With the 4·3 Incident, once again the ‘Mother of Ordeals’ Yeom Hye-ran “A work that does not deal only with the past” - 스포츠경향

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Actor Yeom Hye-ran listens to a question at the premiereㆍpress conference for the film ‘My Name Is’ held on the 2nd at CGV Yongsan IPark Mall in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Photo Yonhap News

Actor Yeom Hye-ran once again stood as a ‘mother within a history of ordeals’. However, it did not portray only the pain of an individual. Yeom Hye-ran, who appears in the film ‘My Name Is’ by director Jeong Ji-young, which deals with the Jeju 4·3 Incident, a wound in modern Korean history, explained why she took on the role.

Yeom Hye-ran attended the media screening and press conference for ‘My Name Is’ held on the afternoon of the 2nd at CGV Yongsan IPark Mall in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Present were director Jeong Ji-young, who has directly illuminated dark corners of modern history through works such as ‘Bureojin Hwasal’ ‘Namyeong-dong1985’ ‘Black Money’ ‘Sonyeondeul’, and the actors Shin Woo-bin, Choi Jun-woo, and Park Ji-bin, who played teenage roles.

Actor Yeom Hye-ran answers a question at the premiereㆍpress conference for the film ‘My Name Is’ held on the 2nd at CGV Yongsan IPark Mall in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Photo Yonhap News

‘My Name Is’ is set in Jeju in the spring of 1998 and tells the story of an 18-year-old boy for whom the rustic, feminine-sounding name ‘Young-ok’ is an insecurity, together with his mother ‘Jeong-sun’, who raised him. Young-ok becomes steeped in violence as power relations within the school shift, and his mother Jeong-sun evokes an image of Jeju in 1949 that lies beyond her own memory.

Playing Jeong-sun, Yeom Hye-ran said, “Although there was pressure because it is a work based on a real event, the script was also literarily appealing, so I decided to take part.” She said, “It was compelling in that it does not deal only with the past of the 4·3 Incident, which marks its 78th anniversary this year, but addresses how we should view it today.”

Director Jeong Ji-young answers a question at the premiereㆍpress conference for the film ‘My Name Is’ held on the 2nd at CGV Yongsan IPark Mall in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Photo Yonhap News

She said, “The character Jeong-sun was by no means flat or conventional. The multilayered, three-dimensional aspects that include both perpetrator and victim were compelling.”

‘My Name Is’ is a work in which several images Yeom Hye-ran has shown in previous projects overlap. Her use of the Jeju dialect and her hardiness recall Jeon Gwang-rye in the Netflix original series ‘When Life Gives You Tangerines’, and her Korean dance also brings to mind Guk-hee, who dances in her immediately preceding work ‘Mad Dance Office’.

Poster for the film ‘My Name Is’ by director Jeong Ji-young. Photo CJ CGV, Wide Release

Yeom Hye-ran said, “Compared with Gwang-rye, Jeong-sun lived longer. It was hard to express the pain, but it was similar in that it portrays a strong mother who has endured a history of ordeals with her whole body,” and added, “There is pain, but the way a person who had nothing at all uncomfortable, who was not holding that pain, goes toward the truth, came across as impressive.”

The working relationship between Jeong Ji-young and Yeom Hye-ran began with the previous film ‘Sonyeondeul’ by Jeong. Based on the true “Samrye Nara Supermarket robbery and fatality case” that occurred in 1999, in the film released in 2023 Yeom Hye-ran played Kim Kyung-mi, the wife of Detective Hwang Jun-cheol (Seol Kyung-gu), who investigates the case in the story.

Poster for the film ‘My Name Is’ by director Jeong Ji-young. Photo CJ CGV, Wide Release

Jeong said, “It may look like we did not shoot for several days, but to be honest, I was smitten. The acting is flavorful and real. So I thought I would like to meet an actor like that later in a bigger role,” and added, “When I was preparing the next project and there was a desire to work with Yeom Hye-ran, without a second thought I revised the script with Yeom Hye-ran as the lead.”

Having often presented narratives based on true events, Jeong explained why he chose the 4·3 Incident as his subject, saying, “In fact, I did have an interest. But I thought someone else would do it. To deal with 4·3, the issue of ideology has to be mentioned, and that was already addressed in ‘Nambugun’ or ‘Namyeong-dong1985’,” while adding, “However ”the idea of finding the name was appealing, so I took on the challenge of adapting it into a film“.”

Actor Yeom Hye-ran enters the venue for the premiereㆍpress conference for the film ‘My Name Is’ held on the 2nd at CGV Yongsan IPark Mall in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Photo Yonhap News

‘My Name Is’, directed by Jeong Ji-young and starring Yeom Hye-ran, opens on the 15th.