Potato
(Kamja)
by Kim Sung-ok
South Korea
Script: Kim Sung-ok after Kim Tong-in's work
Cinematographer: Chang Sok-jun
Editing: Kim Hui-su
Sound: Hanyang
Music: Lee Pong-jo
Cast: Park Nosik, Ho Changgang, Yun Jung-hee
Production: Taehung Cinema
Year: 1968
35 mm, Colour, 118 min,
OV Korean with French Subtitles
Unreleased
With kind support of Paris' Korean Cultural Center and Taehung Cinema
Pongnyo comes from a poor family. She thinks that her marriage with the honorable Chang of noble lineage will help her family. However, her husband is a lazy widower who does not give her any money, thus forcing her to work in the forest to make a living. One day, she is raped by a construction site supervisor. He gives her some money to buy her silence and she understands how selling her body could be a final way to make a living. Little by little she becomes bolder and bolder and even makes advances to her neighbours, which provokes their wives’ fury. Her husband runs away one day, owning Chinese Wang huge debts. She becomes Wang’s mistress to pay back the debts and starts to dream of a better life. Yet, Wang leaves her to marry another woman. "The Potatoes" is adapted from a classic of Korean literature which inspired several films. This is the debut and only film by director Kim Sung-ok who got selected in competition at Locarno festival in 1970.
