South Korean documentary, REPATRIATION (Berkeley premiere)

CLOSING NIGHT & FILM SCREENING for North Korea Awareness Week at UC Berkeley
REPATRIATION (Berkeley premiere)
Dong-won Kim
Winner of Freedom of Expression Award, Sundance Film Festival 2004
( 149 min / 35mm / 2003 / In Korean with English subtitles )

REPATRIATION ("Songhwan")
In the spring of 1992 filmmaker Dong-won Kim met Cho Chang-son and Kim Seak-hyoung, two North Koreans arrested by South Korean authorities years before. Convicted of spying for the North, they had spent thirty years as political prisoners. These men, and many others like them, underwent conversion schemes in prison that involved torture—those who renounced their communist beliefs were released from prison early. The others, known as “the
unconverted,” served their full terms. None were able to return home to North Korea, however, until the extraordinary exchange following the historic June 15 North-South Summit in 2000. Director Dong-won Kim followed these men for ten years, documenting how they survived—both physically and
psychologically—the dehumanizing time spent in prison, and their quest, once released, to finally go home.

For more info, visit http://www.koreasolidarity.org