54 Years (2023)
About
A village once named Maehyang for the fragrance of its plum blossoms has, over the span of 54 years, become a place filled with the stench of gunpowder.
The seas and tidal flats that once sustained the livelihoods of fishermen have rotted, saturated with heavy metals. For 54 years, approximately 250 days a year, for 12 to as long as 16 hours a day, the ground trembled, and noise relentlessly battered the eardrums.
Noise-induced hearing loss, lead poisoning, uranium warheads, misfires, unexploded ordnance, abnormal and stress-induced miscarriages, congenital deformities, soil contamination, suicide. What’s more terrifying than all these is indifference and oblivion.
I am a mere observer, standing at a distance from Maehyang.
I am one of the many who, by chance, was not born in Maehyang.
I am one of the many who, by chance, was not born amidst explosions.
I am one of the many who, by chance, did not have to endure 54 years of suffering.
And yet, I listen to Maehyang.
A village once named Maehyang for the fragrance of its plum blossoms has, over the span of 54 years, become a place filled with the stench of gunpowder.
The seas and tidal flats that once sustained the livelihoods of fishermen have rotted, saturated with heavy metals. For 54 years, approximately 250 days a year, for 12 to as long as 16 hours a day, the ground trembled, and noise relentlessly battered the eardrums.
Noise-induced hearing loss, lead poisoning, uranium warheads, misfires, unexploded ordnance, abnormal and stress-induced miscarriages, congenital deformities, soil contamination, suicide. What’s more terrifying than all these is indifference and oblivion.
I am a mere observer, standing at a distance from Maehyang.
I am one of the many who, by chance, was not born in Maehyang.
I am one of the many who, by chance, was not born amidst explosions.
I am one of the many who, by chance, did not have to endure 54 years of suffering.
And yet, I listen to Maehyang.