1955 Seoul Korea

Cylvia YunJa Mun

Jan 7, 1940

Seoul, Korea

Interviewed on Jan 22, 2026

By Zephyr Simus

• What is the first movie you remember seeing?
  • Movie name: 꿈 (translated: Dream)

• How old were you?
  • Fifteen years old

• What do you remember about the movie?
  • It was about a young monk who falls in love with the daughter of a town’s richest man. The monk has a dream and in it, he and the woman were having an amazing time eating all the tasty foods, frolicking in the mountains, and having so much fun. But then, the wealthy father finds out, and he gets the police to find the monk, and the monk and the woman must escape through the mountains – yet ultimately the monk is caught. The dream ends right before the monk’s head is going to be cut off by the head priest.

• What did you think about the characters or the story?
  • The monk was young and handsome. He was probably about twenty years old. It was during my puberty, and I liked the story because the thought that someone even like a monk could romantically love someone made me wonder if maybe someone could love me, it’s a very romantic thought. It also makes me think at the time that maybe it was possible to have dreams that could become reality. I liked that things you wanted could show up within your dreams at night.

• Who did you go with to the movie?
  • My friends: Yoon Yong-soon (윧용순), Kim Jeong-sook (김정숙), Choi Gyeong-nan (최경난), and Kim Mi-yok (김미욕). We all skipped school to see it and had to change out of our uniforms, so that we would look older.

• Who did you get to the theater?
  • We walked. The theater was in our neighborhood, about two bus stops away, but we walked to save money. We had to save money for the movie, which was about 30 won.

• Was there a concession?
  • No, there were no concessions. There were stores nearby where you could buy food, but food was not allowed in the theater.

• Do you remember the name of the theater? Were there ushers?
  • It was Ah-yeon Theater (아연극장). There were no ushers, and some seats had row numbers, but no seat numbers. Your ticket had a row number. Sometimes we would take pins with us because you never knew who would sit next to us, and if they were perverts, we made sure to stab them.

• What town and what year was this?
  • It was in Ah-yeon-dong, Seoul, in 1955.

Cylvia YunJa Mun is my maternal grandmother.