Goodbye, Pyeongyang (2011)
Genre : Documentary
Runtime : 1H 22M
Director : Yang Yong-hi
Synopsis
"Goodbye, Pyeongyang" is co-production between South Korea and Japan Synopsis Director Yonghi Yang’s previous piece, “Dear Pyeong Yang”, has told of North Korean tales. This time, he brings in “Sun-hwa”, the sister of a brother who migrated to North Korean from Japan in the beginning of the 1970s. Through “Sun-hwa”, it shows the images of the immigrant generation as well as the generation that was born and raised in North Korea. Although ‘Sun-hwa’s growth stages are very typical, the specialty of the North Korean society is quietly shown. Through the process of establishing her identity in the North Korean society as an immigrant generation, North Korea isn’t portrayed as simply an unsociable society but as an area on earth which hold the universal image of the human society. This may be said to be producer “Yang”s special merit. The picture of family gives a normal everyday life view of the known-to-be different name, North Korea.
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Shin Dong-Huyk was born on November 19, 1983 as a political prisoner in a North Korean re-education camp. He was a child of two prisoners who had been married by order of the wardens. He spent his entire childhood and youth in Camp 14, in fact a death camp. He was forced to labor since he was six years old and suffered from hunger, beatings and torture, always at the mercy of the wardens. He knew nothing about the world outside the barbed-wire fences. At the age of 23, with the help of an older prisoner, he managed to escape. For months he traveled through North Korea and China and finally to South Korea, where he encountered a world completely strange to him.
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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.
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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.
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