DEAR PYONGYANG

THURSDAY 28 OCTOBER AT 3PM

Country Japan Running Time107 mins Format DigiBeta Director/Producer/ DoP Yong-hi Yang Email akiyama@cqn.co.jp Website www.film.cheon.jp

The Japanese term for a second-generation ethnic Korean living in Japan is zainichi. Yong-hi Yang is one such director, and her fascinating documentary about the North Korean issue takes the form of an intimate portrait of her aging father.

Mr Yang emigrated to Japan as a teenager during the Japanese occupation of Korea and prior to the dividing of the country that followed the Korean War. Like many Korean immigrants of his generation, he is utterly ambivalent about his new Japanese homeland, and fiercely patriotic towards the country of his origins, believing strongly in the idea of a united communist Korea. His personal experiences have led to him identifying with the state established by Kim II Sung in the north, now presided over by the dictator’s son Kim Jong II, to such an extent that he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in 1971 of splitting up his family and sending his three sons, then aged 14, 16, and 18, to live in Pyongyang forever as part of a repatriation project that saw 90,000 such zainichi returning to North Korea.

Only his daughter remained, and it is evident that, having been raised with all the material comforts of the new adopted homeland, she does not share the same ideals and romantic vision of North Korea as her parents. Over the years she has recorded on video their visits to her estranged brothers and their families in Pyongyang, giving a rare insight into the living conditions of the professional classes who live in this mysterious country’s capital. What emerges through the process of her making this film is a tender, often humorous, often poignant, dialogue between father and daughter as they try to reconcile their ideological differences. JS

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