Aperi Cor Meum

by Kim Soleum


with introduction and notes by Baek Saheon


2^nd Edition

Forward

The first edition of Aperi Cor Meum was privately distributed and minimal changes were made to the text. Every effort has been made to provide accurate credits to all sources. To distinguish between writers, all text by Mr. Kim will appear in Times New Roman font, and all text written by Mr. Baek will appear in Courier New font ⁠— The Editor; Jaheon, Lee

Introduction

It’s cold inside.

The fire in the hearth is almost gone, nothing but embers. I can’t remember stoking it, or even lighting it.

I used it to boil water, enough that I could make a cup of tea. Black tea with honey and milk. It’s what my sister used to make me on a bad day.

I’ve been struggling to finish it, but that’s not surprising when I haven’t been able to keep anything down for days. It’s keeping my hands warm though, for as long as that will last. It’s the only thing that’s felt warm, even though I’ve been standing in front of the fire for hours. I can feel it getting colder though.

The house is so fucking cold. I can hear the wind coming in through the cracks in the windows and the gaps in the doors. There’s an incessant creaking coming from upstairs, like someone is walking back and forth, back and forth.

I know I’m the only one here, I checked when I first arrived.

I know I’m alone.

Instead of checking again, I’ve just been standing here holding this damn cup and staring at the dying fire.

It’s easier to look at the sparks jumping from the hearth than it is to look up. I just don’t know what I might see if I finally look away from the fireplace. If I look up, I might see out the window. I can’t. If I do, I might see someone looking in.

That same someone keeps knocking on the door. Three knocks. Pause. Another two.

They’ll go away if I ignore them.

I can’t answer and find no one there, not again.

I want them to stop, but it’s been days and I don’t think they will.

I’m alone in this house, I know I am.

Fuck.

I’m getting ahead of myself, I think.

I should have listened when I was told to throw the box away. Should have tossed it right into the fucking trash. I didn’t and now you’re about to make the same mistake I did. This is how it starts, the temptations of a mystery.

It starts with the tapes.

The Choi Records

Must it be?

23 JUNE 1998

[Exterior shot on black-and-white film: A grassy yard with a single large maple tree near the back fence. Sunny. Voiceover, male. His tone is warm and friendly, excited.]

“It’s moving day!”

[The camera pans across the fenced in yard. A small golden dog runs across the lawn, nails catching on the grass and kicking up dirt as he runs. The camera follows him.]

“He’s going to love it here.”

[Another voice. Male. His voice is calmer, more subdued than the previous, but no less happy.]

“We’re going to love it here.”

[The camera lifts and a man comes into frame. He has dark hair and sharp looking eyes. He’s smiling softly at whoever is holding the camera. In the distance, bells chime twice. It’s two in the afternoon.]

“Happy move in day, Jaekwan! I’m glad we’re doing this.”

[The man on camera ducks his head with a laugh at the cheerful call from the man behind the camera, before the shot cuts.]

I

On June 23 1998, film director Choi moved into a house with his long term partner, Ryu Jaekwan. The two of them were assisted by two friends: Park Minseong and Eun Haje. This would mark the beginning of what would become the great debate of the authenticity of Mr. Choi’s most ambitious piece of work, The Choi Records.

The Choi Records saw a small theatrical release in 2001, which was promptly followed by a wider VHS and LaserDisk release. This film was initially received with public outrage and a demand for the distribution to be halted until an investigation was opened and concluded on the welfare of the subjects within the film. As there were never any criminal charges brought up against Choi, and distribution of the film was never criminalized, it is easy for one to draw a clear answer on the truth of the film.

It is a hoax. A hoax of exceptional quality, but a hoax nonetheless.

As it stands, The Choi Records is an incredible piece of fiction and one can read them as a biographical piece about Mr. Choi’s life.

The film is subversive and delves into the intricate ebb of human emotions that one typically doesn’t share with the world. It takes the form of a ghost story, although further chapters will explain how this film doesn’t simply fall into that genre. The Choi Records can easily be upsetting to anyone viewing it for the first time and believing it to be a piece of nonfiction, as it was released as. The apparent fear of not only Mr. Choi himself, but two additional people alongside his partner Mr. Ryu, is incredibly difficult to witness.

The distributors labeling this film as a documentary didn’t assist in the public perception of this film.

Mr. Choi only permitted one interview to be used in the marketing for The Choi Records, where he confirmed that everything captured and shown was his lived experience. He had not edited the footage outside of splicing his recordings from his Hi8 Camcorder together into some kind of coherence. He says that he never had intentions to share this as a film and it was more a documentation of the life he was starting with his partner.^[1]

Mr. Ryu has never publicly addressed the film, nor did he distance himself from Mr. Choi. As of 2013, Mr. Choi and Mr. Ryu remain partners, with Mr. Ryu being featured sitting beside Mr. Choi in a publicity shot on the film director's social media. Eun Haje and XXX XXXXXX^[3] have also refused to comment on their experience working on Mr. Choi’s film.

All of this created both interest and outrage of the film, reminiscent of both Cannibal Holocaust and The Blair Witch Project. While these films previously were thought to be real and were subsequently forced to prove that they were not; The Choi Records did not and has not.

Instead, the audience is left with this feeling of incompletion and horror towards the film. The horror remains twofold, in both what they saw and how it left them with a sense that their views of the world are uprooted.

With that being said, those who believe this film to be true past their initial feelings towards their first viewing tend to also be the type of people who believe in further conspiracies. Those who take the time to truly think about this film are able to recognize that Mr. Choi took advantage of digital technology to tell his story.

It is, as previously stated, an incredible piece of fiction.^[4]

24 JUNE 1998

[Interior shot on black-and-white film: A staircase leading upstairs. The camera bounces as whoever is holding the camera runs up the stairs, his loud laughter behind the camera tells us that it’s Choi. He reaches the top of the stairs to an empty wall, before turning and starting down the hall. It stretches out in front of him, ending in a window where the maple tree from the yard can be seen.]

“Ryu Jaekwan?”

“In here.”

[The camera sweeps to the side, and we step into a room where a mattress is taking up most of the floor. There are boxes lined up along the wall, four of them taped closed and two of them open. The mattress is piled with clothing that are carefully being lifted into a set of dresser drawers by Ryu Jaekwan. When Ryu Jaekwan turns around the expression on his face is subdued, but fond.]

“What are you filming for?”

“I never want to forget this!”

“Forget what? Me unpacking our clothing?”

[The camera jostles, turned around so that Choi is in frame for the first time. He’s pouting as he talks to the camera.]

“He doesn’t know why I’m filming! He can’t figure out why I never want to forget the first afternoon of being alone in the new house with the man I love!”

“Choi!”

[The camera turns again, back to Ryu Jaekwan where it catches him trying not to laugh. He turns back to the dresser, hiding away from the audience.]

“You could be kissing the man you love in our new house, instead of filming, but I guess filming is more important.”

“Oh!”

[The camera falls, pointing down towards the ground, before it cuts.]

II

Idyllic may be the perfect word to describe how The Choi Records begin.

The yard is welcoming, sunlight filling the space, and joy is a present part of both Mr. Choi and Mr. Ryu’s interactions. Further, stepping into the shared bedroom and witnessing their interactions, one can see the years they’ve been together and how they fit. It is a well worn familiarity that these two have earned during their time together. These are two people who know and care deeply about each other.^[5]

These shots show us into the lives of Mr. Choi and Mr. Ryu, sharing an intimacy that at the time was unheard of. This wasn’t a simple declaration of partnership, it was also a risk.

It would, at the time, have been easier to feature unknown actors within the roles of the film. Mr. Choi and Mr. Ryu instead chose to stand by this film being a documentary about their lives within the house, making no room to misjudge their relationship. It also granted that aforementioned authenticity, because why would they risk public outcry by showing us the truth of their relationship?

They chose not to take the quiet path, which would have been something no one could begrudge them for.

Instead, they shared these establishing shots of not only their relationship, but also our first look at the interior of the house.

With our first perspective of the space, there is nothing to be uneasy about. It’s only upon reflection that we see this space for what it truly is.

Fridge logic refers to inconsistencies that the audience doesn’t recognize in the moment. It’s only when they’ve stepped away and a stray thought wonders at something, do they realize something was entirely misplaced. In most incidents, this would be called a plot hole, but in the case of The Choi Records, the inconsistencies that audiences recognize after the fact simply add to the horror of the experience.

As we are taken up the stairs, we see the hallway: two doors on either side, with a window at the end. The walls are bare of photographs or art.

This is simply a new house that hasn’t been made a home yet.^[6]

These opening shots are not what makes the film interesting. They are simply setting the standard for what a person should expect to see from a house that they have moved into. Something completely and wholly ordinary. This is the setup that makes The Choi Records appear as a home movie, creating a false sense of security in the audience who goes into this film not knowing what to expect.

The next shot follows the same principle as the first two: two men settling into their new house.

Ryu Jaekwan is shown with a hammer in his hand, setting nails into the wall. He hammers them into place, using a level to make sure that each nail he sets is even with the one beside it. Three times he does this, before he stands back, the hammer hanging limply from his hand as he tilts his head and inspects his work.

“It looks even,” Choi’s voice confirms from off screen, accompanied by a shuffle of papers.

Looking over his shoulder, the corners of Ryu Jaekwan’s lips twitch upwards, before he turns back to face the wall. He reaches down, carefully lifting up the picture frames that he had leaned up against the wall and hangs them. Black frames, white mattes and glossy photographs held behind the glass.

The first photograph is one of Choi, laughing with a film camera in his hands as he stands on a beach. The second photograph is of the two of them, heads together as they’re bent over a table and looking at something. The third is a shot of a dinner party, a space lit by fairy lights and numerous people gathered around a table.^[7]

“Welcome home,” Ryu Jaekwan says, as he steps back away from the wall.

The intimacy shared in this film was one that easily could have been left out, but welcoming the audience into their relationship is why all these years later this film still has the impact that it does.

28 JUNE 1998

[Exterior shot on black-and-white film: the camera surveys the side of the house. The outside paneling is pristine and does not look like it’s weather damaged. The camera pauses on each window: two on the first floor and two on the upper story.

Footsteps as whoever is behind the camera walks around to the backyard, their hand coming into frame only to push open the back gate. They step into the middle of the yard, where they pan over the house again. There’s a set of double doors, a large window on the lower level and two wide windows overlooking the backyard.

Again, whoever is behind the camera walks to the other side of the yard, exiting the backyard and to the other side of the house. There is a small side door, a single lower level window and two on the second floor.

Once more, they head out to the front yard, where we can see the front door and a window right beside it. Another large window is on the lower level, while three are upstairs. There also appears to be a small window into the attic. The house number is obscured by a clematis crawling up along the front porch.

The camera cuts.]

III

Before we continue into the examination of The Choi Records, it is important to examine the film that preceded it.

In 1999, Exploration #5 was a small film project where simple VHS copies were passed around by hand. Accompanying it was a statement that everything shown on the film was real and had not been altered. Something that could easily be set aside to the drama of the film, if not for the fact that it was quickly tied to Mr. Choi.

Mr. Choi, at the time, was known for his video journalism. He was a documentarist. He was not known for fiction and it once again added a layer of authenticity to the film.

Exploration #5 begins with a similar shot of the side of the house as later seen in The Choi Records. We can count two windows on the first floor and three on the second. There is nothing inherently strange with this.

In a continuous shot, Choi, who the audience never sees, walks around the house and in through the front door. He makes his way up the stairs and we are with him as he opens all the doors in the hallway. He opens the closet at the top of the stairs, then proceeds to the first door on the right side of the hallway.

One door, one window. The next door, another single window.

Choi crosses the hall and this time we’re on the same side as when he had been outside. He opens the door at the end of the hall and we are once again met with a single window. He proceeds to the next room, where he takes a deep breath before he pushes open the door.

Inside the room, we are met with two windows.

It is an immediate inconsistency with how long he had had the camera focused on the side of the house.

The camera cuts away, and the audience is left facing the living room. Off camera, Ryu Jaekwan can be heard. “It’s strange isn’t it?”

“What is?” Choi answers and there’s a clatter of noise. The steady sound of metal on metal, cutlery being put away.

“How quiet it is.”

The sound stops and there’s a pause. The audience hangs in silence.

“It feels like, every night, it gets too quiet. Ten comes and then there’s nothing.”

The silence continues, and this time, Choi’s the one who breaks it.

“I hadn’t noticed, or maybe I hadn’t wanted to.”

Another series of shots.

The maple tree in the backyard through a window in the upper level of the house, its leaves falling to the ground.

An empty hallway that stretches forward. Empty of doors and windows. Lit by three dim lights hanging from the ceiling that sputter and flicker.

It returns to Choi: “Something isn’t right here.”

Followed by two more shots.

A dark room.

Stairs.

A new voice: “Something’s following me, but I don’t know where to run. I can’t figure out where to go, I can’t remember where I even came from. It’s following me.” It’s hard to make out who’s speaking. He is nothing more than a shadow in the darkness. His steps are loud as he runs, but no one can miss the steady thud thump of footsteps in the distance.

In the wake of The Choi Records, it becomes startlingly obvious just how incomplete Exploration #5 is.

Exploration #5 creates unease in the showing of these disjointed elements, where The Choi Records builds up before showcasing what has made Mr. Choi and Mr. Ryu’s new house so strange.

In August 1998, both Choi and Ryu Jaekwan leave their house to attend a mutual friend's wedding. They are gone for four days.

The house that they return to is irrevocably different from the one they left. It is not a dangerous change, it is not one born out of malice. Regardless, the change in their environment is unsettling and removes any sense of security that the partners may have initially had living in the space.

“Ryu Jaekwan,” Choi calls from where he is standing at the top of the stairs. There’s a bag dropped carelessly off to the side, spilling haphazardly into the middle of the hallway where someone could easily trip over it. It says that whatever has stopped Choi was enough for him not to care as he dug into it to pull his camera out and start recording.

“Ryu Jaekwan,” Choi calls louder this time and in the distance Ryu Jaekwan’s murmured reply can be heard.

The camera in Choi’s hands is shaking as he points it to the wall at the top of the stairs. Once empty, there now stands a white door, with a dark bronze handle. It matches all of the other doors in the hallway and yet, it’s alien.

“What is it?” Ryu Jaekwan asks, but the camera doesn’t turn to face him. It stays on the door.

“I don’t know,” Choi answers, his voice softer and more confused. “I feel like I’m going crazy. I don’t remember there being a closet here.”

The stairs creak, the only thing to break the quiet once Choi stops speaking. One step at a time, until Ryu Jaekwan steps into frame. He moves in front of the door, reaching for the handle and pushing it open without hesitation. Choi’s breath catches in an audible gasp, as the door opens easily before them.

The door swings inward, into darkness.

Ryu Jaekwan leans into the space, far enough that he can rest his hand against the back wall. It’s dark and grey, the paint on the walls almost absorbing the light filtering in from behind them. There’s nothing in the space. No light, no shelves or hooks. Nothing but the dark hardwood floor and the dark grey walls.

“It’s cold,” Ryu Jaekwan says as he pulls his hand away from the back wall of the closet. It’s only three feet deep, but he still steps back away from the doorway, as if there’s something there. For the shakiness of the camera, it makes Ryu Jaekwan appear firm and unbending as he stands there, before he reaches back forward and pulls the door closed.

“Ryu Jaekwan?” Choi’s voice is confused. It’s the first moment we can recognize just how young they both are. That for his success in the industry, Choi’s still young. They both are.^[8]

“I don’t know,” Ryu Jaekwan murmurs and when he turns back to Choi, his expression is tight with worry. He steps forward and the camera is buried between them as he pulls Choi in tight. The rustle of fabric overcuts whatever is said between them, the murmur of their voices the only thing we can hear. Gentle.

Ryu Jaekwan pulls away and turns back to the closet. He stares at it for a moment, before he steps over the bag and walks down the hall to the door that leads into the bedroom that the closet backs onto. Choi follows, the camera in his hands an almost forgotten thing.

It jostles, as they go into the bedroom, the one that we had first seen Ryu Jaekwan unpacking in. The bed is made and the boxes are long gone. The camera is slow enough that we can see two windows overlooking the side garden, before it’s turned to follow Ryu Jaekwan as he makes his way towards the far wall.

Ryu Jaekwan rests his hand against it, “I don’t know how there can even be a closet there.”

“I don’t know either,” Choi says and the camera finally cuts.

While the focus of Exploration #5 was the immediate impossibility of the second window in the bedroom, The Choi Records doesn’t acknowledge it. It remains a detail that the audience can miss or not. Instead, our focus is on the impossible closet. Built in the span of four days without evidence of the construction or anyone else being in the house. Attention is on the strangeness of how much space was left between the stairway and the bedroom to accommodate such a build.

Careful camera angles and perfectly timed cuts would make this possible with practical effects, but even on careful inspection, it’s difficult to see where those cuts could have been made.

It speaks volumes of Mr. Choi’s filming choices that he is capable of capturing this so seamlessly.

4 SEPTEMBER 1998

[Interior shot on black-and-white film: the camera is once again sitting on the table in the dining room, with Choi and Eun Haje^[10] sitting at the table.]

“I know we sound crazy.”

[The shuffle of paper is heard off screen, before Ryu Jaekwan comes into frame, unrolling sheets of paper across the table. He smooths his hands over them, and from where the camera is angled, we can just make out that they are building plans of the house.]

“It just doesn’t add up. We’ve checked and double checked.”

[Eun Haje stands up and looks over the blueprints, studying them.]

“You’ve always been crazy, but this is something I can look over for you.”

[Choi leans forward, resting his forehead against the table and blowing out a breath. There’s nothing but the sound of Eun Haje flipping through the plans, pulling the paper up and inspecting them.]

“Thank you for doing this.”

“Whatever you two need.”

IV

Exploration of the house begins quickly.

“Thank you for coming,” Choi says as he helps Eun Haje unload her truck at the side of the house. There are clouds in the sky, and what looks like a storm is starting to roll in. It’s easy to tell that time has passed from that first shot of the backyard when they’d been moving in.

Fall has arrived.

The pair of them walk in and out of the camera frame as they take boxes from the bed of the truck and in through the side door. “You don’t need to keep thanking me. You’d come help me if I needed it.”

The cuts happen quickly from here. The camera is moved location to location as the pair moves about the house. It always comes back to the dining room table where papers are laid out, pens and pencils scattered. It makes the disorganization of the unpacked house seem neat. The table is in chaos.

Cut after cut, the pair return to their tools. Measurements scribbled on loose sheets of paper, on napkins and in the margins of books left too close to where they are working. Over and over, they check calculations. It continues to add up to the same number. Back and forth, they pace over the hardwood floors of the house.

1/4'.

The interior of the house exceeds the exterior by 6.35 millimeters.

In the background, Ryu Jaekwan watches the pair from the entrance to the kitchen, where he turns to pick the phone up from the edge of the counter.

It’s an easily missed moment, especially when in the forefront of the shot, Choi throws a sheet of paper from the table to the floor and grabs a new one. Eun Haje watches it float to the floor, before reaching across the table for an open bottle of beer and takes a drink from it. She watches as Choi makes yet another set of calculations, already looking defeated with the knowledge that it will simply lead to the same outcome as all the ones before.

“At least we all sound crazy now.”

The Choi Records is a ghost story.^[11]

We can see the beginnings of the house’s occupants becoming haunted. By the ghosts of the place, by the ideas, by the impossibilities of it all. We can see the reactions, in how fevered Choi and Haje become over calculations that don’t add up the way they should. We can see it in the way Choi leaves the house, while Jaekwan stands in the doorway watching him pull out of the driveway.

Jaekwan stands there, the shot held long past the point of Choi’s vehicle being in frame. He stands there quietly. Silence. Nothing.

Jaekwan finally closes the door and turns to the camera. His expression pinched into something akin to worry.

We see it in a shot where Choi is standing on a stepstool, settling a camera up on a shelf. Another shot, where he’s installing another in the hallway upstairs. Another, directed up the staircase and towards the closed closet door.

Desperation sets in.

The tension is palpable. Everyone is holding their breath.

L‘odeur du silence ext si vieille.^[12]

Months before Exploration #5, a different tape circulated in a smaller berth.

The Hallway was nothing special. It was a simple one-take shot that could have been achieved by most amateur filmmakers through visual effects. What made it so special, was the accompanying statement that claimed that it was all real.

The camera focuses on a window, where we can see the beginning of snowfall. The edges of the window are frosted, condensation from not being sealed properly. The shot doesn’t linger here for long, instead turning to look over the room. A bedroom with nightstands on either side of the bed, a dresser, and a potted plant in the corner.

We face the room, before the camera turns once again and we leave to enter the hallway. The camera jostles on each step, as we step down the hall and towards the top of the stairs. We turn again, this time facing a door on the top of the flight of stairs. Painted white with a bronze handle.

Off camera, we can hear a small intake of breath, before a hand comes into frame and reaches for the door handle.

The door opens easily, swinging inward and we’re met with darkness.

Having circled in from the bedroom, we know this closet should be on the backside of the room we were in previously. It should, at most, be shallow. Instead, the darkness in the closet seems deep, unmeasurable with only the single shot from the camera. The light from the hall does nothing to alleviate the unease this growing maw offers.

Another step. Whoever’s holding the camera keeps their hand extended, reaching into the closet. Reaching into that empty space.

Another step. The camera sinks into the inky darkness, and in the graininess of the film, we can make out the way the sides of the closet extend deeper.

It is not simply another closet. It’s another hallway.

“Don’t you dare,” someone says off camera, distantly.

Whoever is holding the camera steps backwards, back into the safety of the lit hallway. They close the door, sealing the strange space back out of view. “It’s cold.”

The recording stops.

On its own, The Hallway isn’t anything that should stand out. After the release of Exploration #5 though, it was soon revealed to be a part of Choi’s work. His name held weight alongside the piece. It wouldn’t be for years that we would learn the importance of that dark hallway. It wouldn’t be until midway through the film when XXX XXXXXX arrived at the house, that we learned it would become the epicenter.

With Jaekwan’s phone call happening in the background, with the mounting frustration, XXX XXXXXX arrival sets it all into fast paced motion.

Choi pauses after opening the door, the audience only managing to catch the line of his shoulders go tense, before XXX XXXXXX tells Choi to show him.

It’s the camera pointing up the stairs that shows us the next cut.

Choi leading XXX XXXXXX up the stairs, pausing at the closet door. Jaekwan carefully follows them, stopping midway up the stairs with a mug nursed in his hands. In the corner of the frame, we can see Minseong joining them, having come out of one of the rooms in the hall, a hastily put together guest room.

Time lurches forward slowly, everyone hanging on a precipice.

Finally Choi reaches for the closet door and pushes it open, the door silently swinging inward. The same as before, the same as in the short film.

The cup in Jaekwan’s hand falls, crashing against the stairs and shattering into chunks of glass and a river of coffee.

It’s a shriek of noise, the only sound as the camera barely picks up that where the closet had once had a back wall, it now stretched out into darkness.^[13]

10 OCTOBER 1998

“I didn’t know what to make of his call when I got it.”

[Exterior shot, facing the backyard. XXX XXXXXXXX sits in frame, looking directly into the camera and talking to it.]

“All I knew was that Jaekwan sounded concerned. If he was concerned, then they both were. It takes a lot for Jaekwan to ask for help from me, especially when he thinks that he’s meant to be the one who holds Choi together.”

[XXX XXXXXXXX leans back in the chair he’s sitting in, lifting a glass to his lips. He takes a drink as he looks out across the backyard behind him. Along the back fence, Choi’s dog Jae sits quietly, still as he stares at the house beyond the scope of the camera.]

“It would be easier if I thought they were making shit up. If I thought they were playing a prank. I saw the door though and the hallway. Jaekwan had to leave and go outside when I opened it to look. Choi just clung to my hand and it was like we were stupid teenagers again checking the house after watching a horror movie.”^[14]

[XXX XXXXXXXX looks back to the camera, and takes another drink.]

“We’re not teenagers though and that thing is very fucking real.”

V

Exploration #1 begins with a title card.

“A thousand feet. It’s all I could pick up at the hardware store on my way.”

XXX XXXXXXXX heaves a large spool of double braided nylon rope onto the landing at the top of the stairs. Already stacked at the top of the stairs are two halogen flashlights and a backpack. Eun Haje is there, a radio in her hand that she holds the button on just to hear the returning buzz of static from the matching radio held tightly in Choi’s grasp.

Ryu Jaekwan is nowhere to be seen.

“Don’t let go,” XXX XXXXXXXX says and Choi meets his gaze. The two of them stand there for a moment, before Choi finally nods and goes to stand by the spool. He’s twitchy and XXX XXXXXXXX meets him with a smile, hand grabbing Choi’s wrist and giving it a squeeze, before he grabs the end of the rope and ties it to one of his belt loops.

“This is stupid,” Choi says.

Haje laughs, “Sure fucking is!”

XXX XXXXXXXX nods, before reaching for one of the flashlights. He leaves the backpack for Haje, before nudging her and the two of them walk into the dark open space of the closet.

Behind them, the rope begins to unspool.

“Maybe we should try fishing line, we’d have more length to work with,” Haje suggests, sitting at a chair in the dining room.

Choi nods, “I’ve got some in a box somewhere. Maybe a camera too.”

“It was pretty dark, but with the light, we can have an idea of what way we went in. I swear we took different turns coming back.”

“I don’t like it, I don’t think anyone should go back in,” Jaekwan’s voice cuts in from off camera.

XXX XXXXXXXX paces into frame, a toolbox in his hands. He sets it on the dining room table and starts rummaging through it. “It seemed safe. Weird and improbable, but safe.”

Jaekwan follows him, his back to the camera. We can see how tense he is, how his shoulders are hunched and he barely seems to be breathing. “You said you heard something in there. You said you heard growling. That isn’t safe.”

“Not growling,” Haje shrugs. “Rumbling. Like a furnace.”

“I still don’t like it. It’s too strange.”

“It’ll be okay, we’re making sure to take safety precautions.” XXX XXXXXXXX tries to soothe Jaekwan, as he triumphantly pulls out a flare from the box he had been digging in.

His words appear to do the opposite of soothing, as Jaekwan makes a low noise and storms off to the side.

It’s the beginning of us seeing something is wrong. It’s the beginning of the foundation starting to crumble.

It’s the first time that Choi doesn’t follow after him.

“It’s impossible,” XXX XXXXXXXX says from behind the camera as they investigate the darkness. Their flashlights illuminate walls as they walk down a seemingly endless hallway. It turns right and left, winding forward further and further. There is nothing but the darkness, the sounds of their footsteps and a low, nearly imperceptible rumbling.

Haje sweeps her flashlight up to the ceiling, lower than the standard ceiling height of most houses. It makes the hallway they’re traversing seem small, despite the time they’ve been traveling through it. The walls and ceiling both are pristine, flat and unmarred by any kind of marks. The same dull dark grey. “It feels like a dream.”

There’s a pause as the two round yet another corner, their footsteps stuttering to a stop as they face a doorway. “Maybe it is.”

The film cuts, returning to the house where Jaekwan is pacing the living room while Choi tries to catch his hand to pull him to a stop.

“I don’t like it,” Jaekwan yanks his hand out of Choi’s, continuing his pacing.

Choi watches helplessly, his hands falling to his side and his shoulders sagging as he watches his partner walk back and forth. “It’s only been an hour. It hasn’t been that long. They were gone for thirty minutes yesterday. The fishing wire is still unwinding.”

Jaekwan makes a noise, an animalistic growl, wounded and keening. “Something is wrong.”

Another cut, back to the darkness.

The doorway looms in front of XXX XXXXXXXX and Haje. They hesitate in front of it for a moment, still. Past the sound of their heavy breathing, it is quiet. There’s no resounding sound of their footsteps and there’s no low rumble of noise under it all.

Finally, they step forward and into the room. It’s a small space, with a low ceiling, but it’s more open than the hallway they’ve been traversing. The floors, walls and ceiling are smooth, lacking any kind of imperfection. It’s an empty space, except for the doorway that stands across from them.

“We’ve been walking for two hours,” Haje says as the camera catches her pointing her flashlight at her watch. “This is the first time we’ve come across anything different in this place.”

“We’ve come this far,” XXX XXXXXXXX says and leads the way forward. His boots fall heavy, his footsteps a staccato echo that hadn’t been there previously.

The camera sways with each step he takes, as he gets closer to the doorway on the other side of the room.

“The room was huge,” Haje says, fingers tapping along the table. She’s jittery, her leg bouncing as her hand reaches for the corner of a piece of paper and starts folding it over on itself.

“An antechamber,” XXX XXXXXXXX hums, leaned back in his chair. His feet are kicked up onto the table and he’s chewing on the end of a pen.

Beside them, Jaekwan clicks his tongue and rises from the table. He leaves the room and Choi watches him leave helplessly. It’s yet another fracture. A lack of communication, a missed opportunity to mend what’s breaking. XXX XXXXXXXX continues speaking and the opportunity passes. “We left after seeing it. It felt like we weren’t the only ones there.”

Exploration #1 ends there, with so much left unsaid.

The audience becomes desensitized to the low hum of noise that follows Haje and XXX XXXXXXXX through Exploration #1. There are no music tracks laid over top of their travels, nothing but the sound of their footsteps, breathing and the rumble of sound. Something unmistakably there, but also something unrecognizable.

The hallway opening up into a room, that static noise disappearing, it simultaneously creates both a sense of safety and unease.

It is a continued appearance of something other^[15] within this already impossible house.

It is a continued reminder that the idyllic beginning of the film is gone.

Exploration #1 is a humanization that was lost when Exploration #5 and The Hallway were first circulated. It offers an intimate view to the relationships on display, rather than a disjointed collection of clips with limited context. We have witnessed the established relationships and now we are witnessing the parts of them that are breaking down under the stress of this unprecedented situation.

There is no ability to understand how someone may react to impossible changes within the very house they have just moved into. There is no way to understand how someone may deal with curiosity and horror in tandem. There is no way to understand how these different reactions will happen amongst people and how they will create friction within said group.

This depiction, messy and honest, is enough to pull a visceral reaction from a viewer.

As I dig for wild orchids
in the autumn fields,
it is the deeply-bedded root
that I desire,
not the flower.^[16]

It is human instinct to seek a deeper understanding, to want something beyond superficial information.

Exploration #5 and The Hallway whet the appetites of their audiences, and now we are left with the unflinching reality of what happened in that house.^[17]

22 OCTOBER 1998

[Interior shot. The camera is panned downward at a slope, turned towards the top of the stairs. Ryu Jaekwan stands in front of the open closet door. No longer a closet. A hallway. He has a flashlight in hand that he’s shining into the space. We cannot see how far the light reaches from this angle, we can only see that he is doing it.]

“Ryu Jaekwan?”

[Ryu Jaekwan reaches out and closes the door, leaning down to set the flashlight on the floor beside it. He turns and walks down the hallway, off camera. His voice is too soft to catch what he finally says to Choi, who has been the one to call him.

The camera cuts.]

VI

lam cinis, adhuc tamen rarus. Respicio: densa coiigo tergis imminebat, quae nos torrentis modo infusa terive sequebarur. “Dejiectamus” inquam “than videmus, ne in via strati comitantium turba in tenebris obteramur.” Vix consideramus, et nox non qualis inlunis aut nublia, sed qualis in locis clausis lumine exstincto.^[18]

What we know is that Mr. Ryu has a phobia of enclosed spaces.

One of Mr. Ryu’s earlier exhibits was a disconcerting selection of pictures depicting empty rooms. Windowless spaces, with very little light. All of them feature a mirror, reflecting the space back into the camera lens, and where Ryu Jaekwan should be seen in them, there is nothing but continued empty space.

It was a series of photographs that depicted his own strained relationship with enclosed spaces.

There has been discussion about where his phobia stems from, but Mr. Ryu has never talked about it past how he reacts to them. Accompanying the exhibit was a barebones write up that detailed his reaction in a very detached way: panic attacks that result in accelerated heart rate, trembling, sensation of suffocating, chest pain, severe dizziness, derealization and eventual depersonalization, culminating in an intense fear of those around him dying.

Mr. Ryu’s phobia is well documented and with the appearance of the strange doorway, his unease is on display in the recordings shown in The Choi Records.

“I want to leave. We don’t have anything tying us down to this house, but⁠—” Ryu Jaekwan trails off in a recording that almost acts as a video journal. He’s sitting in front of the camera, talking to it as if it is an audience who can ease his current worries. It’s the most that he’s talked through the film up until this point. This is the appearance of someone who struggles to verbalize their worries while in company. “I don’t know. Every time I go to tell Choi we should go, the words just get stuck.”

“It’s getting harder to even walk past the door. Even if it’s not open, I know what’s on the other side. Or rather, I don’t know what’s on the other side.” Ryu Jaekwan pauses, turning to look over his shoulder. Maybe looking in the direction of where that strange alien door is sitting so still at the stop of their staircase. “It’s fucked up.”

“I feel like⁠—” Ryu Jaekwan pauses, still looking off into the distance. It would be easy to see this as a paused frame, frozen in the moment, if not for the way his shoulders rise and fall with each breath he takes. “I feel like if I let him go into that door, he won’t come back.”

We hang in the quiet of that statement, with Ryu Jaekwan sitting so still, before he finally turns back around and reaches for the camera. It cuts and we’re in another room, this time with the camera facing a bookshelf filled from top to bottom.

“Jaekwan-ah asked me not to go into that space,” Choi’s voice comes from off screen. He paces across the room, coming into frame long enough for us to catch the tight expression on his face, before he walks off the other side. He wanders back and forth, chewing at his bottom lip and scratching at the side of his neck. “I want to take a camera in there and see what’s there, but it unnerves Jaekwan and I won’t do that to him. I love him more than I’m curious.”^[19]

“He’s having nightmares though and he’s started sleepwalking.” At this, Choi finally pauses and crouches down in front of the camera. His bottom lip is split from how he’s been biting at it, his own nerves on display. “I’ve found him standing in front of that door two nights in a row now. It’s open and he’s shining the flashlight into it.”

“It’s like he’s standing guard.”

The camera cuts to another shot of Ryu Jaekwan standing in front of the door, in a near identical shot to the previous one. This time, he’s in different clothing, the only thing to show that it’s different from the other. This time, Choi comes and stands at his side, his hands carefully taking the flashlight from Ryu Jaekwan’s hand and closing the door. Once he’s made sure it’s closed, Choi gently leads Jaekwan back to their room and away from the space that Jaekwan can’t seem to go near when he’s awake.

A cut.

“We should leave,” Choi says as the film returns to the room with the bookshelf. “The two of us should just pack a bag and go. It’s too late tonight, but maybe tomorrow.”

Another cut.

Back to the hallway.

The house is dark and the strange door hangs open.

A light turns on, spilling out of the bedroom.

“Ryu Jaekwan?”

Choi yawns as he comes out of the bedroom, making his way down the hall slowly. He stops at the open door, his whole body going rigid as he stares at it, before he’s running down the stairs.

“Jaekwan?”

This time Choi calls Ryu Jaekwan’s name louder, this time there’s panic beginning to tinge the words. We can hear the sound of his footsteps as he runs, the sound of doors creaking open, before they’re being slammed closed. The house comes to life as he turns on the lights.

He runs back up the stairs.

Room after room, Choi opens doors, checking for any sign of his partner. He races back to the door at the top of the staircase, shoulders heaving as he pants for breath. Hesitatingly, he leans into the dark space.

“Ryu Jaekwan?” He pulls back after a moment when he gets no response. “Fuck!”

Choi turns around and this is the first time we get a good look at his expression as he stumbles towards the camera, pulling it down and frantically unhooking it and throwing the world into a blurry mess of movement, before the camera cuts.

Choi’s eyes are wide, his face pale and there’s sweat beading along his hairline. He’s afraid.

They should have talked. He shouldn’t have waited to bring up leaving till tomorrow.

We hang in darkness, the film rolling in silence for 20 seconds, but for what feels infinitely longer, before the next shot plays.

It’s the same angle from the camera Choi had placed in view of the door at the top of the stairs. It’s the same angle we have been seeing when Ryu Jaekwan has been standing in front of the doorway.

It’s quiet. Not a single noise. The door is closed.

Ryu Jaekwan leaves the bedroom, barely a shadow of movement this late at night. He walks to stand in front of the door and after a minute he reaches his hand forward and pushes the door open. It swings open easily, silently.

Ryu Jaekwan stands there for another minute.

The silence is almost deafening.

Ryu Jaekwan steps forward into the dark space, the graininess of the camera recording unable to pick him up past the first step in.

The light in the bedroom turns on and we once again hear Choi’s voice, calm and relaxed compared to how scared he will sound in mere moments.

“Ryu Jaekwan?”

23 OCTOBER 1998

[There is no light. There is nothing to see. There is nothing but darkness and Jaekwan’s voice.]

“I had a nightmare.”

[There is a rustle of noise. Soft. Blankets moving against each other. A comforting sound. Choi breaks the growing quiet.]

“Usually it’s me having the nightmare. What was it about?”

[Footsteps can be heard, even and repetitive. Someone is pacing back and forth. The pauses between the two draw out, making it easy to think that the other won’t respond.]

“I was lost, wandering around hallways. It was a maze and I couldn’t find my way out.”

[The bed creaks, followed by a soft exhale.]

“I would come find you.”

[The pacing stops.]

“Jaekwan, come back to bed, please.”

VII

Le coeur a ses raisons, que Ia raison ne connait point.^[20]

It is easy to get lost within the narrative that has been set up. Oddities that turn the house into something threatening, the near constant noise that follows the investigations into the hallway past the closet, and the near deafening silence elsewhere.

The haunting of these people and the house itself, define this as a ghost story, but it is also more than that.

The terror is not what one should focus on while watching The Choi Records.

The truth of this film is the underlying care that the patrons of the house have for each other.

Choi stands in front of that unnerving closet door, a flashlight held in his hands as he stares into the darkness in front of him. Grey walls stretch forward, a seemingly endless path into nothingness.

Choi stands in front of that closet door, even as his hands shake hard enough for the camera to catch.

This is the man who had a curiosity about this space, who wanted to delve into it and discover what it was hiding. This is the man who held back once he had made a promise not to.

He’s about to break that promise. For the man he made that promise to. For love.^[21]

“Are you sure?”

The words break the silence, crackling and artifacting. The microphone from the camera picks up XXX XXXXXX’s voice and fills it with static. It’s a quality issue that has not felt nearly as present as it is in that moment.

Choi’s works have always been masterfully crafted and the degradation of quality in The Choi Records is once again at odds with all of his previous works. There is no shiny veneer to hide behind, nothing but static and honesty. There is authenticity in error.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“It’s different this time.”

The flashlight swings across the hallway, illuminating unmarked grey walls. They turn left and right, continuing forward further and further.

“It doesn’t matter, we have to keep going.”

Their voices sound muffled, where they should instead echo off of the bare walls. Their footsteps are quiet, and underneath it all, that same nearly imperceptible rumbling that had been heard in Exploration #1. Audio balancing that hasn't been done correctly. Errors upon errors that would not be found in a polished film.

The Choi Records is a ghost story.

Hauntings upon hauntings.

Beyond The Choi Records being a ghost story, it is also a love story.

Choi and XXX XXXXXX continue down the hallway, despite the way it is no longer the same right angle turns that had been present in Exploration #1. They continue down the hallway, despite the way that low rumbling has gotten just a touch louder. They continue down the hallway, despite the fact that they may not find Jaekwan at the end. They continue down the hallway, despite the way there may not even be an end.

Previously, Choi had chosen not to follow Jaekwan when his partner had voiced concern about Haje and XXX XXXXXX exploring the hallway, yet, this time Choi is doing everything in his power to follow after his partner.

There is no fishing line to guide them back, no breadcrumb trail.

To a viewer, the risks are obvious and outweigh the situation. Choi isn’t a viewer though, but a participant. He is guided by an urgency that would impact critical thinking. The combination of both Jaekwan’s parasomnia^[21] and the hallway have created a situation where Choi can either call for emergency assistance and hope the delay doesn’t lead to harm coming to Jaekwan, or he can delve deeper himself.

XXX XXXXXX is not in a better position to make a rational decision either. Despite the way he has been holding himself steady, a reliable figure that both Choi and Jaekwan could rationalize their thoughts to, could tackle the mystery of the hallway together with, his voice now contains a tremor as he speaks.

“We should be coming up on the antechamber.”

There’s a cut. Reminiscent of the previous Exploration tapes. Cut. New scene. Cut.

The antechamber opens up in front of them, still that same single room, with only two entry points. The one that Choi and XXX XXXXXX enter from, and the gaping maw of a door across from them. It is nothing but a black, empty frame.

Even as the pair walk closer to it, inky shadows are the only thing to greet them.

Standing there, the camera picks up nothing but grainy darkness. Another step forward, into the doorway. The film is dark, held in limbo. There is nothing but the sound of their breathing and that low ever present rumbling. It is the only thing that tells us that there hasn’t been another cut.

Suspense isn’t necessarily the right word for the pause here.

More so, it’s an opportunity for us to understand the unknown they are about to step into. Different from the winding hallway that they have already tread. A pause where we know that they are asking themselves if this risk is worth it. If finding Jaekwan is worth taking that final step forward.

They’ve made it this far and not many would tread further.

The Choi Records is a love story, not one dissimilar to the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.

How far would one traverse into a nightmare out of affection?

There is an inhale, sharp and jarring, followed by a thud.

The darkness remains, and over top of the low rumbling, there is a new sound.

Not the sound of their breathing.

Something else.

Water


d


r


i


p


s.

Dicamus et labyrinthos, vel porrentosissimum humani inpendii opus, sed flon, Ut existimari potest, falsum.^[22]

.. - .----. ... / -.-. --- -- .. -. --. .-.-.-

22 OCTOBER 1998

[Interior shot on black-and-white film, with what appears to be a diffusion filter on the lens. The camera is once again sitting on the table in the dining room. Tapping can be heard in the background, rhythmic. There are papers still scattered across the table. Choi is idly scribbling on the corner of one of them: kvoh ofs ks ucwbu hc twbr]

“What if we pack up and move?”

[Off camera, a sigh.]

“Why now?”

[Choi’s pen stops scrapping across the paper. He sets it down carefully, before turning to look to where Jaekwan is standing off camera]

“I’m sorry.”^[23]

VIII

Water drip, drip

drip

drips.

It echoes off the walls, the sound no longer muffled. It resonates through the space. Different from the antechamber, smaller, but still more open than the hallway had been.

The darkness isn’t as oppressive now, the space dimly illuminated from an unknown source.

The camera shakes as Choi gets to his feet, pushing up from the ground with a slow exhale. Through the shaking, we can see XXX XXXXXX standing atop a set of stairs, five steps leading up to an empty doorway. That same dark void from the entry point in the antechamber.

XXX XXXXXX has his hand firmly pressed to the wall, bracing himself.

“That was strange.”

It’s the only thing said after the two have left the antechamber. No hint as to what about it was more strange than the situation they have already found themselves in. No additional context for the viewer.

The sound of water dripping continues, but there is seemingly no source as the camera swings around in Choi’s hands. Instead we catch doors lining the room, six in total. All opposite the stairs attached to the wall.

One

Closed.

The Choi Records takes a decisive turn here. Much like the Exploration tapes, the film finds itself with other snippets spliced into the reel.

There is nothing but an empty room, no doorways in sight of the camera. Something rattles, the sound of metal on metal. Chains.

Two

Closed.

”We have to make a choice.”

XXX XXXXXXXX makes it down the stairs, his back to the camera as they look towards the doors.

Three

Closed.

There is a table in a grey room, the end of which sits under a window. Past the glass, there is nothing but darkness. No reflection from the lit room the table is in.

We only see half of the table, an empty chair at the end with a single table setting. A spoon, bowl, and glass.

The film is grainy enough that we are unable to tell if there is anything in the dish.

Slowly, the camera pans back, pulling back from its tight view of the head of the table, slowly revealing more table settings lining the table. Until we pull all the way back to the opposite end of the table, turning the viewer into a participant of this empty dinner party.

There is nothing in the bowl once it is pulled into frame of view.

Four

Closed.

”What if we make the wrong one?”

Choi answers XXX XXXXXXXX statement with a question, raw and honest. Still, even as he asks the question, he steps forward, towards the line of doors.

A choice needing to be made.

Five

Closed.

Water falls from the ceiling, hitting the floor. It ripples out, across the floor. A perfect veneer of water atop plain white tiles.

Six

knock
c     n
o     o
n     c
kconk

knockknockknockknock knockknock knockknockknockknock knockknockknockknockknock knockknockknock knockknockknock^[24]

.... .. .... ..... ... ...

In Choi’s hands, the camera jolts, barely catching the way XXX XXXXXXXX takes a step back from how the final door rattles in its frame, jarred with each resounding bang against it. It bends the way cheap composite wood curves under any weight, but it does not crack in the same way.

The stillness that follows is unnerving. Nothing but the way the camera sways in Choi’s hand.

XXX XXXXXXXX doesn’t move. It’s Choi who takes those steps forward towards the door.

It would be so easy for someone to turn around here. To take those five steps back up to the dark entryway leading to the antechamber. It would be so easy to backtrack until they are back in the threshold of the house.

There is something here.

Choi reaches for the door handle. He ignores the doors that had remained unassuming, instead twisting the handle on the door that the oppressive knocking had come from. Without hesitation, with a surety that he will be okay once the door opens.

“By his Devilish art to reach the organs of her fancie, and with them forge illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams.” ^[25]

The door swings open into emptiness.

The room before Choi dwarfs the antechamber, turning it into a miniscule space in comparison. The ceiling soars well above, only a surety as we cannot see the sky past it. Below them, a yawning pit, with only a set of stairs against the wall. A mirror of the ones that Choi had stumbled down to land in front of the six doors.

They wind downwards, attached to nothing but the wall and exposed to the open air on one side. Dizzying, even from an audience perspective.

Choi steps out onto them, testing his footing, before he moves fully out.

“There’s only one way to go,” he says, and we can see him bracing his hand against the wall as he takes a step down.

Behind him, the only answer he receives is a slam. No reply from XXX XXXXXXXX. Just a loud echoing thud.

The camera jostles, as Choi turns around, slowly due to his precarious perch upon the stairs.

Behind him, the door is now closed. No handle on his side to be seen.

.... .. .... ..... ... ...

Knocking, repeating. That same repetition as before, only softer. Gentle, compared to the previous banging. A rap of knuckles against wood, instead of a fist.

“There’s only one way to go,” Choi repeats, just as soft as the knocking. Just as quiet.

Down and

            down, and

                        down

                                    the

                                                stairs

                                                            lead.

Until the doorway he had come from was out of sight.

IX

Un livre est un grand cimetière oil sur la plupart des tombes on ne peut plus lire les noms effacds.^[26]

Each

step

down

takes

Choi

further

and

further

away

from

where

this

all

began.

It began with a hopeful, “We’re going to love it here”. A statement that came before anyone knew what the house had in store for them.

Every year, thousands of people go missing, with many of those cases being closed without a full-scale search. With three people stuck in the impossibility of the labyrinth they’ve stepped into, there are still friends who would report their disappearance.

Eun Haje might return in the morning to realize one of Choi’s cameras is missing, alongside her three friends. She may be able to realize that they stepped into that hallway closet unprepared. She may be able to report their disappearances, but the why is not something as easily given to the police.

There is no guarantee that the closet door with the impossible hallway is still there. Just as easily gone if there are no residents currently residing in the house.

Any statement she may give will have to be heavily doctored for her own safety in an investigation. ^[27]

Being found, falls heavily onto the three traversing the winding hallways, rooms and chambers on their own. They are the ones who must rescue themselves.

Choi walks down the stairs, his steps becoming quicker and quicker, more sure. With one hand braced against the wall and the other holding the camera, he takes each step without hesitation. No worry that a stair might fall away from underneath him. There is only one path to go, and that is forward.

Forward

                                            and

                                                                                        forward.

Choi’s steps quicken until he sucks in a sharp breath, staggering to a stop.

“Jaekwan,” the name is as quiet as a breath, desperation and relief. Choi lurches back into motion and in the distance, the camera catches a shadow.

There is a break between the stairs, and across the wa
y, Jaekwan stands. He is flipped, a mirror, stan
ding in a way that defies gravity. He crou
ches down, stretching out a han
d, his expression pinched ti
ght with worry “Hurry, y
ou have to ju
mp.”


Aga
in, there is n
o hesitation. The unde
rlying growling that has beco
me an integral part of the film gro
ws, a low reverberating sound. The soun
d of footsteps, thumping and rhythmic. Choi inhal
es, takes a step back, before he lurches forward and leaps.

The camera slips from Choi’s hand, as he drops it in favour of reaching for Jaekwan’s. Their fingers twist together, barely there for a frame, before the camera falls into the pit now hanging below where they are, the pit Choi had climbed uʍop from.

The camera

f
a
l
l
s,

and it makes me wonder how the footage was found.

We return to the thesis of this whole thing: It is a hoax. A hoax of exceptional quality, but a hoax nonetheless.

This film is a magnificent show of trickery. Of exceptional graphic effects and sly camera work. Despite Choi’s one interview where he claimed that everything in the film was his lived experience, this moment here, is where we can definitively say that it was fiction.

The camera falls in the direction that Choi had been climbing down from. Gravity swinging the opposite way as soon as he jumps.

There is no discussion on how the film was recovered, on how they managed to find their way out of the impossible maze in which they found themselves in. Nothing but Choi saying he had not edited the footage outside of splicing the reels together. Nothing but his word.

The camera falls and maybe XXX XXXXXX finds it, but that speculation just feels like another impossibility.

The camera falls and we are left to wonder how Choi and Jaekwan escaped. We’re left to wonder if XXX XXXXXX ever did.

I begin to wonder If I ever did.^[28]

“... all this, don’t take it as anything else but this. And if one day you find yourself passing by that house, don’t stop, don’t slow down, just keep going. There’s nothing there. Beware.”^[30]

¹ UIP (United International Pictures) Press Release, 2001^[2]

² UIP has no records of this press release, and they don’t have any records of this film ever being something they distributed. Nationally or internationally.^{[return to text]}

³ X’s mark passages that were typed over enough times to make them unidentifiable. These are deliberate removals on Kim Soleum’s part. ^{[return to text]}

⁴ All of this is fiction. All of this is made up.

When I first met Kim Soleum, I didn’t have any idea of what it was going to come to. I don’t think anyone could have guessed. Even when he started to get a little weird, I didn’t think it would ever come to what it did. He was still so bright, but he was hiding something. He was keeping secrets. He was obsessive. “I’ll show you soon, Baek Saheon.” It was a promise he kept making and a promise he ended up keeping.

In 2014 Kim Soleum went missing.

I’d known him for three years at that point. We’d been neighbours.

He wasn’t easy to be friends with, despite the fact we were the same age and lived next to each other. Fuck, he wasn’t all that friendly, but he still helped me move my couch into my apartment and then shared a beer with me that first night. Maybe that’s where we made our first mistake.

The first year of knowing each other was bare bones acknowledgement when we would run into each other. I can’t even remember how we started talking. It feels like one day we would barely greet each other in the elevator, and the next we were inviting each other over for dinner. It’s easier to share a meal than eating alone in a quiet apartment.

Friends isn’t the right word for what we were, not when it was both something less and something more. Two people living in close proximity that didn’t necessarily like each other, and yet, we were inexplicably drawn to each other.

We both had lives. Work, friends, each other.

Then he started spending more time locked in his apartment. He started skipping work. He stopped answering the door.

“I’ll show you soon, Baek Saheon.” He promised, over and over again. Was he into something bad? Was he in trouble? I didn’t know and I wished I’d asked. I wish I’d used the spare key he gave me to check on him.

I thought, I can still hear the static of the TV from the other side of the wall. I can still hear his footsteps. I can still here him tapping against the wall as if to ask “Are you awake?”. I know he’s alive and whatever he’s into, I’ll be ready for when he is.

I shouldn’t have waited to use that fucking key until I stopped hearing anything. Maybe I would have found more than his box of notebooks and tapes filled with audio recordings. Maybe I wouldn’t have been the one to find that fucking note saying not to read the books or listen to the tapes. To burn them.

It was my stupid mistake. All of it. I should have checked on him more. I should have dragged the truth out of him. I should have burned the damn box.

I should have listened to him for once.

It’s all fucking fiction.^{[return to text]}

⁵ Before this film, it was left up to speculation just what their partnership was. It was believed that they artistically helped each other with Mr. Ryu being an adept photographer within his own right. Best friends was often how they referred to one another prior to the film.^{[return to text]}

⁶ The walls were bare.

It was a house that hadn’t been made a home yet.

Standing in Kim Soleum’s apartment, I wonder if he even knew what a home was. His walls are bare, there’s barely any furniture outside of the table I found the box on, a chair, a bookshelf, a bed and an empty fridge. Empty.

It makes me realize how often we spent at my apartment. How often he would crash on the couch or in my bed, rather than going back to his apartment. I feel like I have been in his space. I feel like it used to be filled with more, but it all feels fuzzy. Like a memory I can’t quite grasp.

Damn.^{[return to text]}

⁷ These photographs are a departure from Mr. Ryu’s usual work. His last exhibit was a feature on cut flowers to backdrops of industrial scapes. The commentary on the high CO₂ emissions of the cut flower industry was a startlingly beautiful and horrific one.^{[return to text]}

⁸ At the time of filming, Mr. Choi was thirty-four years old, while Mr. Ryu was twenty-eight.^[9]

⁹ Fuck. Kim Soleum’s as old as Jaekwan was. I know it’s just a coincidence that he turned twenty-eight last month, but it’s still too close.

Asshole. He was supposed to be here.

Most of Kim Soleum’s voice recordings are him explaining what he saw on the film. Or making up what he’s pretending to see. I don’t know. He’s talking about the films on them.

I’ve been piecing them into the rest of his writing, trying to put it all together. It’s one giant puzzle.

Listening to them, it’s easy to forget he’s not still here. That he isn’t just sitting on the couch telling me about it.

I’ve found myself just listening, instead of writing down whatever he’s narrating. I’ll get lost and find myself replying when there’s a pause, asking questions, before the tapes pick up again. I never get a proper answer.

I almost wrecked them today. I thought about pulling the tape from the cassettes until they were empty. Thought about cutting them up with scissors and throwing them out. Instead I hit rewind and listened to Kim Soleum tell me about this damn closet a second time. You could hear the awe in his voice, the wonder, the fear.

I need a fucking drink.^{[return to text]}

¹⁰ Eun Haje is Mr. Choi’s longtime friend. While she did help the couple move into their house with her partner Park Minseong, this is her first appearance in the film.^{[return to text]}

¹¹ It’s a ghost story.

These people were haunted by their house. Kim Soleum was haunted by them. I’m haunted by Kim Soleum.

There are some nights where I can hear noise from his apartment. Floorboards creaking with what sounds like him pacing. I’ve gotten up every night this week, pulled on my pants, grabbed my keys and gone to check. I’ve opened his door to find it empty and dark, the steady tick tick tick of his damn clock the only noise.

The apartments are old. Maybe it’s the pipes.

I’m haunted by Kim Soleum. He’s been missing for seven months now and yet he feels like he’s right fucking here.^{[return to text]}

¹² ”The odor of silence is so old.” O. W. De L. Milosz^{[return to text]}

¹³ I don’t understand Kim Soleum’s insistence in removing this person's name. He’s been obsessive about keeping all the other information together. It feels weird to see him crossing this piece out over and over again.

I can’t figure it out, even though I’ve been going through his piles of notes for days. Weeks? Months? It’s hard to tell how long I’ve been going through all of this. Maybe since I first realized he was missing. It’s hard to stop. It’s hard when I think there might be a clue here, that there might be some way to figure out where he went in his notes or his voice recordings.

I almost threw them all out tonight.

I found the recording about the The Hallway under his couch. It was an accident. I went digging for a beer cap that fell while I was sitting on his floor and staring at the wall. I needed a night where I wasn’t waking up thinking I’d heard him. Or maybe I thought I wasn’t dreaming the sound and thought I might actually find him if I was here and not in my own apartment.

It doesn’t matter.

I found his voice recording and he was talking about it, and I could hear voices in the background. Faint. A murmur, before a crash.

Something about it felt wrong. Something about it scared the fuck out of me.

I almost did what Kim Soleum asked and burned the box. I almost did it. I had all his shit in the tub and a match in my hand.

It should have been easy.

I’m a fucking coward. I threw the match in the sink and picked up all his stuff. I brought it right back to his table and I played that recording again. Over and over. Enough that I felt like I heard someone say “Show me”. Bullshit. It’s haunting me. He won’t leave me alone.

I think I hate him. I’m angry.

I miss him.^{[return to text]}

¹⁴ It would be remiss of me to not research further into XXX XXXXXXXX. Since his appearance in The Choi Records, XXX XXXXXXXX has not made public appearances anywhere, where previously he has been photographed attending Mr. Choi’s film premiers as well as Mr. Ryu’s exhibitions.

XXX XXXXXXXX appears in photos shared by Mr. Ryu from their youth, confirming their long standing relationship.^{[return to text]}

¹⁵ Other being the unidentifiable way in which the house was irrevocably changed. Other being the way XXX XXXXXXXX says that they were not alone. Other being the nebulous state of unease.^{[return to text]}

¹⁶ Izumi Shikibu. As translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani.^{[return to text]}

¹⁷ At first it’s a hoax of exceptional quality, and now it’s the unflinching reality of what happened in that house. Kim Soleum, were you seeing it too?

The more time I spend listening to his tapes, the more I’m starting to believe in this stupid film of his. Maybe this wasn’t some creative writing project, maybe it was something more. What a horrible, terrible thought.

I try not to think about it when the thought crosses my mind.

I smelled his shampoo today, while I was trying to find the notes he’d scribbled his annotations on. Note 14 was neatly held by a paperclip, but whatever papers had previously been attached to it were long gone. There had to be something, but if it was other notes, photos or documentation, they’re now long gone.

I smelled his shampoo and I know he was the one who had taken them. He left nothing but the annotation and a paperclip.

I keep hoping I’ll find him in all these pieces of paper and recordings.

Maybe he left a clue. Maybe he left something.

He told me to burn it all, so even if he did, it wouldn’t have been intentional.

Didn’t he know I would follow him if he just asked?[return to text]

¹⁸ “Ashes were already falling, not as yet very thickly. I looked round: a dense black cloud was coming up behind us, spreading over the earth like a flood. ‘Let us leave the road while we can still see,’ I said, ‘or we shall be knocked down and trampled underfoot in the dark by the crowd behind.’ We had scarcely sat down to rest when darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room.” Young Pliny. As translated by Betty Radice, Pliny: Letters and Panegyricus. Volume 1 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1969)^{[return to text]}

¹⁹ I don’t think that Kim Soleum loved anything more than his own curiosity.

If he did, maybe he would still be here.

The thought makes me fucking furious.

I know it isn’t true. I know he loved so much beyond his curiosity.

I just don’t understand why. He was afraid of everything, yet he couldn’t give this up. Kim Soleum would jump at his own shadow, but this piece of fiction he created, he let it consume him.

I’m just so mad at him all the time. I’m still reading these damn notes and listening to these tapes just hoping I’ll find some clue to where the fuck he went.

The longer I spend on this, the more I feel like he left. That he went looking for this damn house. Did he find it? Maybe. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t come back. Maybe that’s why he went by himself instead of just talking to me.

I would have gone with him if he had asked. Even if I thought he was fucking crazy, I would have gone with him.

Fuck it.

I went for a drink tonight, because I couldn’t stop thinking about the shitty “what if?”. Haunted, haunted, haunted, we’re all fucking haunted.

I picked up someone from the bar. I hoped that it would take my mind off of it all, even if just for a few hours.

It did, but once we were done and he was sleeping in my bed, I went to Kim Soleum’s apartment. I just stood there in the middle of his living room and it’s the first time that I realized that his windows were covered. Not just curtains, but newspaper taped to the glass and covering them.

I never noticed. I’m usually only over here at night and I haven’t bothered pulling his curtains open, but something about standing in his apartment tonight was making me feel claustrophobic.

I went back to my apartment. I couldn’t stand being in there once I noticed. I could have pulled it all off the windows, but it’s late and I’m drunk, and I don’t fucking know what I would do if his windows were bricked up behind the newspaper.

Maybe I’ll rip them down tomorrow.^{[return to text]}

²⁰ ”The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” Blaise Pascal Pensées.^{[return to text]}

²¹ Soleum’s always been obsessive.

Reading through his notes and listening to his voice recordings, there’s something I didn’t want to believe. He loves this film that he’s dedicated himself to. He loves these men who are facing so much impossibility. He loved them, and maybe a reason part of me has struggled with all of this so much is that I wish I knew he loved me in the same way. It wasn’t just curiosity. He loved them.^{[return to text]}

²¹ Sleepwalking (Somnamulism) has led to serious injuries in those who suffer from the condition, due to performing complex behaviours during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. During an episode, sufferers have no conscious awareness of actions, creating an unprecedented situation with the inclusion of the unknown hallway.^{[return to text]}

²²[443— “We must speak also of the labyrinths, the most astonishing work of human riches. but not, as one might think, fictitious.” — Ed.] Pliny Natural History 36.19.84^{[return to text]}

²³I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

I keep saying maybe I’ll destroy the tapes. Maybe tomorrow I can burn them. Maybe tomorrow I can shred them. Maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow.

I can’t do it. I’m a coward.

Reading everything is like catching glimpses of him in the mirror, or like I’m just missing him as he walks past the doorway.

I said Soleum was the obsessive one, but maybe it’s always been me.

Fuck. It’s a bad night.

I spent all day in his apartment, trying to pull that damn newspaper off of his windows. I couldn’t bring myself to do that either. He left me to clean up his damn mess all by myself.

I’m still sitting here, in his living room. In the middle of the floor, looking at the way the streetlights from outside are bleeding through the paper. It’s almost like there’s something there, in all the articles. I didn’t find any notes that Soleum left on them, but there must have been a reason that he lined the windows with them. Why did he choose these articles and pages?

Maybe there’s something here.

There has to be something here.^{[Note from the Editor]}

^{Note from the Editor} At this time, we have decided to interject with additional papers unrelated to Aperi Cor Meum, but that has a relationship to Baek Saheon himself and his reaction to Soleum’s disappearance. Alongside the scattered copy of Aperi Cor Meum, letters were found. The following pages are those letters.

Letter One

My beloved brother,

The days are passing slowly here. I think often about how they would be filled with more laughter than they are now if you were here. You must be doing well though, and I hope that the world is being kind to you. Kinder than it ever was to me.

You haven’t written back to me recently, but that’s okay. I spend my time imagining that you are kept busy with wonderful things. Please don’t take this as a guilt, because it isn’t. You’ve just been on my mind as of late. It’s as if I can hear your footsteps in the room just beside me. Scampering about like when we were children.

It’s like your ghost is here with me, forever in my thoughts and space. You may not talk and I may not see you directly, but that doesn’t erase that fact.

Maybe I will see you soon, if you can find the time to visit me. I would love that beyond words could describe. Only if you find yourself with time to make the drive from the city.

Write me soon!

Letter Two

Fall is here, my dear brother.

Your visit earlier this week has been filling me with joy for days. Getting to sit with you and talk for hours, truly you could not have made me happier.

I’m so happy to see you doing well, and even making friends. But I thought you had left. I found that you had spent the night, but why did you not tell me goodbye in the morning? I would have made you breakfast and something to take on your drive home.

Did you not sleep well? I could hear you pacing.

It was too hard to get up and check on you. I couldn’t seem to pull myself from bed.

The reason you couldn’t sleep was me, wasn’t it? Did I say something to upset you earlier? If so, you have to tell me. You have to let me apologize.

I’m sorry, my little brother. I’m sorry for whatever it was.

Letter Three

My darling brother,

I’m so sorry, for everything that I have done.

Will you please talk to me? Will you please come see me?

I am breaking apart under the fact you will come home, but you won’t see me. You lock yourself in your room, even as I desperately ask you to let me in. Won’t you please? I want to apologize.

I’m so sorry, I don’t know what it was that I did, but it must have been awful.

I’ll take the silent treatment, I’ll take whatever punishment you deem necessary.

Please, just let me see that you are okay.

In 2012, Baek Saheon’s sister took her own life. These were the last letters she wrote, the final of which she never mailed. It was returned to Saheon as a copy from the police department.

Amongst the letters, there was a sticky note with Baek Saheon’s hand writing on it. The only thing he had written on it was: I never visited her. I couldn’t find the time. I should have. ^{[return to text]}

^{24The knocking. The tapping… I always thought Soleum’s tapping to see if I was awake wasn’t anything at all. Mindless knocking. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was the tapes this whole time.[return to text]}

^{25John Milton. Paradise Lost, Book IV[return to text]}

^{26[437—A book is a vast cemetery where for the most part one can no longer read the faded names on the tombstones.” — Ed.] Marcel Proust[return to text]}

^{27We reported Soleum as a missing person in October of 2014. It’s been seven months since then. It’s 2015 now. A new year, and he’s still missing.}

^{The police interviewed me once, but there was never any follow up. I told them what I could at the time, and then when I found the tapes, it’s not like I could. How do you explain to investigators that your friend was obsessed with a house? How do you explain to them that you’re beginning to be too.}

^{They haven’t said if they found anything. They must not have looked through his apartment all that well either. If they had, they would have been the ones to find the tapes and all his notes. Maybe then they would have been the ones in my shoes instead.}

^{I don’t know. They haven’t told me shit on what they’ve found. Like, I said, there’s been no follow up.}

^{I’m not his family anyways, so why would they tell me anything? I’m just the neighbor.[return to text]}

^{28Soleum crossed out that name so many damn times. XXX XXXXXX and XXX XXXXXX and XXX XXXXXX , over and over and over again.}

^{It shouldn’t have taken me this long to put that puzzle together. Just like the one that he left me in the newspapers on his windows. Sly bastard.}

^{It’s far too late anyways.}

^{I finally finished that damn cup of tea, and my hands have started to get cold now that they’re not holding it.}

^{Knock, knock, knock.}

^{Still that same knocking.}

^{It hasn’t stopped.}

^{”Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away…”[29]}

^{I’m alone in this house, I know I am.}

^{This time, I’m not getting ahead of myself.}

^{It started with the tapes, and now, here, it ends with the house.}

^{Up the stairs, there’s a closet door: a white door with a dark bronze handle.}

^{An impossible thing.}

^{Soleum told me to burn the tapes. I didn’t do what he told me. It was a warning, but it was one I know he knew I might disregard.}

^{I found that damn house, and now I’ve made the choice to find him.[return to text]}

^{29William Hughes Mearns. Antigonish.[return to text]}

^{30Will Navidson. House of Leaves.}