Films shot on the islands of the Han River

The Han River, which rises in Taebaek, Gangwon Province, is a 460 kilometers long river which flows until Seoul. The Han River runs slowly and gradually, and it divides Seoul into its northern and southern parts. Throughout a long history of erosion and sedimentation, several small islands have made and have disappeared in the Han River. Especially, during the Joseon Dynasty era, there were 4 large islands in Jamshil, Jeoja, Yeoui and Nanji areas of Seoul. As time went by, the flow changed, and as a result, the sand bank changed too. Therefore, today’s Han River has several islands and Islets like Yeouido, Bamseom, Nodeulseom, Ttukseom, Seonyudo, and Nanjido.

The islands on the Han river have inspired many filmmakers and a lot of films were shot on these islands. Here, I will introduce three of these islands through three films shot there.

Bamseom Island

<Castaway on the moon>

In the center of Seoul, a ten million inhabitants megacity, there is an uninhabited island called Bamseom Island.

In fact, there were 150 inhabitants on Bamseom Island before the Korean War in the 1950s, and due to a planned bombing of Bamseom Island, all of its inhabitants had to move to the Changjeon-dong area on the main land.

Afterwards, Bamsoem had dissolved but reappeared through sedimentation and even recovered its ecological system, becoming a habitat for migratory birds. Therefore, in 1999 Bamseom was designated as ecological landscape and a protected area. Later, the site became closed to the general public and damaging activities of all kinds such as poaching wild animals and collecting plants being prohibited.         

A desert island, Bamseom has become an isolated area in the noisy and crowded city of Seoul. It is a very isolated and unnoticeable place, even for daily passers-by.

Kim Hae-Jun, director of the film Castaway on the moon, started to write the scenario imagining that there is an inhabitant on the desert Bamseom Island.

Kim, the protagonist who is highly indebted, tries to commit suicide by jumping into the Han River, but fails and washes up on the shore of Bamseom. He sends an SOS message to a ferry passing by the island, yet the spectators on the ferry simply wave him leaving him there, not realizing he was actually stranded. He searches every corners of the island, but can’t find a way to escape, and at last, he writes “HELP” on the sandy beach. After he adapts himself to his new wild life style, he modifies “HELP” into “HELLO”.

The film stars another Kim, who is agoraphobic and never leaves her small room. Her only hobby consists is taking pictures of the moon. And once by chance she finds a stranger living on Bamseom. She sends him a letter in a wine bottle, which he receives, and answers her back by writing on the sand. The two isolated Kims in the mega city of Seoul start communicating with one another, in their own way.

Yeouido

<Cold Eyes>

Yeouido is a flooded plain of 8.35㎢on the Han River, with a small river pass accross Yongdeungpo area. The island is a sandy plain, which turned into a rough surface airfield in 1916 during Japanese colonialism. It remained a rough surface airfield even after the construction of Kimpo airfield in 1936, the US army occupying it after the Korean independence in 1945. It is later, in 1968, when the Seoul government started developing the Han River area, that the Yeouido really began to develop.

Currently, Yeouido Park is located in the middle of Yeouido, the National Assembly of Republic of Korea, with the Korean Broadcast System Building in the west and the Korea Stock Exchange, Apartment complexex, in the East. Yeouido, supposedly, is an area representative of Korean Finance and politics with 19 public institutions, 5 mass media organizations and 59 financial agencies.

Cold Eyes is a 2013 Korean film, which screened in the summer. The film is about detectives from the surveillance team of a special crime unit in a police division who work together to take down a bank robbing organization. The plot is largely about the police chasing criminals who try to commit the perfect crime in Seoul. Members of the police division hide their identities and focus exclusively on following the secretive criminals all around to gather information with their limited memory and observation tools.

The detective division uses its instinctive senses and intuitions to follow the criminals; at some point they receive a case related to a criminal organization led by a certain James. James always ditches the police thanks to his clever and elaborate plans. However, the detectives chase him very tightly and closely, so he tries to leave the criminal organization to fly away overseas so as to avoid being arrested. However, he is obliged to conduct one last mission the criminal organization orders him to do which consists in trying to paralyze the Korean Stock Exchange center.  

Cold Eyes was shot in several places accross Seoul; not only in the Yeouido Stock Exchange Center, but also on Teheran Road, in Itaewon, Cheonggyecheon, Yongdeungpo and in the Jongno area, so the film creates a better reality regarding the action and chasing scenes.

Seonyudo Island

<Samaritan Girl>

Seonyudo Island is located in the middle of the Yanghwa Bridge. Its scenery has been known since the Joseon Dynasty era when it used to be a spot where people would go for boating. In the past, the island used to have a small peak of an altitude of 40 meters called Seonyubong. But during Japanese colonisation, the peak was cut to supply rocks to build the airfield on Yeouido Island.  

Seonyudo Island has also been through other changes during the 1970s and its process of urbanization and industrialization. For instance, a purification plant for citizens of southwest Seoul was built in 1978, then the usage stopped and was permanently closed in 2000.

Today, the purification plant remains and has not been demolished but transformed and integrated as a part of an ecological park, Seonyudo Ecological Park. The latter comprises a garden with green pillars, a “garden of time”, a water purification basin, and an water-themed botanical garden.

Samaritan Girl, which won the Silver Bear, the second place award at the 2004 Berlin International Film Festival, was shot mostly on Seonyudo Island.

The beginning part of the film, where the protagonists Yeo-jin and Jae-young play hide and seek, takes place in ‘a garden with green pillars’ in the east part of Seonyudo Park. This garden was made from a previous clean water basin after its concrete roof was taken off. So the remained pillars from the reservoir recreate a calm and speculative space.

The scene of the film in which Yeo-jin and Jae-young make phone calls to men who want to have paid sexual relations with minors was shot in ‘a Garden of Time’, formerly a coagulation basin. This garden has two water basins of 41 meters width, 41.4 meters high and 5 meters depth, where the impurities found in the water were filtered out. This garden remains the most perfect among the gardens, compared to previous constructions. The plants grown in this garden show traces of the history of this place and that is why the garden was named “Garden of Time”.

Besides, many other films and TV series were shot on the islands in the Han River like Nodeulseom, Ttukseom and Nanjido Islands. With time passing, some of the islands on the Han River have disappeared, sometimes becoming filled-up pieces of land. Also, they change shapes and uses according to historical changes and developments. We shall see the endless transformations of the islands of the Han River.