to go there. When he begins his trip, Hong repeats the shot of the young woman in the train's passenger car on her way to Kangwon Province with which the film began to signal that the two trips coincide with one another during the same diegetic time despite how viewers experience them in the film as widely separated occurrences. In effect, Hong restructures diegetic time to keep the two characters apart. Visualizing the film's narrative as a single, chronological sequence suggests that Hong resorted to an achronological ordering of events to avoid having to present the two trips simultaneously. Curiously, however, the movement of characters in and out of the frame or into the depth of a shot in both visits present multiple cues within these two widely separated portions of the film that Hong actually staged and shot the two visits so they could be combined into a single, chronologically continuous sequence by simply alternating their shots and sequences. Following a visual explanation of the logic of intercutting two lines of action, I combine the two visits according to this logic to construct an extended passage of parallel editing comprised of more than one hundred shots. Though there are narrative reasons for presenting the two visits separately, in the context of his preceding and following films, shooting the two visits so they might be combined coherently into a single chronology, reflects Hong's interest in his first three feature films in finding ways to express chronological relationships without reference to specific clock time. In his first film, The Day a Pig Fell into a Well (Doejiga umul-e ppajin nal, 1996), Hong signals the temporal relationship of four lines of action solely by wall calendars. In his third film, Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (Oh!, Soojung!, 2000), Hong combines the strategies he used in his first two films to construct the chronology of a couples' romantic history. Just as he split a couples' single day in Kangwon Province into two strands of action, here he treats the course of a couple's much longer relationship in a similar manner. Unlike the hidden possibility revealed in this essay of intercutting the two visits in The Power of Kangwon Province into a single chronology, Hong challenges viewers in Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors to use cues in the film to combine the couple's separately presented lines of action into a single, coherent chronology.



People tell me that I make films about reality. They're wrong. I make films based on structures that I have thought up.

Hong Sangsoo [1]


<1> Viewers watching Hong Sangsoo's second feature film, The Power of Kangwon Province (Gang-wondo-ui him, 1998), slowly come to realize that the film's main characters, a college professor named Sang-kwon and one of his former students, a young woman named Ji-sook, were involved in an affair that began and ended some time before any of the events depicted in the film. The film's scrambled chronological structure seems considerably more complex, however, than might seem to be required to present the modest story of the aftermath of their romantic liaison. If this were a typical critical essay I might continue on from this point to develop an argument that suggests a relationship between the film's strikingly unusual structure and the couple's separation.

<2> Even though I will eventually suggest a possible connection between the film's story and its structure, what follows takes its lead, instead, from the claim the director made just before the film's initial release:

If you feel something from my film, it doesn't come from making a connection between the so-called 'material' of the film and the form of the film. It comes from the imagining process inside yourself as you watch the film. It comes from a much lower part of yourself. It doesn't come from making all these abstract connections. The formal structure is purely an aesthetic means of putting together those scenes that I felt are necessary to include in the movie. It's a way to help people feel that there's a certain aesthetic consistency throughout the film. After that, how each responds is different—it's up to them. So, structurally, my films are very closed and tight, but in terms of the response I expect from the audience, it's very open. That's what I intend. (Burgeson, p.239)


Describing the Film's Structure

<3> The film is divided into two blocks of time, one for each character, and a brief coda that takes place some time later. Each block consists of chronologically continuous time divided into two parts. For Ji-sook, with whom the film begins, the two parts are a week-end trip with two girlfriends to Kangwon Province followed by a second brief visit there, alone, to see whether the tentative relationship she began with a married policeman during the first trip might develop into something more serious. Following a fade to black at the conclusion of her second trip, the continuous two-part block of time devoted to Sang-kwon begins. The first half of his block time follows his attempt to secure a more permanent teaching position. Until the end of this section, viewers assume they have been watching a single, linear narrative. However, with the beginning of the second half of his block of time viewers experience what Donato Totaro calls a "surprise non-linearity" as Sang-kwon joins a friend for a week-end trip to Kangwon Province aboard the same train as Ji-sook and her friends. The former lovers spend a day wandering through the National Park without ever meeting. By the time the next day that Sang-kwon realizes that he and Ji-sook have been there at the same time, she has left on her return trip to Seoul. The two meet briefly only in the film's coda, which takes place sometime after their separate, simultaneous trips to Kangwon Province.

<4> Although it is tempting to say that with the return to the initial shot aboard the train the film begins again, it is more accurate to describe the film's structure as two parallel lines of action whose parallelism is only revealed at that moment. Because we see only Sang-kwon before and Ji-sook after their time in Kangwon Province, the two lines of action might be visualized as I have arranged them in Diagram 1. As it illustrates, Hong has rearranged the chronological order of the narrative so that the simultaneous trips to Kangwon Province (1 and 4) occur at the beginning and end of the narrative, separated by the time immediately after (3) and before the trips (2), in reversed chronological order. Only the coda (5) occurs in the proper chronological position.


Diagram 1
(Click image for larger version)


Arranging the narrative as I have suggests that Hong employed this achronological sequence in order to avoid having to present the two trips simultaneously. Curiously, however, multiple cues within these two separate portions of the film suggest he actually staged and shot the two visits so though they could be combined into a single, chronologically continuous sequence by simply alternating their shots and sequences.


Editing Together the Simultaneous Visits to Kangwon Province

<5> Diagram 2 visualizes the basic situation. There are two lines of action, marked "J" for Ji-sook and "S' for Sang-kwon, each of which consists of a sequence events that occurs in different places, but at the same time (each moment of time indicated by the superscript number). Thus, for example, J3 and S3 happen in different places at the same time.


Diagram 2


By cinematic convention, simultaneous actions occurring in two different places are indicated by intercutting, or editing together alternating shots from the two lines of action so that, as Diagram 3 illustrates, discontinuous space (the alternation of J, S, J, S, . . . ) is understood as continuous time (1, 2, 3, 4, . . . ):


Diagram 3


By convention, everything important occurs during the shown moments (S1, J2, S3, J4), while nothing significant happens during the moments not shown (S2, J3, S4, J5).

<6> Normally, one would expect S1 and J1 to occur in the film at the same time in different places. Hong, however, indicates that they occur at the same time in the same place by repeating the film's opening shot of Ji-sook standing in the aisle of a crowded train car (J.1 below) as a man enters the car, passes behind her, buys two cans of beer and a package of dried squid from a vendor, and retraces his steps to return to where he came from (S.1 below). Ji-sook is in the foreground in the first shot, while a reverse camera angle in the second instance of this scene photographs the man in the foreground. If both shots take place at the same time in the same place, and the following actions are meant to be intercut, which shot should follow—the shot of Ji-sook's two friends asleep on the floor behind the car's last row of seats (J.2 below) or the man eating the squid and drinking the beer with Sang-kwon as they sit in a sleeper car (S.3 below)--if the two lines of action are meant to be intercut? The fact that the man leaves the frame after buying the snacks defines the logical choice for the next shot. Because time is continuous, the next shot should be of the sleeping women (J.2) in order to give the man enough time to rejoin Sang-kwon (S.3). The same logic can be seen at work later in the film (S.33-J.34-S.35) where the time it takes the cable car carrying Sang-kwon, his friend, and the mysterious woman they have met, from the moment it leaves its base station (S.33) until it arrives at its destination atop a mountain (S.35) is filled by a series of actions involving Ji-sook, her friends, and the policeman they have met (J.34). By convention, nothing significant happens in the cable car during the time we don't see it.

<7> Hong has indicated through mise-en-scene most of the points at which to cut from one line of action to the other. For example, where characters walk into a shot after it begins (J.4, S.9, J.10, J.20, J.26, S.29, J.30, J. 38, S. 39, J. 40, S.49, J.66), and shots where characters either walk out of shot before it ends (S.1, S.13, J.18, J.26, S.29, S.37, J.40, S.41, J.60) or walk so far into the depth of a shot that they almost disappear (S.7, S.19, J.30, S. 45, S.49, J.56, J.60), provide trustworthy cues that indicate the moments to intercut the lines of actions.

<8> Once the visits to Kangwon Province are intercut, it is striking to see how carefully Hong has structured their actions and incidents to parallel one another. Ji-sook and Sang-kwon appear to decline the offer of a taxi at about the same time (S.5 and J.6); each has lunch at the same time (S.15 and J.16); Ji-sook argues with Misun at dinner at the same time that Sang-kwon argues with his friend, Jaewon (J.46, S.47, J.48, and S.49); Ji-sook fumble at sex at the same time that Sang-kwon has dissatisfying sex with a prostitute (J.58 and S.59). Hong effectively ends the parallelism by shots set in the same place at different times: at night, back in Seoul, Sang-kwon writes a message on the wall beside Ji-sook's apartment door (S.65) which Jisook in he morning reads and erases (J.66).

<9> The following illustrates how intercutting the two visits to Kangwon Province as suggested in Diagram 3 turns them into a single, extended sequence whose shot changes many viewers will probably experience as being smoother, or at least less disruptive, than the shot changes in either Ji-sook's or Sang-kwon's visit to Kangwon Province as they are experienced in the actual film:

J.1 (0:00:40-0:01:27) A vendor pushing a cart passes behind Ji-sook as she stands in a crowded train car. A man passes behind her and buys dried squid and beer from the vendor, then returns from where he came.
S.1 (0:58:43-0:59:12) Jaewon passes behind Ji-sook, buys dried squid and beer from the vendor and returns to where he came.
J.2 (0:01:28-0:01:34) Ji-sook's two friends are asleep on the floor behind the last row of seats in the car.
S.3 (0:59:13-1:00:10) Sang-kwon and Jaewon sit on lower berths in the next car eating the snacks and talking.
J.4 (0:01:35-0:01:59) Ji-sook washes her face in the train station's bathroom, then walks outside to the front of the station.
S.5 (1:00:11-1:01:03) In front of the place they are staying, Sang-kwon declines the offer of a taxi. Jaewon joins him. They take another taxi.
J.6 (0:02:00-0:02:17) Ji-sook declines the offer of a taxi.
S.7 (1:01:04-1:01:27) The two men climb a stairway at Mt. Sorak to the pool beneath the Beeryong waterfall.
J.8 (0:02:18- 0:02:52) Ji-sook's friends decide to stop hiding from her inside the train station and join her.
S.9 (1:01:28-1:02:16) The two men sit on the rocks around the pool.
J.10 (0:02:53-0:03:33) Ji-sook and her friends walk across a beach to the water's edge. She digs in the sand while the others stand barefoot by the tide line.
S.11 (1:02:17-1:03:13) Sang-kwon sits with his feet in the water. The pair converse at a distance from one another.
J.12 (0:03:34-0:04:03) Near the road, J's friends talk to Zuppie the horse.
S.13 (1:03:14-1:04:01) The men descend the stairway and meet the mysterious woman as they reach the middle of the nearby footbridge. She asks whether the waterfall is nearby.
J.14 (0:04:04-0:05:07) Ji-sook and her friends sit near the water signing "Clementine." When they disagree about the lyrics, the decide to sign a different song.
S.15 (1:04:02-1:05:08) While they sit at a picnic table having lunch, Sang-kwon lectures Jaewon about bathing less often. When the mysterious woman walks by, Jaewon goes after her to make a date.
J.16 (0:05:09-0:06:00) While they dine in a restaurant, Ji-sook tells her friends how a boy who had a crush on her in high school fell off a roof either by accident or in a suicide attempt. When he came to, the first thing he said was her name and telephone number.
S.17 (1:05:09-1:05:49) Sang-kwon sits at the table. After a while, Jaewon beckons to him.
J.18 (0:06:01-0:06:29) Ji-sook buys admission to a shrine. Her friends decide to go to a bath house. The three agree to meet in an hour.
S.19 (1:05:50-1:06:22) As they walk on a path in the woods to meet the woman, Jaewon tells Sang-kwon that she has agreed to meet them for coffee.
J.20 (0:06:30-0:06:46) Ji-sook walks through the temple grounds.
S.21 (1:06:23-1:06:44) The woman waits for the men.
J.22 (0:06:47-0:07:09) Ji-sook stops to look at turtles sunning themselves in a pond.
S.23 (1:06:45-1:06:53) Jaewon stops to tie his shoe.
J.24 (0:07:10-0:07:33) Ji-sook prays.
S.25 (1:06:54-1:07:21) The men arrive where the woman was waiting, but she has left.
J.26 (0:07:34-0:07:47) Ji-sook walks along a road with her friends.
S.27 (1:07:22-1:07:51) Elsewhere on the path, the men throw stones at a rock.
J.28 (0:07:48-0:08:02) Ji-sook sits on a rock while her friends wade in a rocky stream.
S.29 (1:07:52-1:08:06) The mysterious woman waits in a line for a cable car. As the men pass her, Sang-kwon greets her. She looks at him without replying.
J.30 (0:08:03-0:08:49) As the trio walks along a road, a policeman calls to them, asking if they are looking for a place to stay. He leads them to a guest house.
S.31 (1:08:07-1:08:40) After making a phone call, Sang-kwon joins Jaewon in reading the cable car's safety placard.
J.32 (0:08:50-0:09:01) The women arrive at the guest house.
S.33 (1:08:41-1:08:59) The cable car leaves. The woman is a passenger.
J.34 (0:09:02-0:11:09) Misun lies on the floor reading a book of poetry. Suddenly, she rummages in a backpack and takes out a black top. Ji-sook and Eunkyoung watch the policeman wash his car. When Ji-sook tells him that they want to go up the mountain, he advises them to go the next morning because it is too dark. Ji-sook tells him they are leaving in the morning.
S.35 (1:098:00-1:09:09) The cable car reaches the summit. The men are among the first to get off; the mysterious woman is the last.
J.36 (0:11:10-0:11:44) At a stream in the woods, Eunkyoung takes photographs of the others.
S.37 (1:09:10-1:09.38) Sang-kwon and Jaewon climb to a high point and walk out of the frame.
J.38 (0:11:45-0:13:08) Walking on a trail in the woods, Ji-sook sees a small fish. Even though it is alive, she buries it so no one will step on it.
S.39 (1:09:39-1:10:48) Eying a couple standing on an outcropping, Sang-kwon wonders aloud to Jaewon that the couple can be so blind to the danger of where they are standing.
J.40 (0:13:09-0:13:40) The women pass the mysterious woman and a man on the footbridge. The couple seems headed toward the waterfall.
S.41 (1:10:49-1:11:22) Sang-kwon and Jaewon decide not to climb higher. They walk out of the frame.
J.42 (0:13:41- 0:14:37) The policeman drives the women in his car He tells them he is married.

S.43 (1:11:23-1:12:32) Sang-kwon and Jaewon walk along a sidewalk and decide to stop at a hotel for coffee. As they sit on a couch in the lobby, the see the mysterious woman joined by the man seen earlier as he tells her he has called a taxi. The couple walks out of the frame.

J.44 (0:14:38-0:14:52) The policeman changes his shirt at the police station.
S.45 (1:12:33-1:14:52) The couple waits in front of the hotel for their taxi. Sang-kwon walks up to them and asks the woman why she didn't wait to meet them. The man asks her who the questioner is. As the man watches, she walks back to the foyer with Sang-kwon. She says she did wait and is now going to Osack to see the mountains. She rejoins the man as Sang-kwon apologizes.
J.46 (0:14:53-0:16:14) The policeman sits in a restaurant having dinner with the women. Ji-sook and Misun argue.
S.47 (1:14:53-1:16:07) Sang-kwon and Jaewon have dinner in a restaurant. Jaewon urges his friend to try harder for a position at Choonchun University.
J.48 (0:16:15-0:17:40) Misun criticizes Ji-sook for having had a relationship with a married man.
S.49 (1:16:08-1:16:58) Sang-kwon insists on paying for the meal, but agrees that Jaewon will pay their next bill. They walk away into the dusk.
J.50 (0:17:41-0:18:28) The policeman explains that the restaurant owner, who is the chief of the local rescue team, has rushed out because there was an accident. Someone fell off a cliff. People heard a scream, but saw nothing.
S.51 (1:16:59-1:17:53) It's dark The men accept an offer from a driver to take them in his van to an all-night club where there are Russian "chicks."
J.52 (0:18:29-0:18:38) Misun walks away from the restaurant in the dark.
S.53 (1:17:54-1:18:42) The two men sit in a booth at the club with two Korean women. The women look at Karaoke selections. Sang-kwon seems uninterested in his date.
J.54 (0:18:39-0:19:39) The policeman comments on Ji-sook's gesture of turning her glass. Eunkyoung leaves to find Misun. The policeman asks Ji-sook if they should go somewhere else.
S.55 (1:18:43-1:19:32) In another room, Sang-kwon asks about the Russian women. When he learns how expensive they are, he says he prefers Korean women.
J.56 (0:19:40-0:21:05) Ji-sook, drunk, is sitting on the curb in front of the police guard post. The policeman struggles to get her to stand up. He eventually manages to pull her into the building.
S.57 (1:19:33-1:20:05) Sang-kwon, smoking, sits alone on a stairway in the club. He crushes out the cigarette on the palm of one hand.
J.58 (0:21:06-0:22:48) As they lie on the floor of the police post in the dark, Ji-sook asks what time it is. When the policeman says it is 4 am, she tells him she has to leave early in the morning.
S.59 (1:20:06-1:25:06) Sang-kwon and Jaewon, drunk, sit at the table alone. They argue about who will pay for the evening. Sang-kwon throws a drink in his friend's face. Later, two women drive the men to an apartment for sex. The women are in a hurry to finish. Sang-kwon's prostitute tells him not to touch her hair and repeatedly tells him to hurry and finish. At dawn, after the women have left, Sang-kwon smokes a cigarette on the apartment balcony.
J.60 (0:22:49-0:23:45) Morning. While the policeman paces in the background, Ji-sook sits in a chair outside the guest house. Misun apologizes to her. The women begin to walk with the policeman to the bus station.
S.61 (1:25:07-1:27:15) At the airport counter, the two men learn there are no seats available on the flight to Seoul. They have to wait to see whether seats will be available on the next flight. They sit outside the terminal to pass the time. Sang-kwon mentions that he once visited Kangwon with the woman he had had an affair. They stayed at the resort the men passed earlier, walked on the beach in the rain, and had a secret wedding ceremony.
J.62 (0:23:46-0:24:14) The policeman says good-bye to the woman at the bus station.
S.63 (1:27:16-1:28:10) When there are no seats available on the next flight, the two men decide to kill time before the next flight by visiting a temple. Sang-kwon hopes they will not have to take a bus.
J.64 (0:24:15-0:24:51) While Ji-sook sleeps, Misun tells Eunkyoung that the policeman looks like one of her teachers.
S.65 (1:28:11-1:32:27) At the temple, the men stop at a stand selling roof tiles on which prayers can be written. Sang-kwon sees a tile on which Ji-sook has painted a prayer for her mother's health. Later, at the airline counter, the man who was with the mysterious woman pushes to the front saying he has a reservation. He identifies himself as Yu Myounghun and says hello to Sang-kwon. Jaewon takes the one remaining seat on the flight. Later, Sang-kwon sits alone in the airport parking lot. Sometime later still, at night in Seoul, he buys a drink from a machine and walks to an apartment house. Inside, he writes something on the wall beside one apartment's door, then listens at the door to hear whether anyone is inside.
J.66 (0:24:52-0:26:42) Morning. Back in Seoul Ji-sook stops at a newspaper stand, goes to a public bath, and walks to her apartment house. On the wall beside her apartment door she finds the message that Sang-kwon had written. She reads it, thinks for a moment, then rubs it out.
S.67 (1:32:28-1:33:49) Morning. Sang-kwon reads a newspaper account of the death of the mysterious woman. He goes to a public telephone and calls the police to tell them, anonymously, the name of the woman's companion. He returns to his apartment building to find a letter from Choonchun University.


Accounting for the Film's Structure

<10> If Hong did not intend to intercut the visits and purposely left them uncombined in the finished film, why has he filmed and edited them in such a way that they could be intercut so well? Perhaps leaving the two portions uncombined makes symbolic sense in relation to the film's narrative because Sang-kwon and Ji-sook are estranged. A more convincing answer, however, can be found by comparing the structure of The Power of Kangwon Province with the structures of the films that preceded and followed it.

<11> From this perspective, The Power of Kangwon Province continues Hong's attempt to define temporal relations without specific references to clock time. As in his first film, The Day a Pig Fell into a Well (Doejiga umul-e ppajin nal, 1996), events are keyed to the time of the day. In the earlier film, each of the four sections devoted to the film's four main characters begins in the morning and ends early the next morning. Only October 26th, the date of the third day is specified, but it is possible to deduce the relationship of one day to the others from internal evidence and wall calendars visible throughout the film. Thus the first day occurs in September; the second day, taking place outside of Seoul, apparently occurs on October 26th as well; the fourth day, which apparently occurs forty days after the second day, takes place in December. [2]

<12> In The Power of Kangwon Province, Hong restricts the two characters' actions to a single day that extends, again, from the morning of one day to the early morning of the next. Clock time is mentioned only once, when Ji-sook asks the policeman the time and tells him she must leave early in the morning. Otherwise it is the progress of the day, from daylight to darkness, dawn, and daylight again, along with meals that define the moments of passing time. Filming the two visits so they would fit together into a single chronology if they were intercut appears to have been for Hong an experiment whose success established the basis for a more subtle elaboration in the film that followed.

<13> In his third film, Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (Oh!, Soojung!, 2000), Hong combines the structures of his first two films by splitting the retelling of a couples' romantic history, just as he split a couples' single day in Kangwon Province, into two separated parts of the film, each of which takes place over not one, but several days, just as the events did in his first film. In this case, each retelling of the couples' history takes place over seven numbered days. To the casual observer, it appears from apparent difference in the two retellings that the couples' memories are different. A careful observer, however, will realize that the seven numbered days are not the same ones in both retellings. Only six of the days are the same; each retelling has a unique day. Thus despite their numbering, what appear from their numbering to be seven days are actually eight days. And from this realization follows the realization that despite their apparent discrepancies, the two retellings fit together into a single, coherent chronology, just as the two visits to Kangwon Province do once they are intercut. [3]

<14> Critics often discuss the permutation of characters' relationships across Hong's films as he finds new ways to recombine them. As this essay argues, Hong reworks structural patterns in much the same way, refining them into ever more intricate constructions.


Works Cited

Burgeson, J. Scott. "Hong Sang-soo." Korea Bug. Ed. J. Scott Burgeson. Seoul: Eunhaeng Namu, 2005. 227-239.

Deutelbaum, Marshall. "The Deceptive Design of Hong Sangsoo's Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors." New Review of Film and Television Studies 3.2 (2005): 187-199.

Hartzell, Adam and Darcy Paquet. "The Hong Sangsoo Page." <http://koreanfilm.org/hongsangsoo.html>.

The Power of Kangwon Province (Gang-wondo-ui him, 1998). Dir. Hong Sangsoo. Spectrum DVD, Republic of Korea, 2001.

Totaro, Donato. "Sátántangó: And then there was Darkness." April 30, 2002. <http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/satantango.html>.

 

Notes

[1] Hartzell, Adam and Darcy Paquet. "The Hong Sangsoo Page." <http://koreanfilm.org/hongsangsoo.html>. [^]

[2] I explain the film's structure and its purpose more thoroughly in "The Pragmatic Poetics of Hong Sangsoo's The Day a Pig Fell into a Well" in Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema. Ed. Warren Buckland, forthcoming from Wiley-Blackwell. [^]

[3] See my essay "The Deceptive Design of Hong Sangsoo's Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors," New Review of Film and Television Studies 3.2 (2005): 187-199. [^]

 

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