Noh Soon-kyung, The Testimony of December

About the film

Bringing the narrative of the 20th-century independence movement into the present day, the film shows the visceral fear felt not by “historical giants” but by ordinary teenagers.

Two days before their state board exams, Noh Soon-kyung — a trainee nurse at Severance Hospital — and her friends laugh and chat like any high schoolers. When the clock strikes the appointed hour of 7 p.m., they walk into the street in school uniforms under thick puffer jackets and shout “Long live Korean independence.” Broken by insults in the interrogation room and by the horror of Cell No. 8, where she cannot help her wounded comrades, Soon-kyung is lifted by Yu Gwan-sun, a girl her own age, and realizes how she must live. In 1920, now eighteen, she vows to go to China after her release, to build a hospital for independence and raise funds for the army.

Making of

One faint name

Records of Cell No. 8 at Seodaemun Prison, where Yu Gwan-sun was held, disagree — some say seven activists were there, others say eight. One name remained especially faint; it belonged to Noh Soon-kyung. At a small exhibition held by her descendants, hearing of the torture scars she carried for the rest of her life, my vague curiosity turned into remorse.

A 17-year-old face, found by AI

Restoring the swollen face on her prison card with AI revealed a fragile seventeen-year-old nurse — the same age as Yu Gwan-sun. Every character in the film except the Japanese police is an AI restoration of a real independence activist.

Mending a torn photograph

The nurses Noh Soon-kyung, Lee Do-shin and Kim Hyo-sun once posed for a single group photo, which the colonial police later cut apart to use as their mugshots. I reassembled the fragments with AI and brought the moment of the three standing together back into the film.

Bringing the past into the present

The film keeps the historical story and only shifts its timeline to today — to show that AI can do more than recreate history; it can bring the past directly into our reality. That, I believe, is what this film means as an AI film.