THE TREATMENTFor each issue, we choose an unproduced screen-
play and present it to you as a one-page description
of the proposed movie. A talented and promising
illustrator then reimagines the story as a picture
(see left). If you have a submission, please email edi-
[email protected] with your feature film
treatment or screenplay.
We didn’t have to look far for this month’s con-
tributor: It’s Editor-in-Chief of Character Media,
Serena Kim. Born in San Francisco, she moved with
her mom, dad, two older sisters and grandma to
L.A.’s Koreatown when she was 2.
Kim won a full scholarship to study at Ewha
Women’s University in Seoul. She also attended the
Yonsei Language Institute while teaching English to
students. Her Korean-language skills would prove to
be useful decades later when she relocated to Korea
in 2014 to work as a marketing manager for Samsung
Mobile HQ in Suwon.
Kim is also a hip-hop scholar, having written for
major hip-hop magazines in the ’90s and ’00s and
served as the features editor at the award-winning
music magazine Vibe. She was widely published in
the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. She
has been running this magazine since last year.
LOGLINE
Set in pre-World War II Japan, a pair of resource-
ful Korean sisters outsmart their way into running a
successful kimono studio. But when they’re cheated
out of their fortune by the yakuza, they must find a
way to survive.
CHARACTERS
Jae, 22. Born and raised in Japan, this ethnic
Korean woman is a smart and talented seamstress
with a sharp eye for beauty. With her bone-straight
black hair chicly bobbed in the latest flapper-girl
style, a bindi-like mole between her eyebrows and a
wiry strength, she is a faithful acolyte of the beauty
muse. She reads the latest magazines and learns to
dress like a Westerner. She loves her family fiercely,
but her fiery Korean temperament means that
she can act in hurtful and brutal ways. Despite the
Japanese prejudice against Koreans, she feels an
unshakeable sense of self-confidence and believes
she and her family are entitled to equal treat-
ment. Against all odds, she is ruthless in her quest
to succeed.
Yoon, 19. Jae’s sweet and supportive sister is shy
and soft-spoken. Yoon is equally as talented and
smart, but is afraid to voice her ideas and opinions.
Most people assume she’s a perfect Japanese lady
because she is so timid and submissive. Because of
her loyalty to her sister, she helps Jae in the atelier,
but has her own goals of making fine ceramics. She’s
plumper and has soft, curly hair. She likes to wear
traditional Korean hanboks, even though it embar-
rasses Jae. Sometimes Jae is horribly cruel to Yoon,
but Yoon must learn to stand up for herself.
Young, 22. This handsome, yet impoverished art
professor from the local school falls in love with Jae
when he sees her in the marketplace. He’s attracted
to her modern style and dynamic personality. In his
art, he bucks the so-called “Oriental” style of paint-
ing that is popular with art collectors. He chooses
to paint in a bold, modern way that confuses and
angers the other artists in his school. His goal is to
move to America and someday have a gallery show
in New York City.
Umma, 50. Yoon and Jae’s mother is a beauti-
ful and troubled narcissist, whose writing career is
fading, along with her once-legendary looks. She is
tall, auburn-haired and yellow-eyed, with a strong,
commanding voice. Though she seems powerful,
she’s weak and defensive. Unhappy in her second
marriage, she is married to a reclusive and childish
painter who resents her daughters. Their biological
father abandoned them when they were children,
and Umma is still paralyzed by her hatred of him.
Hiro, 50. This dashing but short-statured yakuza
gangster was cruel to animals as a child and is now
cruel to Koreans. Ironically, he himself is an ethnic
Korean who tries to mask his true identity by tor-
menting Korean immigrants. At first, he lulls Yoon
and Jae into a sense of security and familiarity with
his charm, but eventually the relationship evolves
into him extorting money from them. As a collabora-
tor, a traitor and a snitch, Hiro is the lowest life form.SYNOPSIS
In the first act, we meet Yoon and Jae as little girls
in Japan. They are at school wearing rough linen
hanboks and are ridiculed by girls wearing elegant
silk kimonos. Jae looks enviously at their kimonos’
fine detail. She envisions herself wearing one, being
beautiful and luxuriating in the silks.
Because Jae is lost in thought, she is distracted
when the teacher calls on her. She hits her with a
ruler, and she cries. Yoon consoles her, and they
run through the alleys and rice paddies and play
with dolls in one of the rooms of their shack. Theytear up scraps of their old clothes and make home-
made kimonos for their dolls. Jae makes a perfect
kimono for her doll. They laugh and mumble softly
to themselves.
Fast forward to the 1920s. Yoon and Jae are now
adults working in a kimono studio. Yoon is hunched
over bolts of fabric and cutting patterns. Jae works
with a client, fitting the sumptuous robes over her
little shoulders and pinning parts. She holds up con-
trasting fabrics for the obi. The client looks pleased.
Hiro enters the dress salon, and the women go
scurrying for cover, including Yoon and the client.
Only Jae stands unfazed by the short man’s pres-
ence. He gives her a deadline to deliver money that
the yakuza has been demanding—or else Yoon will
be shipped off to be a comfort girl for the Impe-
rial Japanese Army, and their studio will go down
in flames.
Together, the sisters and their flawed mother
must somehow outsmart Hiro and raise enough
funds to secure their safety and the security of their
studio. Their quest involves three challenges: find
the money that their missing father has left for
them, destroy Hiro and the yakuza who are leeching
off of the Korean community, and lastly, overcome
their own struggles as a family in order to make
peace with their Korean culture. It’s only when the
sisters learn to work together that they find a way
to succeed in designing Korean hanboks for their
own community.ABOUT THIS PROJECT
My connection to Koreans of pre-World War
II Japan is that my biological father was born in
Osaka in 1938 and moved to Korea when he was 13.
He dedicated his life to studying politeness and
honorifics in Korean and Japanese linguistics. His
academic quest was to prove that the Korean lan-
guage’s parallel structure was intrinsically equal to
Japanese, and not inferior, as Japanese scholars had
previously postulated.
As a child of Korean immigrants in America, I see
that we in the U.S. face similar problems as our fore-
bears did in Japan. In both instances, our culture was
denigrated and deemed inferior and unrefined by
colonial imperialists. Although the Korean hanbok
is perceived as simple and homely, it’s a beautiful
and modest garment that’s good for hard work and
child-rearing. Like much of Korean culture, func-
tion comes before form, instilling it with a practical,
rustic beauty.TREATMENT BY SERENA KIM
ILLUSTRATION BY AILEEN YU
Far Above Our Heads
In pre-war Japan, two Korean sisters seek revenge.
CM