Love song for Sura

By Kim Sun-ae

I twice watched the documentary “Sura: A Love Song” (2022). Sura in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province, Korea, is the last remaining tidal flat in the Saemangeum reclamation project. Before the reclamation, people could see the magnificent dance of tens of thousands of great knots flying together in Saemangeum, swirling with the wind.

Many migratory birds come down to Korea from the tundra in spring and leave in summer to spend winter in Australia and New Zealand. Korean tidal flats are crucial stopovers for these birds that travel such long distances. The importance of Korean tidal flats and their high levels of biodiversity has been recognized internationally. Four have been listed as UNESCO World Natural Heritage sites.

Although many creatures died due to the Saemangeum reclamation project, various animals and plants still live in Sura, the only tidal flat left in Saemangeum. The documentary features beautiful birds of diverse colors and shapes living in Sura, including parent birds brooding their eggs, and tiny baby birds waiting for their mothers to return with food.

The existing airport in Gunsan displays chronic neglect. Nevertheless, the government plans to build a new airport by reclaiming the Sura Tidal Flat near Gunsan Airport.

“Birds come back to where they were born,” says Oh Dong-pil, the head of the Saemangeum Citizens Ecological Group. “Birds born in Sura will return to the tidal flat someday. If their hometown disappears, where will they be able to rest when they come back? People who are trying to construct the new airport, too, might have heard the ocean while holding a conch shell to their ears when they were young.”

As Hwang Yun, the film's director, says, “Tidal flats were made by the gravitation of the moon and Earth … Living creatures, countless like the stars, are born and grow in these areas.” Tidal flats, created by the mystery of the universe, are precious homes to numerous plants and animals. Sura is home to milky fiddler crabs, a legally protected species, and Seoul pond frogs, an endangered species found only in Korea.

The director's narration of mysterious living creatures in Sura is like a poem. Maybe because few people read poetry these days, I was the only person in the theater when I first saw the film. After some time, I went to the theater again, with my family this time. Fortunately, that day, there were more people in the audience including parents who came with their young children.

This film is a love song sung by people who love the beautiful tidal flat. The ending credits include the names of various living creatures in Sura, such as Saunders's gulls and little terns. Sura residents in the film include a mother bird protecting her baby in the strong wind. The mother bird's love may be no different from that of our parents.

Kim Sun-ae (blog.naver.com/everythingchanges) is a writer and editor.