The Korean and US governments worked together to establish 96 “camp towns” equipped with brothels and clubs around the US bases, which have involved one million women thus far. In the 1970’s, the Korean government required camp town women to wear number tags and STD test results on their chests at all times, pressured by the US government to lower the STD rate among their soldiers. The women who were suspected to have STD were locked up in a detainment center, and the detention center was given the name “Monkey House” because people could hear the imprisoned women screaming to be let out like monkeys trapped in a zoo. Tearless is an immersive media project that interweaves elements of experimental documentary and narrative storytelling, while actively incorporating a new medium and technology to further my efforts for utilizing new technology for social justice. Wearing a VR headset, viewers are virtually transported to the immersive environment of Monkey House. Once entering the site, the viewer will be introduced to the multiple rooms of the building such as bedroom, bathroom, dining hall, and treatment room – all of which is communal and bare like those in the military camps. The staged props that emerge slowly in the footage imply what the women had to go through in each room, based on the testimonies from the women as well as a handwritten panel of the daily schedule that was discovered on the site.
 

 [Gina KIM, Excerpts from director’s treatment (Full Text)]