The film "My Name Is" quietly traces how state violence tramples individual lives and repeats itself across generations through names — the "markers" that distinguish self from others. Set in 1998, the story centers on a mother and son: Choi Jung-soon (Yum Hye-ran), who has lost her memories from before age 9, and her 18-year-old son Lee Young-ok (Shin Woo-bin). Young-ok lives with a girl's name at a school where violence runs rampant. He hands his mother an application to change his name, but she refuses outright.
From this point, Jung-soon's sealed memories and the name "Young-ok" become lenses through which modern and contemporary Korean history is projected, including the Jeju 4·3 incident, the Vietnam War, and the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement. Jung-soon collapses every spring from a chronic illness. When a psychiatrist (Kim Gyu-ri) asks her, "Why did you give your son a girl's name?" Jung-soon replies, "That name just came to me." The moment it becomes clear that all of this is a metaphor for the pain of enduring an era of violence, audiences are left with a heavy heart. The suffering of those who could only survive by forgetting becomes our own.
Young-ok's school life, which takes up a significant portion of the film, reveals how the history of violence is being replayed in different forms across generations. Even after decades, violence still tramples the lives of the weak, and history that must be remembered is being erased. Kyung-tae, a "gold spoon" transfer student from Seoul, incites violence and even manipulates the class president election to his desired outcome. The mechanism of violence and the logic of power are reproduced intact in the school, a microcosm of society. The way the film handles "erased history" is even more symbolic. When a student asks, "Why don't you properly explain the Jeju 4·3 incident?" the teacher refuses to answer, saying, "It's history that doesn't appear on the College Scholastic Ability Test." In this way, the film draws attention to the fact that history has not disappeared but is being excluded through "the way it is not taught." The moment the countless names that endured suffering in erased history are called out through the film, emotions well up.
Director Chung Ji-young's restrained direction and the performances of actors including Yum Hye-ran contrast with the tragic modern history to maximize the pain. Rather than pushing emotions forward, the film builds the narrative plainly and fills it with silence and pained expressions instead of explanations. The cinematic restraint that calmly observes the pain of history resonates all the more deeply. Since its release on the 15th of this month, the film has surpassed 100,000 viewers, continuing a quiet box-office run.
