Synopsis

‘Ryeohaeng’ means 'journey' in North Korean dialect. A group of women climbs a summer mountain situated in South Korea. They are refugees who have settled in the South Korean society after fleeing from North Korea. Despite their wish to lead a new life in the South Korean society, the conflicts that forbid them from settling down roots in neither North nor South and the longings for home follow them. For them, climbing the mountains has been an unavoidable journey for survival.

Director

• 

  Im Heung-soon
  

  Factory Complex (2014-5)
  Jeju Prayer (2012)

  Korea, which originally was one nation, was divided into North and South Korea over Japanese colonial era and the Korean war. For the people currently living in the South, people in North Korea are often associated with poverty, autocracy and the nuclear weapon. The false perceptions towards South Korean from the North Koreans are not much different.
  These people who haven’t been able to see, hear, or meet each other over the militarized border, continued on with the hostile relationship and brought them into even stranger relationship.
  This project questions the public and social responsibility that art holds by bringing the honest stories from the women who experienced the lives in North and South Korea.

Review

<Ryeohaeng> by the director Im Heung-Soon relates to his previous film, Factory Complex. If Factory Complex pays attention to the women workers who are the driving force behind the condensed industrialization and its victims at the same time, <Ryeohaeng> focuses on the women from North Korea as active subjects who have moved and disturbed the Division and also as the most vulnerable people under Division Structure. Because they are women, they could cross the border and leave North Korea, but they experienced a lot of pain and discrimination. Since North Korean famine in the mid-1990s, controlling the population has been weakened and some women could be so active to make a long journey to South Korea with crossing the border. However, their migration had been a series of terrible experiences, such as purchasing marriage, human trafficking, violence, etc., and they can hardly be free from discrimination and prejudice in Korea that they went through hell and high water to arrive.
<Ryeohaeng> describes calmly the life in North Korea, fears and hesitation about crossing the border, the course of their migration through China and a third country, and their difficult daily lives in South Korea, based on the interviews with ten women from North Korea. The director's unique poetic images and music, juxtaposed with their touching interviews, bring another narrative development to the film. The film poses serious questions related to living as a woman on the Korean peninsula and the conditions of women under the Division Structure, in depicting 'Ryeohaeng' of the women from North Korea who cannot settle down nowhere and live a roaming life as ever. [Kim Seong-gyeong]

Credits

• Director  Im Heung-soon
• Producer  Kim Min-Kyung(mk)
• Cinematographer  Cho Young-chen
• Editor  Lee Hak-min(127COMPANY)
• Music  Kang Ida
• Sound  Lee Sung-jun

Contribution & World Sales

• Contribution & World Sales  이다영
• E-Mail  minhiedy@gmail.com