Social & External
An amazingly harrowing story of the 17 day engagement of bloody combat and heroic survival in subartic temperatures. UN forces largely outnumbered and surrounded, due to a surprise attack led by 120,000 Chinese troops.
Ryun-hee Kim, a North Korean housewife, was forced to come to South Korea and became its citizen against her will. As her seven years of struggle to go back to her family in North Korea continues, the political absurdity hinders her journey back to her loved ones. The life of her family in the North goes on in emptiness, and she fears that she might become someone, like a shadow, who exists only in the fading memory of her family.
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.
After the dissolution of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was launched as a South Korean government organization in 2005, civic groups and bereaved families wishing to complete the mission the government had failed to accomplish form a joint organization to investigate the remains of civilians who were massacred during the Korean War. A three-year-long documentary about the organization’s three-year-long excavation efforts, 206: Unearthed is a record of sunlight, dirt, and sweat.
An investigative reporter seeks to expose the whereabouts of a slush fund belonging to the former president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak.
In July 1951, all the sides to the Korean War sought a ceasefire. For a ceasefire, the Allied and Communist forces began to hold talks at Naebongjang, located northeast of Kaesong. However, they only sharply opposed each other and didn't make progress in the negotiation. In October 1951, the two sides met again in the small village of Neolmun-ri below Gaeseong. They set up tents there to negotiate and named the place Panmunjom. The name Panmunjeom is a combination word of Panmun, meaning Neulmun-ri, and “Jom,” of an inn.
They speak the same language, share a similar culture and once belonged to a single nation. When the Korean War ended in 1953, ten million families were torn apart. By the early 90s, as the rest of the world celebrated the end of the Cold War, Koreans remain separated between North and South, fearing the threat of mutual destruction. Beginning with one man's journey to reunite with his sister in North Korea, filmmakers Takagi and Choy reveal the personal, social and political dimensions of one of the last divided nations on earth. The film was also the first US project to get permission to film in both South & North Korea.
A documentary that tells the story of Choi Hyun-sook, the first out lesbian parliamentarian candidate in Korea who ran for Jongno-gu in the April 2008 National Assembly election. It's a story about people who dream of a world where minorities are happy, and who, with expectation and aspiration, find the campaign headquarters and made an election with Choi Hyun-sook.
My parents were real estate developers and dealers in the 1980s. They achieved the ‘middle class dream’ thanks to the development boom. However, the Asian financial crisis swept everything away.
Eunmi, a woman who underwent intense anti-communist education while she grew up in South Korea, lives a normal life in America. However, after going on a trip to North Korea with her husband, her life begins to change. During an open forum event in South Korea, where she was invited to speak, she suffers the unimaginable, and the more she tries to escape from the situation, the worse and worse it gets.
Heroes brings to life the harrowing exploits of a Canadian platoon who fought to hold their vulnerable outpost in the face of repeated attacks during the Korean War.
A contemporary history of Korea(s) from a unique point of view that embraces the inner history of both South and North Korea in a single narrative.
Things That Do Us Part is a documentary that reframes the stories of three women fighters who dove into a tragic war in modern Korean history, using witness statements and reenactments.
KIM-GUN searches for the whereabouts of a young man whose identity has sparked a national controversy over the 1980 May 18 Gwangju Uprising. Starting with the vague memories of those who had crossed paths with him during that time, the film tracks down those who participated in the Uprising as “Citizen Soldiers.” It also traces KIM’s final steps, based on photographic clues found in the firearms he carried and the “Surveillance Truck No. 10” in which he rode. By identifying KIM-GUN, we believe that we can find valuable leads to resolving the ongoing controversy over May 18. Why did a nameless young man join the Uprising? Why did he take up arms? Where has he gone afterwards? It is the answers to these questions that the film seeks.
A story about 4 gay men who try to lead a normal life in Korea, the conservative and harsh country for LGBT in Asia. In the middle of making a queer film Jun-moon, a director, loses his self-confidence due to social scrutiny regarding his sexual orientation. Byung-gwon, a gay rights activist, has been participating in movements to establish equal rights for homosexual laborers. Young-soo, a chef who moved from the countryside 15 years ago, lived a lonely life but he finds happiness after joining a gay choir. Yol, who works for a major company, dreams of the day him and his partner, can have a legal wedding with overcoming the prejudice against people living with HIV/AIDS.
From 1950 to 1953, one hundred thousand children were orphaned by the Korean War. With no resources to mend the wounds, the two sides, North and South, took different paths to find homes and families for the war orphans. While the children of South Korea were sent to Europe and the United States through ‘International Adoption’, the children of North Korea were distributed across Eastern Europe through a method called ‘Commissioned Education’. As a result, more than five thousand children from the North had to spend nearly a decade living in foreign lands across Eastern Europe. This story is a record of their lives, which used to be kept hidden from the rest of the world. There is a key to understanding how North Korea's closed political structure began and how the ‘Juche ideology’ was formed in this documentary movie. Understanding North Korea in the 1950s is an important way to understand North Korea at present.
Tracing the footsteps of North Korean orphans who went to Poland during the Korean War, two women, one from the North and the other from the South, bond through the solidarity of wound and forge together a path toward healing.
In April 2014, the entire nation of South Korea watched on television live as The Sewol capsized off the coast of Jindo. The tragedy left life-long wounds in the hearts of people whose family and friends had been among the 304 passengers killed. The majority of the victims were high school students on a school trip. Their parents were not even given the luxury of grieving, as they had to camp out in front of the Parliament, City Hall and the Presidential House, asking for only one thing - to know the truth about why their children had been left to die. But after more than a year, that truth has yet to be brought to light. This film is a documentation of the year-long struggle and painful soul-searching of people destined to be labelled as 'bereaved families' for the rest of their lives, as they come face to face with the naked face of their cruel country.
"You belong to the country for the next two years." The film describes Woo-cheol's struggles with becoming part of a group while trying to maintain his individuality throughout his military service period. A humorous yet cynical portrait of military groupism.
