Social & External
The Christians of North Gando lose their country and leave their hometown, but gain the Gospel. The cross they hold in their hands is the symbol of daring for independence and a royal summon of the generation they have to endure. Historian Sim Yo Han retraces the footsteps of the late Father Moon Dong Hwan and finds meanings of the anti-Japanese independence movement hidden in various parts of North Gando.
A group of women climbs a summer mountain situated in South Korea. They are refugees who have settled into South Korean society after fleeing from North Korea. For them, climbing the mountains has been an unavoidable journey for survival - a matter of life and death.
During the Japanese occupation period, Koreans were forced to deport or drafted to work in other countries. Now 150 years passed, it appears around 7million of those people and their families are spread in 170 countries. There, a world-famous Korean-Japanese musician Yang Bang Ean follows the pathways of Korean diasporas as an inspiration, and performs his cross over music concert called ‘ARIRANG ROAD’.
The film traces PARK Geun-hye's life back to the 1970s, when the leader-follower relationship began between PARK, who became the first lady of the Yushin regime, and CHOI Taemin, the leader of a pseudo-religion. It then examines the Sewol ferry incident, CHOI Soonsil Gate, candlelight rallies, and finally the impeachment.
Jeju-do is the largest of Korean islands and lies between Korea and Japan. There, for hundreds of years, women dive without breathing apparatus, to the ocean floor and collect shellfish, octopus, and urchins that they sell. The divers are in their sixties and seventies and their daughters do not want to inherit their work, lifestyle, and health problems that go with diving. As a filmmaker I was privileged to meet many of these women and dive with them. Their stories of hardship and pride confirmed my desire to record this unique and ancient tradition.
Interpreting an event of ROKS Cheonan corvette, torpedoed and sunken by North Korea, this documentary rebuilds the event with a different insight. No one can tell if the investigation of Cheonan has reached compelling conclusion. But the film tells and reveals how unreasonable Korean society is.
My father led a coup in 1961. Two years later, I became the president's daughter.
There lives a couple known as "100-year-old lovebirds". They're like fairy tale characters: the husband is strong like a woodman, and the wife is full of charms like a princess. They dearly love each other, wear Korean traditional clothes together, and still fall asleep hand in hand. However, death, quietly and like a thief, sits between them. This film starts from that moment, and follows the last moments of 76 years of their marriage.
"Getting into North Korea was one of the hardest and weirdest processes VBS has ever dealt with. They finally said, “OK, OK, you can come. But only as tourists.” At the airport, the North Korean consulate brought us to a restaurant and these women came out and started singing North Korean nationalist songs. We were thinking, “Look, we were just on a plane for 20 hours. Can we just go to bed?” but this guy with our group who was from the LA Times told us, “Everyone in here besides us is secret police. If you don’t act excited then you’re not going to get your visa. So we got drunk and jumped up onstage and sang songs with the girls. The next day we got our visas. A lot of people we had gone with didn’t get theirs. That was our first hint at just what a freaky, freaky trip we were embarking on…" -VICE Founder Shane Smith
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.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th century Finnish philologist G. J. Ramstedt travelled around Mongolia and Central-Asia. In this documentary Ramstedt’s memoirs are heard in the modern day setting, where tradition is replaced with hunger for money, and deserts give way to cities.
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.
Documentary directed by Tom Kleespie inspired from Korean War veterans who recall memories both painful and patriotic, putting a human face on an often forgotten conflict. Stories include wartime recollections, such as one soldier's first moments seeing a MiG fighter up close, and veterans' often-tragic experiences returning home, where Americans largely neglected to welcome them back.
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
In 1966, Deann Borshay Liem was adopted by an American family and sent from Korea to her new home in California. There, the memory of her birth family was nearly obliterated, until recurring dreams led her to investigate her own past, and she discovered that her Korean mother was very much alive. Bravely uniting her biological and adoptive families, Borshay Liem embarks on a heartfelt journey in this acclaimed film that first premiered on POV in 2000. First Person Plural is a poignant essay on family, loss and the reconciling of two identities.
The Grand Canal project was one of the key pledges of the former President Lee. He first said that he was carrying out a project to save the four rivers but it was a lie. He eventually proceeded the project which was a hotbed of all kinds of irregularities. After ten years, now the river is dying. Some people collaborated to the past regime, and some resisted it. On whom will we stand?
Stories of three women who have been living in Itaewon, Seoul, Korea since the era that the town was run by U.S dollars of the U.S. Army.
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