1961 Seoul, South Korea 2

Cha Youngja

1946

Seoul, South Korea

Interviewed on January 27, 2022

by Bianca Nam

(Interview translated from Korean)

I watched my first movie when I was eighteen with my friends. That would have been 1961. We were still in high school, so my parents hadn’t wanted me to go, but I argued that we were in our last year of high school and wanted to make a cool, lasting memory. Going to the movie theater, in our neighborhood at least, was something young people did for fun, it wasn’t entirely proper, you know? Like clubbing or partying these days, a bit.  Everybody else in our grade at school had been at least once! But my parents were well-off and a little old-fashioned, and they didn’t want me to go, but I begged and I begged and they agreed, but maybe that was because my younger brother had gone with his friends the month before.

My friends and I jumped around excitedly all day at school, even getting scolded by our teacher, who made us stand at the back of the classroom. That was certainly a first! But we were too excited to be properly chagrined, and the moment we were dismissed we raced off to my friend’s house. We had brought street clothing in our school bags, and we changed into them at my friend’s house, eating puffed rice crackers and getting crumbs all over the floor. We looked rather silly trying to dress like fashionable young people; we pooled together our little collection of skirts and blouses and jackets and dressed each other up like dolls. We foolishly wore little heels, and as we walked to the theater we could already feel our feet aching.

We went to the Shinchon Theatre, which was full of people! It was bright with lights even in the dark evening, and it stood out with its colorful signs from blocks away. We crowded into the theatre, holding each other’s hands so we wouldn’t get lost. They didn’t have food at the theatre like they do these days, but we had stuffed our pockets with hard candy, and we popped them into our mouths during the movie. There were no ushers, so no one stopped us. We tried to keep the crinkling of the wrappers as quiet as possible. By the end of the movie, the insides of our mouths were sweet but raw from rolling around those hard, cracked candies for almost two hours! I remember how spicy my mouth tasted because I had brought ginseng candy from my father’s desk at home. My mouth waters just remembering it!

To be honest, there’s not a terrible lot I remember about the movie itself, The Houseguest and My Mother. The music was beautiful, and I was deeply focused on the movie while I was watching it, but there wasn’t much of a story to the movie. It wasn’t very exciting. I do remember arguing with my friends about how scandalous the events of the movie would be if they were in real life. Some of them thought it was so romantic how the little girl’s mother developed a relationship with the man who rented in their home, but I couldn’t understand how two people who were tied together in a renter and landlord relationship could fall in love. It didn’t make sense to me. It wasn’t proper!

We bought bottles of juice because we were thirsty from all the candy, and we walked home with two of my friends’ brothers, who had come to escort us home in the dark. The entire way back, we talked about how handsome the actor for the houseguest was. I still remember his name, Kim Jinkyu. With his trendy clothes and swept back hair, he had us swooning. The boys who were walking us home just rolled their eyes and made fun of us, demanding who would look like that and also want a girl who looked like us. We wondered if we would be as stately and beautiful as the mother, and some of us boldly said that we would rather be wild and fun. That made us giggle, and we took off our heels and walked in our stockings until the boys made us put them back on.

After that movie, I didn’t see a movie again until after I graduated high school and I was dating your grandfather. He took me to a few movies, it was really romantic! We just fight all the time now, but dating was really fun. When I was in my twenties, that was such a popular dating place. I would see high school girls there every time, and I would remember when I was in their shoes. It makes me smile to think about how many memories I made there with my friends and my husband. It wasn’t just about sitting in a dark room and staring at a bright screen. Just the excitement of spending time together in a public space, and talking about the movie afterwards…I don’t go to the theatre anymore, but it really was magical.