Remains

Few places in Ukraine have been spared from the impact of the Ukraine war, including the radioactive exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Al Jazeera’s Nils Adler has been seeing how the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster has been affected by the war.

The gorgeous, quirky and melancholy “The Love That Remains,” from Icelandic filmmaker Hylnur Pálmason (“Godland”), opens with an exhilarating shot from inside a long, empty seaside building, from where we can see the roof suddenly wrenched off by some exterior force. As it hovers in the air above, we get to consider the two parts of this one-time whole and how the light changes inside this deconstructed space.

In one respect, that’s the whole of the movie encapsulated, as we encounter a family of five living in the wake of a separation. Visual artist Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) looks to assert herself while still living in the rural home she shared with her teenage sweetheart. The increasing alienation leaves fisherman Magnús (Sverrir Guðnason) living offshore on a big trawler as his hold on domestic security slips. Their kids, meanwhile — teenage Ída and twin boys Grímur and Þorgils (the trio played by director Pálmason’s own children) — exhibit a healthy absorption of the circumstances, meeting moments of togetherness with plenty of humor and spirit.

What we glean of the past comes from the fragmented present, as if we’re leafing through a stranger’s exquisitely curated album (there’s only Harry Hunt’s piano score for sad commentary). Elsewhere we see that home-cooked meals, chores and foraging excursions occasionally bring this fractured family back together. But when Magnus pushes to stay for a while, Anna firmly claims her independence.

While apart, their working lives — his at sea, hers on land — speak to a confluence of the elemental and the man-made. Pálmason, who serves as his own cinematographer (and a great one with the 4:3 framing), revels in the sweep and heft of deep-sea fishing, a seasonal trade that gives purpose to Magnus’ days and nights but also fosters an increasingly unwanted solitude. Anna, meanwhile, devotes herself to earth art, turning machine-lasered iron cutouts laid on white sheets in the open air into large-scale, rust-patterned pieces. Getting her work appreciated, however, is another matter. In one painfully funny sequence, a visiting gallerist (and gasbag) barely seems to care about her art, showing more interest in a goose’s nest that has materialized in an enclosure.

Is love another natural element susceptible to age and wear? Across a running time tied to the shifting seasons, pocked by images of breathtaking beauty, Pálmason is after a feeling that only patient observance yields: a lasting reality about the passing of relationships. One of the director’s frequent visual cutaways is to a knight-outfitted dummy the children build on a picturesque spot, lashed to a stake. It’s an indelibly amusing and heartbreaking totem, suggesting play and suffering, and eventually manifesting wounds both real and internalized. (The director’s 2022 short “Nest,” which captures the building of a tree house over a year, is a precursor to his temporal approach to this feature.)

On the heels of Pálmason’s masterful “Godland,” a 19th century colonizer epic of faith and conquest that couldn’t be more different, “The Love That Remains” nevertheless positions this filmmaker as a gifted craftsman of adult storybooks, no matter the era or scope. This is a delicate, confidently imagined fiction made with the eyes of a naturalist, the heart of a believer in family, and a sensibility with room for both the Pythonesque and the Lynchian.

JEJU ISLAND, South Korea, Feb. 3 (UPI) — Seven sets of remains belonging to victims of an early Cold War massacre were returned to their families on South Korea’s resort island of Jeju on Tuesday, more than seven decades after they disappeared amid the government’s bloody crackdown on a communist revolt.

The remains of the seven Jeju Massacre victims arrived at Jeju International Airport from Gimpo at about 2 p.m. local time Tuesday, where they were received by Jeju Gov. Oh Young-hoon, heads of various Jeju Massacre-related organizations and representatives of the bereaved families.

“I pray for the repose of the seven victims who had to lie without names for so many years, and I offer my words of comfort to the families who endured time without knowing the fate of their loved ones,” Oh said in his memorial address.

An estimated 30,000 islanders were killed between 1947 and 1954 during South Korea’s bloody anti-communist eradication campaign that literally decimated the island’s population of 300,000 and razed hundreds of villages.

Thousands of people went missing during the massacre, symbolized by the Cemetery of the Missing within the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park, just south of Jeju City, where nearly 4,000 tombstones are etched with the names of islanders who disappeared during the seven-year period and are presumed dead.

Hundreds were executed and buried en masse at what is now known as Jeju International Airport following trumped-up court-martial trials, while more than 2,000 disappeared into the mainland prison system.

Since the mid-2000s, the Jeju government has spearheaded a program to find the bodies of those who went missing and identify them.

A total of 426 sets of remains have been exhumed, 387 from excavation sites at the Jeju International Airport, with the remainder found elsewhere on the island and on the mainland.

Three of the victims have been named as Kim Sa-rim, Yang Dal-hyo and Kang Du-nam, who were identified from remains excavated at the Golryeonggol, Daejeon, site, where roughly 1,400 sets of remains of civilians massacred during the Korean War have been recovered overall.

The remains of Im Tae-hoon and Song Du-seon were excavated from the Gyeongsan Cobalt Mine, where prisoners were executed when the Korean War began, marking the first time remains excavated at the Cobalt Mine have been identified.

Only one other body excavated from the Daejeon site has been confirmed as a victim of the Jeju Massacre — Kim Han-hong, who was returned to the island in 2023.

The Jeju 4.3 Peace Foundation identified the remains in a statement, stating Kim Sa-rim, of Iho Village, Jeju City, was 25 when he was captured by government suppression forces in February 1949 while living as a refugee on Mt. Halla, after which his family only received rumors that he had been transferred to a prison.

Yang Dal-hyo, a 26-year-old farmer in Doryeon Village, went missing in June 1948. His family learned he was detained at the Jeju Distillery detention camp. After they were able to visit him once, they lost contact with Yang Dal-hyo.

Kang Du-nam, of Yeongdon Village, 24, was last heard of around October 1948 while he was living as a refugee on Mt. Halla, and then imprisoned at Daejeon Prison around July 1949.

Im Tae-hoon, 20, of Sogil Village, was detained by police in December 1948 and was imprisoned in Mokpo before being transferred to Daegu Prison and then executed at the cobalt mine.

Song Du-seon, 29, of Donghong Village, was arrested by police in the spring of 1949 and imprisoned at Daegu Prison in July of that year.

Song Tae-woo, 17, of Ora Village, was detained by suppression forces while living as a refugee on Mt. Halla in November 1948. After that, there were only accounts of him having been thrown into the sea or killed at the airport.

Kang In-gyeong, 46, of Sangmyeong Village, was detained by police in June 1950 with the outbreak of the Korean War. It was believed that he was killed at an ammunition depot in southern Moseulpo, though he was among those excavated from Jeju International Airport.

The identification process involves matching DNA from the excavated bones with that taken from blood samples of Jeju residents. The foundation has told UPI that some 2,600 people have donated blood samples.

Not only blood samples from direct descendants but from collateral relatives can be used to identify remains, the Jeju 4.3 Peace Foundation said, as it encourages more people to participate in the program.

It said the blood samples from nephews were “decisive” in identifying victims Kim Sa-rim and Im Tae-hoon, as were blood samples from grandsons in identifying the other five victims.

“Jeju Province will continue to exert its utmost efforts to find even a single remaining victim and return them safely to the embrace of their families,” Gov. Oh said.

With the seven recently identified remains, a total of 154 Jeju victims have been identified from the 426 excavated sets of remains, including 147 within Jeju and seven on the mainland.

A new blood sampling drive is being held from Monday through Nov. 30 at Halla Hospital in Jeju City and Yeollin Hospital in Seogwipo City.

“I met my father yesterday for the first time in 79 years,” Yang Gye-chun, the son of the late Yang Dal-hyo said, according to a statement from the Jeju government.

The remains were cremated at Sejong Eunhasu Park on the mainland, before being returned to Jeju.

“I’ve lived without knowing where or how he died, and how glad I am to finally see his face today,” Yang said. “Now that he has come all the way back to his hometown of Jeju, I hope we may meet my mother in heaven and rest peacefully.”