Ryeohaeng

Red Maria 2

September 2015 •Korean

Korean sex worker Yonhee goes to Japan to build solidarity with her counterparts there. YAMASITA Youngae heads for Kyoto to give a lecture on how former prostitute-turned-comfort women were left out of the movement to achieve justice for comfort women. Korean professor PARK Yu-ha is sued by former comfort women because of her book Comfort Women of the Empire. Reportage writer KAWADA Fumiko Tells the story of BAE Bonki, a Korean who worked as a comfort woman in Okinawa. Shuttling between the issue of sex workers who refuse to be pictured as victims and the issue of comfort women who couldn’t even be acknowledged as victims, the film reveals stories that had disappeared from official memory.

The Women Outside

July 1996 •English

They're called bar women, hostesses, or sex workers and "western princesses." They come from poor families, struggling to earn a decent wage, only to be forced into the world's oldest profession. They're the women who work in the camptowns that surround U.S. military bases in South Korea. In 40 years, over a million women have worked in Korea's military sex industry, but their existence has never been officially acknowledged by either government. In The Women Outside, a film by J.T. Orinne Takagi and Hye Jung Park, some of these women bravely speak out about their lives for the first time. The film raises provocative questions about military policy, economic survival, and the role of women in global geopolitics

Verliebt, verlobt, verloren

June 2015 •German

Spy Nation

October 2016 •Korean

YU Wooseong who had been working as a civil servant is on trial for espionage following his sibling’s confession. A reporter who has been laid off begins following the traces of a spy story manipulated by a government agency. The clues lead to a confession and false evidence that society and the press have turned their back on.

The Border City 2

March 2010 •Korean

In 2003 Song Du-yul, a philosophy professor, decides to go back to his homeland after spending thirty-seven years in Germany. Within a week after crossing the border, his reputation falls from a respected global political figure to an infamous communist spy. During a five-year-long trial, he was arrested and held in custody. This throws Korean society into turmoil and brings a big conflict between the Conservative and the Progressive parties. The filmmaker calmly contemplates this long period of the incident in detail and depicts a society with an indifferent manner. The story builds through an accretion of whimsical facts and it sometimes brings up uncomfortable truths which will irritate viewers. This film is a camera inside of us that evokes what viewers may have tried to forget.

No Money, No Future

June 2017 •Korean

Punk bands in Korea get invited to biggest hardcore punk festival in Tokyo. This movie shows how one of the loudest and most active punk bands in Asia live and deliver message very closely and pleasantly.

I Wish I Could Be Japanese

June 1992 •Japanese

The film deals with the rights of Japanese-Koreans -born in Japan but without Japanese passport or nationality- and the social rejection that they face if they don’t integrate completely, abandoning their Korean identity. The film’s main thread is the story of a Korean man, who in the times of the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula, is sent to Japan to fight along with the Japanese in the Philippines, but after the war and fearing discrimination, creates a Japanese identity for himself and manages to get married and have children without his family ever knowing about his origins for 50 years until he is arrested in 1985 for forging official documents and in suspicion of being a spy from North Korea. (…) © timegoesbyin.wordpress.com/tag/i-wanted-to-be-japanese

Beyond Utopia

October 2023 •English

A courageous pastor uses his underground network to rescue and aid North Korean families as they risk their lives to embrace freedom.

Kim Jong-un: The Unauthorized Biography

September 2015 •French

A journey through several countries to find those who really know Kim Jong-un, North Korea's leader, in an attempt to profile a contradictory dictator who seems to rule his nation with both disturbing benevolence and cold cruelty while being worshipped as a living god by his subjects in exalted displays of ridiculous fanaticism.

The 2nd Repatriation

September 2022 •Korean

In 2000, in the era of inter-Korean reconciliation, 63 non-converted prisoners were repatriated to the North, and a 2nd repatriation movement was launched in 2001 but failed again and again in later years. As of 2022, the average age of the surviving secondary repatriation applicants is 91.

Liberation Day

October 2016 •English

Under the loving but firm guidance of an old fan turned director and cultural diplomat, and to the surprise of a whole world, the ex-Yugoslavian cult band Laibach becomes the first rock group ever to perform in the fortress state of North Korea.

PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Opening Ceremony: Peace in Motion

February 2018 •English

Korea: The Never-Ending War

April 2019 •English

Shedding new light on a geopolitical hot spot, the film — written and produced by John Maggio and narrated by Korean-American actor John Cho — confronts the myth of the “Forgotten War,” documenting the post-1953 conflict and global consequences.

Defectors

April 2023 •Korean

Combining a humorous and affectionate family portrait, a historical film and a search for identity, Defectors confronts the impact of the Korean War on different generations. Through encounters with a North Korean defector, Hyun kyung Kim reflects on her separation from her loved ones — such as her whimsical mother, whom she left behind in Korea upon moving to the United States.

The Wandering Chef

October 2020 •Korean

Korean celebrity chef Jiho Im mourns the death of a beloved maternal figure in the only way he knows how: cooking 108 delectable dishes over 24 hours.

Napalm

September 2017 •French

Napalm is the story of the breathtaking and brief encounter, in 1958, between a French member of the first Western European delegation officially invited to North Korea after the devastating Korean war and a nurse working for the Korean Red Cross hospital, in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

North Korea: A Day in the Life

January 2004 •Dutch

If the cityscapes and patriotic anthems of this film seem a far cry from the bleak landscape of Seoul Train, that's no accident. Dutch filmmaker Pieter Fleury, with the full permission and cooperation of the North Korean government, created this propaganda film that gives us a glimpse of a day in the life of one of the world's most enigmatic societies. A Day in the Life, largely dictated by the North Korean film bureau, follows a typical North Korean family through their daily duties, largely dedicated to the pride in the North Korean nation of comrades and the glory of General Kim Jong Il. The film is meant to extol the success of modern North Korea. But does it? With straight footage and a total absence of narration, viewers may interpret Fleury's film in a slightly different manner than intended

Blue Butterfly Effect

June 2017 •Korean

The small county of Seongju staged protests against the THAAD. Young mothers led protests from concerns about their kids and the exposure to radiation. Gradually, they learn the system is faulty.

Sound of Nomad: Koryo Arirang

May 2017 •Korean

The documentary starts with a diva of a tragic family history related to a history of migration. The rare archival footage reanimates her history reverberating with the current world crisis. Sound of Nomad: Koryo Arirang is a testimonial – a witness to injustice and tragedy, but it is also a declaration of survival – a survival that is not static but transformative – not brittle but fluid. The trains that displace, the deserts that separate form one harsh horizon – a historical limit – but within that limit, against it and across it are people, are a culture, not escaping but flourishing unofficially, with the affective majesty of a melody, a rhythm, an Arirang

Geographies of Kinship

November 2019 •English

In this powerful tale about the rise of Korea’s global adoption program, four adult adoptees return to their country of birth and reconnect with their roots, mapping the geographies of kinship that bind them to a homeland they never knew.