영화 "울지마 톤즈"

<#307 Review>
 
Love: the Hottest and Coldest Spot in Your Heart
 
By Shin Hwa-jeong, Senior, Dept. of English Language & Literature
 
Love: When you hear the word do you feel warmth inside, very close around you?
Action: Are you a doer? When you decide to do something do you do it right away? If so, are you limited by your own motivations or closely related to your family or friends?
Sharing: Beyond material things, are you really interested in this?
 
These three words come to my mind after watching the movie, Don't Cry for Me Sudan, also known as Don't Cry for Me Tonj, which was released in November of 2010. The Korea Broadcasting System (KBS) aired a documentary of Fr. John Lee Tae-suk’s life in Tonj under the title of “The Schweitzer of Sudan” last April. The documentary was made into a film and was shown at local movie houses. The plot is very simple and the content is both realistic and surrealistic for us all. The story is about Fr. Lee, a South Korean missionary who was a medical practitioner before he took his vows. He died on 14th of January last year at the age of 48 from colon cancer. How did he decide to go to Sudan? While searching for the best way to be a doctor and priest, he went to Rome in 1997 and happened to have met a few missionaries from Kenya and Tanzania. He went to Africa with them and stayed a short while in Tonj, in southern Sudan, where he visited an impoverished village of a Dinka sub-tribe, and a colony of Hansen’s disease patients. He returned home with the resolve to go back after his ordination. He was ordained a priest in Seoul in June, 2001, and in November, he flew to Tonj. From there, his story began.
 
Poster of Don't Cry for me Sudan
Sudan is tainted by war and various diseases and the Sudanese people live in pain. He knew he wanted to heal them physically and mentally at any cost. He created something from nothing with the Sudanese. Because of the lack of electricity, he used a solar energy collector to power a refrigerator, which kept vaccines for malaria, the most common disease in Sudan. He built schools and hospitals that had never been there before. He established the first school system and he believed it would give Sudanese children hope, and enable them to learn how to progress for the future. He must have known he wouldn’t live there forever. In Tonj, he found music to be a great healer for the children. He learned to play wind and other instruments by himself and then taught the children, and together they later formed a 35-member brass band. He wanted to teach them not only knowledge itself but hope and a promising future. As he offered medical services for free, ill people would walk for miles to be treated, wishing desperately for their pain to be alleviated. Every weekend he drove to other villages and cured people, and listened to their stories. He also brought presents for the people. He did none of this to show off his money or material possessions. He wasn't a businessman or a politician at all.
His dedication to people affected physically and mentally from poverty really affected me. He was very devoted his cause, and threw himself and his lot in for people under conditions highly visible but seen with relative indifference by the rest of the world. Though he was just an individual, Lee Tae-suk was a real doer and followed his heart, sharing his love and donating everything he had. In the film it is very easy to see how he loved people when he was alive. Don’t Cry for Me Sudan truly touches your heart because most of us are far from his character, and we, who live in this complex, fast-moving and mechanical modern 21st century, yearn for his love, too.
저작권자 © Chonnam Tribune 무단전재 및 재배포 금지