Caught in forbidden love, Yong Joon defects from North Korea, leaving Jae Sung behind. Years later, a reunion forces him to choose between past and present.
After defecting from North Korea, Loh Kiwan struggles to obtain refugee status in Belgium, where he encounters a dejected woman who has lost all hope.
Two young North Korean gymnasts prepare for an unprecedented competition in this documentary that offers a rare look into the communist society and the daily lives of North Korean families. For more than eight months, film crews follow 13-year-old Pak Hyon Sun and 11-year-old Kim Song Yun and their families as the girls train for the Mass Games, a spectacular nationalist celebration.
In feudal Korea, a group of starving villagers grow weary of the orders handed down to them by their controlling king and set out to use a deadly monster under their control to push his armies back.
Sung-geun is an untalented actor who makes a living playing minor roles. He happens to land on the role as Kim Il-sung, the former leader of North Korea, for the rehearsal of the South-North Korea Summit. Sung-geun becomes passionately immersed in his role, motivated by his son who looks up to him. However, the summit is not realized, and Sung-geun ends up lost in the delusion that he really is Kim Il-sung.
Sugihara, a Japanese-born, third-generation Korean teenager struggles to find a place in a society that will not accept him.
Shrouded in secrecy and notoriously cash-strapped the North Korean regime has resorted to running one of the world's largest slaving operations - exploiting the profits to fulfil their own agenda. These bonded labourers can be found in Russia, China and dozens of other countries around the world including EU member states. Featuring undercover footage and powerful testimonials, we reveal the scale and brutality of the operation and ask what, if anything, is being done to stop it.
Poongsan has the unenviable - and death-defying - job of delivering messages across the North and South Korean border to separated families. When South Korean government agents ask him to smuggle in In-ok, the lover of a high-ranking North Korean defector, into the South, the damsel and rescuer fall in love instead.
In 1951 ceasefire is declared, but two remaining armies fought their final battle on the front line Towards the end of the Korean War, a South Korean battalion is fiercely battling over a hill on the front line border against the North in order to capture a strategic point that would determine the new border between two nations. The ownership of this small patch of land would swap multiple times each day. Kang is dispatched to the front line in order to investigate the tacit case that’s been happening there.
In the near future, North Korea has established full diplomatic relations with the United States. The Lims, the family of the first North Korean ambassador to the United States, find their newfound freedoms difficult to comprehend, and for their teenage son - impossible to resist.
In 1950s North Korea, during the war with South Korea, Son-a, a stunningly beautiful young girl, saves the life of Il-kyu, a wounded soldier left behind after a brutal battle. Despite being thrown together by tragic circumstances, the innocent young lovers' relationship blossoms, only later to be cruelly severed due to being born into opposing sides of a fight. When Il-kyu leaves to save his mother, he promises to return and Son-a waits for him for a lifetime. Separated by war and countries between them, broken hearted Il-kyu tries everything to return to her in the North. But political realities between the countries make their reunion impossible. As the years go by and their youth slips away, Il-kyu finally gets an unexpected opportunity to fulfill his wish and return to her.
North Korean Refugee Eunseo has been living in South Korea for 20 years. Now she is almost South Korean. No one knows she came from North Korea. Then her mother, who has been out of contact, comes to South Korea, and gets to live with her. People get to know that Eunseo came from North Korea, and Eunseo starts to feel uncomfortable with her mother.
Over many years of division, North and South Korea have become like a hall of mirrors where it is difficult to tell the real from the false. Inspired by real people who have traveled between North and South amid this division, this film depicts a relationship between the two that is so deeply skewed that it is impossible to tell what anyone is working to achieve.
From the late 1950s through the '70s, more than 90,000 of the ethnic Koreans in Japan emigrated to North Korea, a country that promised them affluence, justice, and an end to discrimination. KAZOKU NO KUNI tells the story of one of their number, who returns for just a short period. For the first time in 25 years, Sonho is reunited with his family in Tokyo after being allowed to undergo an operation there. Sonho’s younger sister Rie is at the centre of the film, and is not hard to recognise as the director’s alter-ego. In her documentaries DEAR PYONGYANG and SONA, THE OTHER MYSELF, Yang Yonghi told the story of her own life, and how, at age six, she experienced the departure of her three older brothers, who left their family for Pyongyang.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur leads a Korean War campaign, and the war tests a married couple's relationship.
After completing his required decade of military service and being honored as a hero, a North Korean sergeant makes a sudden shocking attempt to defect to the South, risking life and limb for the chance to finally determine his own destiny.
One late afternoon, a mysterious guy tries to hitchhike in the middle of nowhere. But nobody seems to give him a ride. It is getting quite dark, a small van driver suddenly stops his car because he saw a man standing in front of his vehicle and the strange guy gets in the car abruptly.
A unified team representing the two Koreas competed at the 1991 Chiba International Table Tennis Championships. It was the first such sport team since the division of the Korean peninsula. The unified team won the group competition event, beating the front runner, China.
On the morning of her first day at a new school, a girl practices different ways to greet her teacher in order to make a good impression. A bundle of nerves, she heads off to school, and, contrary to her expectations, is met with indifference by the teacher.
A poor North Korean fisherman finds himself an accidental defector, and is groomed to be a spy by an ambitious South Korean military officer.