(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Kwon Ji-hyeon = "People know me better than I do. I don't know anything."
Minjun, whose secretly filmed video caught people's attention and quickly became a hot topic, is so confused. What was captured on video was him carrying an injured grandmother and running to the hospital. Minjun quickly becomes a viral sensation as a 'good student', but as the facts hidden behind the edited video are revealed one by one, people's perspectives change.
The play 'Jump
The work is an original play planned and developed by the Korea Press Foundation and contains media educational content. The foundation developed the script and held a showcase last year, and officially premiered the work this time.
The title 'jump cut' is an editing method that connects different scenes and changes them sharply. The play uncovers the truth of other scenes that were cut after Min-jun's 'good deed' video, continuously shaking the audience's judgment and making them worry about what to accept.
Minjun's appearance in the video is neither fake nor manipulated. However, 'Jin-ho', the son of the grandmother whom Min-jun helped, suspects that Min-jun hurt the grandmother, and when the videographer 'Ji-woo' says that he actually cut out that part, the audience reverses their view of Min-jun.
Here, ‘Do-hyeon’ reports the story that Min-jun pushed and injured someone while playing ‘parkour’ (a sport that involves running up and down or over obstacles) at his previous school. However, Do-hyeon makes it difficult to judge by saying that this is something he 'heard without directly confirming it.' As each person's words and actions add up, Min-jun goes back and forth between hero and perpetrator.
As the play progresses, with Min-jun being framed as the perpetrator, it is soon revealed that Ji-woo also hit the grandmother and ran away, then secretly filmed the video and uploaded it online without the person's permission. As another person who hurt the grandmother is revealed, the audience realizes that the truth behind the jump-cut video is much more complicated than it appears on the outside.
Characters sometimes convey events from their own perspective through dialogue, but aspects of the events are conveyed to the audience through short videos, live broadcasts, and online articles. Through this, the work reminds us that we must carefully accept the information we inadvertently see in our daily lives.
Oh Se-hyuk, who wrote the work, explained at the 'Jump
Writer Oh said, “It was an incident where the person who helped the grandmother who had fallen was accused of injuring her, but in reality, that was not the case.” He added, “I wanted to tell a story about how individuals think about the truth of a single fact, depending on their position or perspective.”
Director Kang Hoon-gu said, "These days, the person who becomes a hot topic changes in a very short period of time, and someone is criticized very much. We live in an era where we have to quickly judge whether that person is truly a person worthy of becoming famous or a bad person."
Director Kang explained the intention of the project by saying, “I thought we were living in an era where we are forced to make easy judgments when the truth lies beyond that (information).”
The foundation presents works to the general audience at professional performance halls, while also operating experiential programs that allow students to act and present their works, as well as performances that travel to local communities.
This year, students in the third year of middle school to the second year of high school from five schools, including Seoryeong Middle School in Seosan, South Chungcheong Province, participated in the program.
Additionally, as of the end of September, the foundation conducted visiting performances for 3,178 audiences at 59 schools and social facilities across the country, including the Jeongeup Welfare Center for the Disabled in Jeollabuk-do.
The Korea Press Foundation said, "After this year's pilot operation and official premiere, we plan to expand the scale of experiential and observational media education plays next year. In the mid- to long-term, we plan to expand local performances and lay the foundation for regular performances."
