DEAR PYONGYANG

Director(s): Yong-hi Yang
Country: Japan / North Korea
Year: 2005
Language: Japanese / Korean with English subtitles
Length: 107 minutes
Website: www.film.cheon.jp

Program:
2 April - 19.30 hours - Filmmuseum Vondelpark Amsterdam

A Korean-Japanese daughter tries to understand her father’s sworn political loyalty to North Korea. The impossible personal and political quandaries experienced by ethnic Koreans living in Japan find gentle, touching expression in this documentary.

Mr. Yang, lives with his wife in Osaka, and both remain impassioned supporters of North Korea. Leaders in the pro-Communist “Zainichi” movement of Korean-born residents in postwar Japan, the Yangs’ belief in a unified, socialist Korea remained solid into the 1970’s, when they agreed to send their three sons to the North as so-called “returnees” to the homeland. Two of the filmmaker’s visits to her brothers are shown here, revealing a happy home life, but a truly dreary Pyongyang.