“All that glitters isn’t gold” Is a phrase I often heard growing up to describe how people can project an outward appearance of perfection while behind closed doors their lives would be anything but perfect. In her second feature film Time to Be Strong, which premiered at the 25th Jeonju International Film Festival, writer and director Namkoong Sun strips down the facade of perfection projected by the Korean music industry to show that the lives of its artists are anything but golden.
Following the success of her 2021 debut feature Ten Months which screened at numerous film festivals within South Korea and abroad, Namkoong Sun was chosen by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) to create a film for the organization’s 15h Human Rights Movie Projects.
To the hundreds of thousands of fans of the globally popular K-pop industry and its dozens (yes dozens, rather than hundreds) of successful groups, the bright lights, flashy costumes, tightly choreographed dance numbers, and catchy songs the lives of the performers seem glamorous. Seeing their “idols” smile and perform “aegyo” i.e. cute facial expressions, market their latest songs with viral TikTok videos, and engage in fanservice at fan meetings, and concerts seems like the best life imaginable. But the truth is that for the majority of K-pop artists real life off stage is far dimmer than the bright lights on the stage, especially for former artists forced to retire through disbandment when their groups fail to capture enough public attention to turn big enough profits to remain active.
In Time to Be Strong, former company mates Sumin (Choi Seung-eun), Taehee (Hyun Woo-seok), and Sarang (Ha Seo-yun) go on a longer overdue group trip to Jeju Island in an effort to reclaim parts of their youth lost to the industry. For most children going on field trips is an ordinary part of their childhoods and school experience. Traveling to different locations to enjoy a day or weekend of fun excursions at historical landmarks and museums, playing in parks, or frolicking at the seaside are typical, but for these 3 young adults life became more a series of missed opportunities and lost innocence.
Even as they make it to Jeju, their time there turns into an exercise in coming to terms with the trauma they were subjected to at the hands of adults like greedy company owners, lascivious potential investors, and demanding fans who all wanted more of them than any child and teenager should ever be expected to give. For Sumin the de facto leader of their small group there—and the girl group LOVE&LEEDS of which Sarang was a member—the pressure of always taking the lead and conforming to destructive beauty standards presents in her compulsion to push herself beyond her physical and mental limits.
For Taehee, performing for audiences, for women, becomes second nature to the point that he thinks smiling when he doesn’t want to is normal. Having been conditioned to always put on his ‘best face’ for anyone watching, even as he’s burdened with debt forced upon him by his former CEO as a failed investment. Sarang, being given a suitcase in substitution for her own misplaced one, presents the opportunity for her to finally decide for herself what image she may want to project to the world, and acknowledging the fear of losing herself to bouts of depression and anger as a manifestation of all she’s seen and been subjected to.
Started in 2002 with an omnibus collection of short films by contributing filmmakers such as Im Kwan-taek and Park Chan-wook, the purpose of these projects are to highlight the often hidden and ignored struggles of social minorities and vulnerable people in Korean society through film with the aim of having audiences pay closer attention to the people and issues they consciously and subconsciously overlook. And with Time to Be Strong, Namkoong Sun does that with the K-pop industry which for decades has been an industry that relied on the exploitation of children and young adults for the profit of companies and entertainment of fans.
Though the film is fictional, the experiences of its three main characters are all real. Through dozens of interviews with former and current artists, Namkoong Sun was able to produce a story that is very true to the lives of the thousands of retired artists who were allowed to debut, or never even made it to that point having been fired as trainees by the dozens of companies within the Korean music industry.
To many, the traumas of these children and adults might night register or even be considered Human Rights Violations, but any industry that makes it a practiced of having children sign away 7 years of their lives in contracts they haven’t the capacity to understand on a legal and intellectual basis, and overworks them for years to the point of developing chronic debilitating physical injuries and mental illness, is one that deserves to be intensely scrutinized. No matter how glamorous its facade.
In our discussion during the festival, we spoke about the interviews she conducted to help her gain a deeper understanding of the K-pop industry and develop the characters, their stories representing a type of arrested development, and using the beach as a symbol of feeling overwhelmed.
Time to Be Strong won 3 awards in the Korean Competition category at the Jeonju International Film Festival; the Korean Competition Grand Prize, Best Actor for Choi Seung-eun, and local streaming platform Watcha’s top pick for Best Film.
Carolyn Hinds
Freelance Critic, Journalist & Podcaster
African American Film Critics Association Member, Tomatometer-Approved Critic
Co-Host & Producer So Here’s What Happened! Podcast
Bylines at http://Authory.com/CarolynHinds
Twitter & Instagram: @CarrieCnh12
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