A violet blooms in a Kyushu mining town in Jeong Ui-sin’s final Korean diaspora trilogy play

In a Kyushu mining village shaped by the losses of Korean workers, a woman dreams of opening a hair salon in her own name. That dream gives Jeong Ui-sin’s new play its title, Sumire Hair Salon, and its image of endurance.

The play will have its Korean premiere at Seoul’s Sejong Center from September 12 to October 3. It is the final installment of Jeong’s three-part series on the lives of Koreans in Japan, a subject he has explored for two decades through earlier works including Like a Flower in the Field and Yakiniku Dragon.

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Sumire Hair Salon is a story about the tragedy of a Kyushu coal mine in the 1960s, but it also contains family love that does not change. Many industrial accidents still occur in modern society. Because human emotions do not change, I believe Korean audiences will accept it as their own story.

Sumire Hair Salon takes its starting point from the 1963 Mitsui coal-mine disaster in Fukuoka, which killed hundreds. Its setting is Arirang Pass, a mining settlement where Koreans taken to Japan during the colonial period remained after liberation and the Korean War. Sumi, played by Choi Ji-yeon, runs a barbershop while holding on to the modest hope of opening a space for women.

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I interviewed people in Kyushu who had experienced the disaster and their relatives. It is deeply meaningful to capture their stories and convey their voices.

Her family brings together people divided by nationality, language and life experience. Her father, Hong-sil, refuses to give up his Korean nationality, while her husband, Naruhito, chooses Japanese nationality to survive. Together with a brother-in-law and a newly married younger sister, they eat, care for one another and live as a family until a mine explosion confronts them with loss, pain and the difficult process of recovery.

Jeong said he traveled to Kyushu to interview survivors and relatives of people involved in the disaster. The play also reflects the wider history of Korean workers in Japan: about 79,000 Koreans worked in coal mines in Kyushu and Yamaguchi as of 1945, and many later died in accidents during Japan’s postwar rebuilding. Jeong said their history, including their contribution to projects such as the construction of an Osaka airport runway, should be known in Korea.

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Even in a tragic event, there is a comic side. I wanted to make people laugh. Although it is about a coal mine, it also concerns love and sex, the strongest human desires.

“Sumire” is both Sumi’s name and the Japanese word for violet. Like a violet flowering in harsh ground, the title represents Koreans in Japan who endured exclusion without surrendering hope. Jeong said the play combines tragedy, comedy, love and sex, inviting audiences to laugh, cry and think about the lives it portrays.

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From the outside, it is a tragedy, but Sumi’s life, lived brightly without letting go of dreams and hope, is a comedy.