Sun Kim & Morten Traavik: North South Man Woman
Yujin is the protagonist, the smart business woman who came to South Korea from the North setting up a matchmaking bureau – and marrying one of the male clients from the South, Yurok. But they are not the only couple – the photo above shows Hyojuy and Jaewu.
The film has a joyful tone and rhythm with tough moments in the background depicting, what the Northeners come from, with propaganda film clips in a – at the beginning – mosaic structure with a lot of music. Stressing the seriousness of the subject through filming a ceremony for a mother and a son, who died of starvation.
Shot over five years the characters develop, they move outside Seoul, children arrive and they produce bean paste in big barrels. The gender roles change, at least you see Jaewu cooking… later in the film at a party one of the women from the North say that if a man went into a kitchen in the North, he would lose his dick…
(Let me quote the text that is brought in the beginning of the film: “Rugged Terrain and severe winters give rise to regional stereotypes that people from the North of the Korean peninsula are “savage dogs fighting in the mud” and “fierce tigers from the forest”, while people from the South are referred to as “fresh wind and a bright moon” and “plum blossoms in the snow”.)
At the very same party, the same woman tells how she tried to flee ten times before she succeeded after being imprisoned and tortured. Dramatic scene, as is the tragic story Hyojuy comes up with: While she was away working, her little son died without her knowing. She decided to leave and she did to China being sold to a family there, got involved in a traffic accident, survived and after years bought herself the way to the South Korea.
Morten Traavik went back to do this film after “Liberation” with the group Laibach (https://filmkommentaren.dk/ugis-olte-morten-traavik-liberation-day/), also produced by VSF/ Uldis Cekulis, who this time teams up with a Norwegian and South Korean company. The film was at Pöff in Tallinn and premiered at the Sheffield Doc Fest.
Norway, Latvia, South Korea, 2025, 94 mins.
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