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On January 20, 2009, a commercial building in Yongsan, a central district of Seoul, South Korea, erupted into flames. It was during a police crackdown of the building’s tenants-turned-evictees who were staging a protest against the redevelopment of the neighbourhood by occupying the building. During the fire, five protesters and one police officer died. In the aftermath of the tragedy, a heated debate ensued over who was accountable for the deaths – a debate that unfolded in courtrooms, in parliament, and on the streets. The Remnants 공동정범 follows the life of the evictees, who were incarcerated on a charge of the death of the policeman, raising questions about state violence, urban space, and democratic citizenship. Today, 9 years since the Yongsan tragedy, we hope this showing of the documentary the Remnants and the discussion with Min Sook Lee (documentary filmmaker and academic) and Jesook Song (urban anthropologist of Korea) will help us think through these important questions.

Min Sook Lee has directed numerous critically-acclaimed feature documentaries, including: Donald Brittain Gemini winner Tiger Spirit, Hot Docs Best Canadian Feature winner Hogtown, Gemini nominated El Contrato and Canadian Screen Award winner, The Real Inglorious Bastards and most recently, Canadian Hillman Prize winner Migrant Dreams. Lee is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Cesar E. Chavez Black Eagle Award, and the Alanis Obomsawin Award for Commitment to Community and Resistance. Lee is an Assistant Professor at OCAD University, her area of research and practice focuses on the critical intersections of art+social change in labour, border politics, migration and social justice movements.

Jesook Song is Professor of Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. She is an urban anthropologist with interests in housing, finance, welfare, labor, gender, and sexuality. Her first book, South Koreans in the Debt Crisis (Duke University Press, 2009) deals with homelessness and youth unemployment during the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s to early millennium. Her second book Living On Their Own (SUNY Press, 2014) is about single household and informal financial markets through single women’s struggle in South Korea.