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A sprout shoots toward the audience, but when they try to touch it, it retreats back into the screen. Instead, a subtitle appears: "Nature Gives Us Another Chance." The lights go on in the theater, but the spectators who have filled the 242 seats can't move. A Japanese woman was wiping her eyes. The audience looked on stunned as the name of the Korean producer came up on screen.
That was the scene last week at the Korea Pavilion at the World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan. After the conclusion of the 14-minute 3-D animated film "Tree Robo", the mood in the theater was somber. Mr. Komatsu, 46, who came with his family from Saitama Prefecture, said, "It had a strong message of environmentalism and peace. It was good to see it with my children."
The Korea Pavilion in a relatively unfrequented part of the 120-nation Aichi World Expo grounds. But unlike the China and India pavilions, which are yawningly empty, people queue for 30 minutes to get into Korea¡¯s. Japanese tourists say word of mouth is the Korean animation is a must-see.
"Tree Robo" shakes up familiar associations with Korea like pottery and the fan dance. Amid a world destroyed by a war that sprang from greed, a seed is blown into a robot that broke after being drafted into the war. The sprout¡¯s photosynthesis revives the robot. And with a tree in his back, the robot staggers off in search of the young boy he befriended before the war. When he meets the boy, the tree bathes the world in explosive green light, smashing the robot to bits. But from the tree the robot gave birth to a shoot drops into the hand of the young boy, and he throws it toward the audience.
"Everything is original and Korean-made,¡± says Prof. Toshifumi Kawahara of Nagoya University of Arts and Science, writing in the Chunichi Shimbun. ¡°The story is simple and strong. The 3-D video conveys the emotion of the scene.¡±
Kim Young-min, president of "TreeRobo" producer Independence, says he worries about what is ¡°Korean." Stem cell research, semiconductors and the DMZ have all been frequently represented as Korean. But is that enough? "I worried that it would be hard to evoke universal emotions employing these themes," said Kim. So the video instead focuses on "nature's wisdom" (the theme of Expo 2005) and "light of life" (the Korean Pavilion's theme). Mr. Takahashi, 31, from Nagoya, says, "If the pavilion had used actor Bae Yong-joon, the Korean Wave or ceramics as its theme, I wouldn't have come. I got a feeling of a new Korea, of a universal Korean Wave."
According to the latest data, the number of visitors to the Korea Pavilion topped 2.5 million, 17 percent of the 15.09 million visitors who visited the Expo as of Aug. 18. The organizers initially expected 1.5 million.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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