From the 1960s to the 1990s in Korea, women were not considered respected workers. They were treated as “helpers” and temporary labour. Jobs in the seontanbu coal mine were often given to wives of miners who died or were injured underground. To acquire such jobs to support their family, they had to sign a contract stating they would not sue the coal company. There are official records about male miners, but almost none about women. Due to this lack of records, and unfair medical and legal standards, women did not receive proper support or compensation from the state.

Seontanbu is a symbol of multiple scars: unfair views of women, unjust working conditions, and weak legal protection. Through the mask of an “anonymous informant”, this project tries to expose these realities and create a record that cannot be erased. Traditional Korean paper made from Mulberry tree, hanji, has long been used as a material for record-keeping.

In this project, hanji is used to create an anonymous mask as a new interface for recording marginalised stories. On this mask, traces of the seontanbu (women of the coal washery and their workplaces) are engraved in text and image. Like carving into stone, the mask seeks to leave a permanent record of the seontanbu—women whose existence has been forgotten/rendered absent. The hanji mask hides one’s identity as an act of defiance against this politics and forms a landscape that links the ground, face, and forgotten records, revealing the scars of the seontanbu.