Martoons

Cast of characters

Dame

*

“Mind boggling. What kind of individuals who call themselves leaders would order an army to attack a country’s citizens?”

thought Dame.

It was a side of the Korean character that he never would have imagined possible.

Sure, he’d seen a number of incidents in Chinju, usually late at night, when a Korean guy would be engaged in a verbal spat with another.

Sure, these exchanges would become heated and the two would point extended fingers into each other’s chest.

Yet they’d never come to blows. Koreans were by and large civil and respectful to each other.

But this atrocity?

Back outside moments later, Dame gathered a little journalistic fortitude and filmed the building’s exterior, walking slowly backward to the compound entrance, trying to hold the camera steady.

In a hushed voice into his camera’s microphone he narrated, “I simply could not bring myself to film what I saw inside this museum.”

“Film images would not have done the display justice.”

“This is something you have to experience in person. You have to be in that room and feel it.”

“When you think about what happened, it’s like having your belief in the human race stomped on. Chilling.”

He stopped moving, stood still, and zoomed-in on the building.

“But when I saw the candles of hope burning and looked into the eyes of the victims in those portraits, my admiration for their bravery overflowed.”

“Canadians take democracy for granted. Koreans had to fight for theirs and many paid the ultimate price.”

“It was an honour for me – a landmark moment in my personal history – to brush shoulders with their families.”

Exiting the compound, he couldn’t help but run the video recorder as he walked past the ticket lady’s booth.

He even pointed the camera at her briefly.

“This visit woke something inside me up,” he continued narrating. “I was alienated before coming to Kwangju. In Chinju, I didn’t fit in.”

“Yet now I feel more at home and proud to be a Korean.”

* Will Dame now stay in Korea on account of his newfound pride? *

That was a little flowery. He chuckled as he shut the camera off and hailed a taxi. As he waited, he felt warm and profound all over.

The other small group of patrons – the ones who’d icily regarded his camera before – were now all smiles and bid him a hearty farewell with full, respectful bows.

His cab pulled up and once inside he continually pondered the haunting portraits.

It was the eyes of the annihilated victims that struck him most.

As pairs of eyes from each man, woman and child would appear before his mind, he kept nodding his head in affirmation, trying to bring the whole thing together and come to terms with the Kwangju Massacre.

The cabbie noticed that his patron was visibly shaken and cautiously asked, “Customer, everything all right?”

Dame snapped out of his heavy reflection. “Yeah, yeah I’m good. Real good.”

He had his backpack in his lap and unzipped it, removing the video camera. “Can you drive a little slower?”

The cabbie had never before had a request to ease-up on the gas pedal. “You mean faster? Sure.”

“No, slower.” Dame rolled down his window, held up the camera and adjusted the viewfinder.

“I want to film some of the sights between here and the bus terminal. This city has soul.”

Thanks to Kwangju, Korea felt different to Damion now.

*

Tomorrow: Dame heads back to Chinju.