Defectors
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The Border City 2(ko)
In 2003 Song Du-yul, a philosophy professor, decides to go back to his homeland after spending thirty-seven years in Germany. Within a week after crossing the border, his reputation falls from a respected global political figure to an infamous communist spy. During a five-year-long trial, he was arrested and held in custody. This throws Korean society into turmoil and brings a big conflict between the Conservative and the Progressive parties. The filmmaker calmly contemplates this long period of the incident in detail and depicts a society with an indifferent manner. The story builds through an accretion of whimsical facts and it sometimes brings up uncomfortable truths which will irritate viewers. This film is a camera inside of us that evokes what viewers may have tried to forget.
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Unknown or forgotten by most Americans, the Korean War divided a people with several millenniums of shared history. Memory of Forgotten War conveys the human costs of military conflict through deeply personal accounts of four Korean American survivors whose experiences and memories embrace the full circle of the war: its outbreak and the day-to-day struggle for survival, separation from family members across the DMZ, the aftermath of a devastated Korean peninsula, and immigration to the United States. Each person reunites with relatives in North Korea conveying beyond words the meaning of four decades of family loss. Their stories belie the notion that war ends for civilians when the guns are silenced and foreshadow the futures of countless others displaced by ongoing military conflict today.
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YU Wooseong who had been working as a civil servant is on trial for espionage following his sibling’s confession. A reporter who has been laid off begins following the traces of a spy story manipulated by a government agency. The clues lead to a confession and false evidence that society and the press have turned their back on.
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Homes Apart: Korea(ko)
They speak the same language, share a similar culture and once belonged to a single nation. When the Korean War ended in 1953, ten million families were torn apart. By the early 90s, as the rest of the world celebrated the end of the Cold War, Koreans remain separated between North and South, fearing the threat of mutual destruction. Beginning with one man's journey to reunite with his sister in North Korea, filmmakers Takagi and Choy reveal the personal, social and political dimensions of one of the last divided nations on earth. The film was also the first US project to get permission to film in both South & North Korea.
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In 1992, political prisoners from North Korea settled in the South Korean town where filmmaker Dong-won Kim lived. Sent to South Korea as spies during the war, they spent 30 years in jail. How did they endure the many years of torture? What will become of them now that they have been released? Twelve years in the making, Repatriation is a very personal view of a country divided by an ongoing cold war.
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Following the tradition of military service in her family, Alene Duerk enlisted as a Navy nurse in 1943. During her eventful 32 year career, she served in WWII on a hospital ship in the Sea of Japan, and trained others in the Korean War. She became the Director of the Navy Nursing Corps during the Vietnam War before finally attaining the rank of Admiral in the U.S. Navy. Despite having no other women as mentors (or peers), Admiral Duerk always looked for challenging opportunities that women had not previously held. Her consistently high level of performance led to her ultimate rise to become the first woman Admiral.
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Despite his horrible experience as a prisoner of war during WWII, Frank Maselskis stays in the military and goes on to fight in Korea, where he participates in the brutal battle of the Chosin Reservoir. Upon returning home, Frank struggles to live a normal life while raising his daughters.