Sketch (1)
The black screen showed nothing at all as a majestic score swelled through the theater.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Beep tones that had somehow woven themselves into the music without anyone noticing when.
Eventually only the beeps remained; the music stopped.
It felt exactly like listening to the heartbeat of a patient fighting for life in an emergency room—the kind of sound that could flatline at any second with a long, final beeeeeep.
The repetitive beeping unsettled the audience in a strangely intimate way.
I am Jay Miller. When I was seven years old I was adopted to America through the Saint Children’s Welfare Center. Almost none of my early memories remain now; that space has been filled instead with memories of growing up happily in a warm white family.
The moment the narration ended, the camera locked onto the upper body of a man standing motionless in front of a hospital room door, face full of hesitation, unable to step inside.
Whoa… of every Asian I’ve ever seen, this guy has to be the most handsome.
Film student Neil Benson from California marveled inwardly at the visuals that completely dominated the screen.
The beeping that had built such strange tension cut off. The man slid the hospital room’s sliding door open to the side.
At the exact same instant the image cut from the hospital door to the glass doors of an airport departure hall.
6 months ago.
Incheon Airport. Republic of Korea.
“Yes, Mother. I’ve arrived.”
Good, you must be tired. Still, it’s the country where you were born. Why not travel a little between work?
“You know how I feel. I never really wanted to come back here. It’s just work—I didn’t have a choice.”
Jay. You know what Mom always says, right?
At his mother’s gently scolding tone, Jay let out a long sigh.
“Okay, I got it. I’ll keep an open heart. It’s already night over there—go to sleep, Mother.”
The natural American English and the content of the call made it clear the man was American and that he had returned to his birth country with considerable reluctance.
He looked around. Then a voice called his name.
“Mr. Miller?”
An Asian actor whose face somehow radiated warmth even to foreign eyes appeared on screen and approached. Jay extended his hand first.
“Jay Miller. You’re from A-Music Company, right?”
Jeong Cheol-min rubbed his palm against the front of his suit jacket, bowed politely, and took the offered hand.
Hahaha!
Something about Jeong Cheol-min’s slightly comical performance drew a soft ripple of laughter through the theater. In Korea it was simply the kind of earnest gesture sales staff made all the time, but to foreign eyes it apparently looked a little overdone.
The laughter threshold is lower than I expected… does that mean the tears threshold will be just as low?
Yeon-woo briefly registered the unexpected laughter, then refocused on the screen.
“I’m Jeong Cheol-min. The name’s a bit hard to pronounce, so please just call me Manager Jeong.”
“Thank you. Then I’ll call you Mr. Jeong. ‘Manager’ feels a little awkward.”
“Ah, of course. This way, please. We have a car waiting.”
Following Mr. Jeong’s lead, they left the airport. Inside the car heading toward Seoul, Mr. Jeong spoke again.
“Composer, do you like indie music as well?”
Jay glanced toward the driver’s seat. After a moment’s thought he answered.
“I listen to everything. Genre doesn’t matter.”
“Oh? Then would you like to stop by the company and come with me to a festival? There’s no album work for a month or two anyway, and they said they wanted to give you time to settle in.”
Jay looked at the man who was so actively trying to take care of him and nodded.
“Sounds good. Let’s go. I’m curious about Korean indie music that isn’t K-pop.”
Jay turned his gaze back out the window. The screen filled with luxury apartment towers lined along the blue Han River.
The Korean Wave might be slowly expanding its reach these days, but it was still very much a subculture. Many in the audience were seeing the Seoul skyline for the first time and murmured in quiet admiration.
Whoa, Korea’s a developed country. Those high-rises look just like Manhattan.
Then the camera deliberately alternated between the high-saturation Han River, parks, blue sky, and the glass buildings reflecting it all—and the monochrome gray of a bridge packed with black and white cars.
After that sharp color contrast came Jay’s calm face staring out the window. Shadows from the bridge pillars swept across his features, darkening and brightening them in turn.
Without a single line of dialogue, the audience understood that his heart was in turmoil.
“Don’t live your life like that.”
“That’s my line. Honestly, what have you even done? How does it make sense that we split everything fifty-fifty?”
One man roughly yanked the guitar strap off his shoulder; the other flung his drumsticks to the floor. The two of them glared at each other, fists ready to fly.
“Please stop, both of you. I’ll take a smaller share. Once we make it big, this will be pocket change. Let’s not fight, okay?”
The woman trying to mediate between them made the man who had thrown the drumsticks shout even louder.
“Nari noona, you stop too! You keep giving in and that’s why bastards like him show up. You write the songs, write the lyrics, sing everything yourself—why are you giving him a cut of your share?”
“I just…”
Nari’s chest suddenly pounded and her head went blank. She had no idea how things had come to this. The days when their hearts had been perfectly in sync were gone without a trace; only this ugly ending remained.
Mocha Band.
They had formed in the practice room above a coffee shop called Mocha Café and named themselves without much thought. Over the past two years of shared hardship, that meaningless name had filled with memories and become meaningful.
They had slowly built recognition through busking until they were invited to an indie festival.
A mere five million won.
Split among the members it was far less than a convenience-store part-time job. And over that money they were all red-faced, veins bulging, pointing fingers.
Was society simply too cold for passion and heart alone to survive? Or had their passion never been as hot as they believed?
Nari exhaled a shaky breath amid the rising voices.
The indie festival began. Jay felt both anticipation and a faint sense of superiority. From the perspective of someone collaborating with a major agency, indie music looked commercially weak and not particularly high-level.
“Yeah… about this level, I guess.”
Several bands and singer-songwriters took the stage, but nothing caught his ear.
Then a woman climbed onto the stage to prepare for the next set.
“Hello! We’re Mocha Band.”
Jay tilted his head at Lee Na-ri.
“She came up alone and calls herself a band… does ‘band’ mean something different in Korea?”
On stage, Lee Na-ri started a recorded track and began playing guitar over it.
Even if every word I understood turned out to be a lie, it’s okay. In the end we’re unfinished, aren’t we?
“Her guitar playing’s a little clumsy. If she’s going to play like that she should’ve just recorded the guitar too.”
Of course he couldn’t understand a word. The Korean lyrics sounded to him like French chanson.
The song itself was decent, but whether her guitar skill was simply raw or whether singing and playing at the same time was too much for her…
I’ll throw those words away now. I’ll empty you out of my heart.
When the song ended she bowed with a bright smile and left the stage—the self-proclaimed band that was actually a solo vocalist-guitarist.
“Better than I expected.”
“That girl just now?”
Manager Jeong asked after hearing Jay’s muttered comment. Jay nodded.
“I didn’t understand a single lyric, but her voice was pretty solid, wasn’t it?”
“What would I know? Haha. It sounded good to me.”
Most of the audience felt the same; the lyrics had not been subtitled.
They deliberately left the lyrics untranslated. The protagonist Jay Miller has black hair and black eyes—a thoroughly Korean appearance—but inside the screen he’s a foreigner. They’re making us feel the same way he does so we’ll immerse ourselves more deeply in him. Small detail, but meticulous.
Benson’s friend Chris nodded to himself. In LA, where his California State University film program was located, Korean restaurants were everywhere. Korean food was trendy these days, yet Chris still sometimes hesitated to order because of the overly literal English names.
Fish cake? If I hadn’t had a Korean friend I never would have tried eomuk in my life.
Sometimes, when you want to convey information, deliberately not conveying it can communicate far more.
Then came the after-party dinner. Again the director intentionally left the Korean untranslated, so the audience could infer even more simply by watching.
Indie festival participants approached Jay and Manager Jeong Cheol-min one after another, pouring soju into tiny glasses and turning their heads to drink. Even without knowing Korean drinking culture, it was obvious they were trying hard to make a good impression on someone from a major agency.
By putting themselves in Jay’s position—surrounded by unfamiliar Koreans speaking incomprehensible Korean and trying to figure out what was happening—the audience naturally began to identify with the protagonist.
A short montage followed of Jay’s first few days living in Korea.
Jay, will you be all right?
“Mr. Jeong. I’m a grown man. Don’t worry so much.”
Jay chuckled. Jeong Cheol-min’s voice came through the phone.
Okay. But if anything goes wrong, call me right away. If you take a red bus you’ll leave Seoul, but you won’t leave Gyeonggi Province.
“Got it. Red bus. Thanks.”
Today Jay planned to leave Seoul with nothing but a guitar on his back, searching for musical inspiration.
This is what they mean by “into the unknown.”
Following Mr. Jeong’s advice, Jay boarded a red intercity bus and left Seoul. He simply took the first one that came; he had no idea where it was going.
“Somehow I’m traveling before I even start working. Guess I’m being a good son and listening to Mom.”
He gazed out the window, fingers tapping the frame as if melodies were already forming.
They had clearly left Seoul. Neither Jay on the screen nor the audience outside it could understand the announcements, yet the disappearance of the forest of buildings and the appearance of rice paddies and dense greenery made it obvious.
In the scenes that followed, the audience naturally merged with Jay and felt as if they themselves were traveling through Korea, pulled deeper into the screen. It felt less like watching a film and more like watching a travel vlog on YouTube, which only intensified the immersion.
Wow, haejangguk? I don’t know what that stew is, but I want to try it.
Hahaha. This movie is weirdly funny. Getting his bike stolen? Never saw that coming. Are those bird sounds in the background real or post-production?
The audience swallowed at Jay’s hangover-soup mukbang and laughed at the sight of him frozen in place, staring blankly at the lonely front wheel left behind after his bicycle was stolen.
Around that point questions about the film’s story and structure began to form in the back of their minds.
What message is the director trying to deliver by making a film this way? Is he going to have the protagonist fall in love with that Nari character by chance and turn it into a high-teen romance music movie?
The audience who had stood in line since morning and paid premium prices to get into a competitive film festival were mostly cinephiles or industry people; they watched the unusual structure with interest and tried to read the director’s intent.
When Park Chan-hong’s mother—playing Nari’s grandmother in the film—appeared, they laughed at the scenes of mutual incomprehension and grew eager to see where the story would go next.
Film student Neil Benson felt the same.
That’s the charm of Korean films—you can never pin down the genre. I have absolutely no idea what the middle and second half will turn into.
Nothing major had advanced yet, but it was fascinating.
After the rural sequences, the story finally began to move in earnest.
Jay, with his broad shoulders looking comically out of place in a tiny apron, was being scolded by the grandmother while coating vegetables in red seasoning.
On screen, Jay sighed.
At that exact moment Lee Na-ri opened the front door, black plastic bag in hand, and stepped inside.
“Huh? Whose men’s shoes are these?”
She walked into the kitchen, eyed Jay warily, and asked,
“…Who are you?”