In elementary school, I had a classmate from a poor family who had to attend classes during the day and help his single father with work at night. As you can imagine, his studies are not good. Therefore, after the test results came out, the class teacher openly scolded him, which was not a matter of time or two. The most hateful thing is that we don't have a channel for complaints yet.
Parents generally care about the teacher's opinion of the child, and the child does not listen to the teacher's opinion. As a result, her egregious behavior continued until we graduated. However, all this is completely on a par with today's movies.
The Melting Pot is a 2011 South Korean film based on a real child abuse incident at a school for the deaf and mute. And this incident, no matter how many times I have heard it, is still difficult for me to accept.
It's one of the most painful films I've ever seen, but it's also one of the most important in the history of Korean cinema. The topic is heavy, but we should all face this heavy issue head-on. Today, let's talk about the story in the furnace, [changing Korean movies].
Ren Hao is a new art teacher at the Loving School for the Deaf and Dumb, and despite his efforts to get close to the children, the students deliberately keep their distance. The main student, Yeon Doo, is a self-enclosed child. Yu Li is absent-minded and always eating. There is also Min-soo, a boy who is late for class and has bruises on his face. The film spends a lot of time to create a mystery and arouse the audience's suspicions.
That night, Ren-ho heard a cry coming from the school bathroom. But the security stopped him, "The children here are playful and often ghostly." In our intuition, adults are trustworthy authorities, and children are often the problem, and even with the best intentions, it is difficult to resist this prejudice. Ren Hao turned to leave, and what was going to happen next was unbelievable.
We only care about the teacher's opinion of the child, and the child does not care about the teacher's thoughts. But if we take a hard look at children's stories, we'll find that, from their point of view, the world is very different, the world is so bad.
Yan Dou's confession allows us to see the dark side of the school. There are several aggressors on campus, as well as many victims. With the children's testimony, they turned to the Education Bureau for help. They go to the police, and when there is no justice, evil rages unbridled.
Maybe everyone thinks it's a bit exaggerated, but this is the reason why victims of domestic violence are afraid to ask for help. According to a survey published by the National Domestic Violence Hotline, nearly half of the victims of domestic violence interviewed felt discriminated against when they called the police. Two-thirds of the women who have called the police said they did not dare to call the police again.
And the main reason for this is that "the police don't trust them or don't care at all." One of the saddest statistics is that a quarter of women who report to the police for domestic violence or sexual assault have been arrested by the police or threatened to arrest.
We are always righteous in the face of violence, but in fact, even you and I are not as willing to draw our swords to help each other as we think. The first time he witnessed his colleague beating Minxiu, Renhao did not stop him. Isn't it corporal punishment, a bit extreme, but..., it's not that excessive, right?
We all trust those in power, and in this case, we trust teachers more than we trust a problem child. We don't know who the bad guys are, so we choose neutrality. In the first place, we should have stopped it, not asked questions, and evil can ravage because we do not do justice. Fortunately, the news media reported the incident and the case went to court, but the nightmare had only just begun.
During the trial, we saw the operation of the judicial system, "courtesy of former officials". In South Korea, the judicial system has an unwritten rule called "courtesy to former officials." After the retirement of a judge or prosecutor, a full-time lawyer may receive special treatment in court.
Unsurprisingly, the defence counsel, a retired judge, interfered with witnesses, and the defence called two witnesses, both of whom provided false testimony. The security guard secretly chose to help the principal because he did not want to lose his job. The doctor who examined the victim falsely claimed that the victim had shown no signs of sexual assault, and she was also associated with the principal.
Living in poverty, it is no surprise that some of the children's parents have accepted reconciliation. It turns out that the justice system is not here to help the vulnerable. Like the people who make up the system, the system itself is indifferent.
Victims have to confess their painful memories in public, just to see a glimmer of justice and, at the same time, to be stigmatized. This is the reality that victims of abuse cases face. Everyone in this system is doing their job and no one is reaching out. And these children, without help, could not speak, and their voices were worn out.
Fortunately, prosecutors cracked all the witness testimony and brought with them irrefutable evidence. Every defendant was convicted, all sentenced, and given a suspended sentence.
If cinema can change the world, this is the masterpiece. Two months after the film's release, the school was finally closed, the case was reopened, and the school administrator was sentenced to 12 years in prison for assaulting an 18-year-old student. In the same year, South Korea passed the "Melting Pot Law", abolishing the statute of limitations for cases of sexual assault against children under the age of 13 and the disabled, and the maximum penalty was also raised.
The biggest significance of this movie, though, is that it is a wary of all of us. Our whole society has not been able to go well, listening to the stories of children, listening to the words of the weak, listening to the voices of the helpless.
As the movie shows, if we are not vigilant, we will also become the biggest assistants of the perpetrators. If you don't stop it, you are aiding and abetting abuse. This movie changed Korea because it changed people's hearts. Movies wake people up, let people take the initiative to help the weak, give them hope.