[Do You Know MZ?] MZ’s ‘Sunsaengnim’, Youn Yuh-jung
[Do You Know MZ?] MZ’s ‘Sunsaengnim’, Youn Yuh-jung
  • Ham Eun-se
  • 승인 2021.05.27 00:11
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ⓒThe Oscars 2021

 Youn Yuh-jung ‘Sunsaengnim’ syndrome

 As we young people have been losing our affection for schools and society, the word ‘sunsaengnim’ is starting to be rarely heard. The abbreviation ‘saem’, however, tends to still be used but it is as scarce to call seniors ‘sunsaengnim’ as a token of respect as it is to pluck a star in the sky. Even in schools students call their teacher either ‘saem’ or their name.

 There is, however, one person who is nearly one hundred percent called ‘sunsaengnim’: it is actress Youn Yuh-jung. There is no case where Youn Yuh-jung is not called ‘sunsaengnim’ not only in the programs she featured in but also on the sns comment sites that usually contain only blames and insults. Even teens and young adults who think Youn Yuh-jung’s representative work is <Youn’s Kitchen> attach a tag of ‘sunsaengnim’ to her without fail. In 2021 she became an incomparable ‘mentor’ and ‘guru’ to all people, for all that she actually is not a friend nor a neighbor to the common people. Manycelebrities have had a considerable impact on the general public and changed cultural trends and social atmosphere till now but we cannot find a case like this in which a person is looked up to as an elder in not only her every action or saying but her life itself. In this era when sneering can be a weapon and detesting can be right, what brought about this interesting ‘Youn Yuh-jung Sunsaengnim syndrome’? 

 We yearn for ‘an elder’

 The movie <Minari>, a film directed by a Korean-American director Lee Isaac Chung, was one of the most remarkable films world-wide in 2020-2021 in total. In this autobiographical movie of the director Lee Isaac Chung, the actress Youn Yuh-jung, a Korean movies’ big senior and footstone, played a Korean grandmother who set out for an American countryside to look after her grandchildren. She never stopped being challenged through her films like <The Taste of Money>, <The Bacchus Lady>, <Lucky Chansil> despite her established career and position, but it was not at all an easy way to go with the unknown foreign independent art film maker. Moreover, she had performed as a main character in the popular show produced by Na Young-suk, one of the most outstanding TV producers, so it might have been okay if she had refused to ‘invite trouble’. Nevertheless, Youn Yuh-jung opened a new door again deciding to play the role in <Minari> and that decision became a critical moment to make a tremendous stroke to the history of Yun Yuhjung herself, and also to the history of Korean cultural world.

 Through this series of processes Yun Yuh-jung has also been firmly carved as ‘an actress’ on the hearts of the young generations who were born after the death of director Kim Ki-young who had debuted her. But the eye-opening outcomes Youn Yuh-jung made were merely a signal to kindle the fire of ‘Yun Yuh-jung Sunsaengnim syndrome’. The young generations, more familiar with ‘Yun Yuh- jung’ in such shows like <Sisters Over Flowers> and <Youn’s Kitchen>, are enthusiastic with Yun Yuh-jung more as a ‘person’, rather than as an ‘actress’. To the young generations who had better submit themselves to the authorities to survive in reality, her ingenuousness and uninhibitedness offered vicarious satisfaction when she said “I don’t wanna do the real hard work anymore. I’mgetting old” appearing on the stage in  Sundance Film Festival 2020; in the interview in <Sisters Over Flowers> she said “You cannot know how life is when you become sixty, because it’s your first time being sixty. For me it’s the first time being sixty seven,”; and winning the 2021 British Academy Film Award for Best Supporting Actress, she said “but this one, especially to be recognized by the British who are known as snobbish people, they approve of me as a good actor, so I’m very, very privileged and happy…”; and her ‘friendly but fastidious’ attitude gave life to their adoration toward her.

 But it was the young generations’ thirst for long-awaited ‘real elders’ that made Youn Yuh-jung all people’s ‘sunsaengnim’. In this time when a phrase “In our time we…(Latter is Horse…)” is settled as a meme, the young generations’ anger has risen up to its peak more than any other time, toward the so-called ‘old men’ not elders, who think of their age as power, monopolize wealth and honor, mock the young and do not even give a chance. As for me, I suffered shattering my affection on humankind in innumerable situations because of various kinds of ‘old men’ I met working part-time at a fast-food restaurant, and when I talk with my friends about ‘the old men’ whose diverse greed and ignorance caused accidents and troubles posted on the news we cannot help but say tens of times, “Let’s not be like that when we grow old.” (I am sure I have never heard, “Let’s be like that.”) In this society where it might be much easier to find ‘an object lesson’ rather than ‘a role model’, it is natural that we the young people lack faith in the old men, to some extent.

 The young generations, however, have always yearned for ‘good elders’: the elders who do not regard ‘age’ as a synonym of ‘power’; the elders who approve the young men also have their own ‘cross’ to carry on; the elders who manage men and life and the world not with friendly hypocrisy, but wholeheartedly even if they sometimes seem to be a little bit fastidious. And Youn Yuh-jung is just the one who quenched the young people’s thirst, which no one has ever done before. She is acceptably uninhibited and straightforward anywhere. She never loses her identity and needs and never crosses the line nor steps back. Above all she acknowledges and accepts others as they are. She never judges on her own nor tries to change others because she is older and in a higher position. Now ‘Youn Yuh-jung Sunsaengnim syndrome’ ends in a somewhat bitter cheer showing how earnestly the young generations need ‘elders’, ‘sunsaengnim’.

 

ⓒThe Oscars 2021

 It’s the Time for <Minari>!

 In the movie <Minari> produced by director Lee Isaac Chung who brought the monumental achievement of Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress to Youn Yuhjung, not to mention other tens of trophies, ‘the grandmother’ Youn Yuh-jung played went to America bringing ‘Minari’ seeds. ‘Minari’ is a herb that grows well anywhere, and symbolizes an immigrant family that steps on the barren soil and strives to settle down. So ‘the grandmother’ is an important and leading character causing the conflict among the family members and at the same time being the ‘final savior’ raising them again – in a somewhat sad and ironic way.

 And this Minari is like the young people of this time who put forth shoots in desolate surroundings without any help and strongly live their own life. Minari may grow by itself, but the minimum water and sunlight must be required. Good ‘elders’ and ‘leaders’ are that minimum water and sunlight. Even though they are so little in quantity, as Minari needs water and light so do the young generations need good elders. Hoping that we, Minari generations need not to search for sunsaengnim any more in a place far from here, a place unconnected, I finish this with Youn Yuh-jung ‘sunsaengnim’s saying comforting the young people only with her own existence like a ray of hope.

 “We are old enough to fall into mannerism and prejudice. We are very much polluted because of our experiences. It’s a lie when I say I don’t have any prejudices. Then how can we say to young people, ‘What do you know about it?’”

 

 


Ham Eun-se / Translated by Park Eun-sun

 

* 《Cultura》 2021 June (Vol. 84) *

 



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