Reconciliation through film: 45 years after Sabuk Incident

YEONGWOL, Gangwon Province — The town of Sabuk, a former coal mining community deep in the mountains, is grappling with population decline. The main thing keeping it from fading into complete obscurity is Kangwon Land Casino. Remnants of the town’s past are vanishing gradually. Not just the physical signs, but also the people who lived through the Sabuk Incident of 1980. Many have died or moved on, their ties to the town severed with the closure of the mines that once bound them here. Forty-five years ago, the rail overpass beside Sabuk Station, known as Angyeong-dari, was the site of a fierce clash between striking miners from the Dongwon Coal Mine and police dispatched to suppress them. The confrontation was part of the Sabuk Incident, a deeply complex and painful episode whose full truth remained silenced for decades, not only by the state but often by those involved. To understand what happened in Sabuk, it is necessary to first grasp its context. In the wake of the 1970s oil crisis, Korea shifted its energy policy to focus on coal. While hundreds of mines operated across the c

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