​In the past, families often went to a public bathhouse on weekend mornings. As living standards improved, each household gained its own bathroom beyond a simple toilet. Today, people don’t visit bathhouses as much as in the past but they go to the sauna instead. Although times have changed, these hot spaces are still popular today. There are many different ways to enjoy a visit, but the heat and humidity is soaked up by everyone. From my own experience, switching between cold and hot baths brought a feeling of shock that would gradually subside. Although I couldn’t swim, I was good at holding my breath under the water. The bathhouse was a place of healing whenever the weather was chilly or my body felt stiff and heavy, but it was also a place full of nostalgic memories. The sight of a bathhouse alone can soothe my heart.

These warm feelings were brought to mind when I saw Kangmin Kim’s animated short 38-39°C (2011). I could feel the heat in the steamy bathhouse, and the public baths from my memories flashed through my mind. In the film, the child who becomes an adult also remembers the past through the bathhouse. The big man whose skin turns red and the smaller boy both have a big birthmark on their bottom. The boy scrubs the father’s birthmark as hard as he can. Anyone who has experienced a body scrub can imagine the pain during this scene. This pain becomes even more intense in the sequel Jeom (2017), where the big birthmark is a symbol of blood ties. The boy scrubs his father’s birthmark with all his might until it is torn up by the root.

Kangmin Kim is a skilled storyteller who can transform a seemingly uneventful family story into a spectacular action scene or a mystery thriller. Is this a talent that runs in the family, or it something anomalous? I exchanged emails with this brilliant stop motion creator between December 2018 and January 2019. His first child, the inspiration for Jeom, turned three during this time, and the birth of his second child promised to inspire new creative endeavors.