'Spirits' Homecoming' cements box office leadership

A scene from the film "Spirits’ Homecoming" /Korea Times file

By Kwon Ji-youn

More than 420,000 people watched the film “Spirits’ Homecoming” on Tuesday, raising the total number of viewers of the movie about “comfort women” to 1.7 million, according data from cinema ticketing agencies.

Tuesday marked the 97th anniversary of the March 1 Independence Movement, one of the biggest independence protests during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

The flim, released on Feb. 24, is about the suffering of Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by imperialist Japan during World War II. The movie depicts the painful testimonies of “comfort women,” who were forced to work at Japanese military brothels during the war.

It took its cinematic motives from “Burning Women,” a drawing by Kang Il-chul, one of the victims, created during her therapy sessions.

The Independence Movement on March 1, 1919, was an early public display of Korean resistance against Japan’s colonial rule. It was when a declaration of independence was read in Seoul and millions of Koreans - men and women - took part in peaceful anti-Japan rallies all over the peninsula.