Award-winning filmmaker Yang Yong-hi was just six years old when she watched her eldest brother leave Japan for North Korea as one of 200 “human gifts” for leader Kim Il-sung’s 60th birthday.
As a North Korean anthem blared, through bursts of confetti, he handed her a note before his ferry departed Niigata port: “Yong-hi, listen to a lot of music. Watch as many movies as you want.”
It was 1972, a year after her parents — members of the ethnic Korean Zainichi community in Japan — had sent their other two sons the same way, lured by the Kim regime’s promise of a socialist paradise with free education, healthcare and jobs for all.
Photo: AFP
The boys never moved back.
“My parents dedicated their entire lives to an entity that came up with such a senseless project and forced them to sacrifice their own children for it,” Yang, now 57, said.
The trauma of being ripped apart from her siblings reverberates in all of Osaka-born Yang’s films, which document the suffering of her family across generations — from the end of Japanese colonial rule to decades after the split of the Korean peninsula.
Photo: AFP
Her father was a prominent pro-North Korean activist in Osaka, and had sent his sons to live there in the 1970s as part of a repatriation program organized by Pyongyang and Tokyo.
Around 93,000 Japan-based Koreans left for North Korea under the scheme between 1959 and 1984. Yang’s eldest brother was among 200 university students specially chosen to honor Kim Il-sung.
The regime’s promises came to almost nothing, but the Zainichi arrivals were forced to stay. Their families could do little to bring them back.
Yang’s parents “had no choice after having already sent their children. To keep the kids safe (in North Korea), they couldn’t leave the regime, and had to become even more devoted,” she said.
“I was so angry at the system that kept my brothers as hostages.”
Unlike her parents, Yang rebelled.
‘I WANTED TO BE FREE’
Yang said she faced discrimination in Japan — repeatedly denied jobs and fired from a film project because of her Korean heritage. She also had to grapple with the pro-North Korean sentiment in her community.
Her father was a prominent figure in the Chongryon organization — Pyongyang’s de facto embassy in Japan — which ran the university where she studied literature.
During her time at the school, when students were asked to interpret texts with leader “Kim Jong-il’s literary theories,” Yang said she once submitted a blank page.
And at home, where portraits of North Korean leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il hung side by side, she resented her parents for sending her brothers away.
“I wanted to be free,” Yang said.
“I could have... pretended I was Japanese, and avoided being honest about my father and brothers, acting as if I don’t recognize any problems. But to really break free, I had to confront them all.”
After a failed marriage and spending some three years as a teacher at a Pyongyang-linked high school, she left for New York to study documentary filmmaking.
And it was through movies that she began to unpack the story of her family.
Her first documentary, Dear Pyongyang, was released in 2005 to critical acclaim, including at the Sundance and Berlin film festivals.
It offered a rare, independent look inside North Korea, featuring footage from Yang’s camcorder during her trips to visit her brothers.
It infuriated the Chongryon, which demanded an apology.
By then, Yang had acquired South Korean nationality, making it impossible for her to ever visit her brothers again.
“It’s a huge price, but I have no regrets. I at least stayed true to my own desire — to make a movie, and to tell a story about my own family,” Yang explained.
DESPERATE FOR A HOMELAND
Yang’s latest step in that quest is the film Soup and Ideology, set for a theatrical release this year.
It focuses on her mother Kang Jung-hee, who fiercely loves her children but is also deeply loyal to Pyongyang.
For 45 years, she sent food, money and other goods to her sons in Pyongyang, including Seiko watches to be exchanged for cash.
Yang said her mother was often “unnaturally and overly cheerful,” telling people that her sons are doing well in Pyongyang “thanks to the North Korean leaders. But at home, she would cry alone,” the director said, especially after Kang’s eldest son was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Yang said her mother would send any medicine for the disease she could afford from Japan to North Korea, without knowing what he might need.
He died in 2009.
In her old age, she told Yang of yet another traumatic event — a bloody crackdown by South Korean forces on Jeju Island in 1947-54 to crush an uprising.
As many as 30,000 people were killed, according to the National Archives of Korea.
They included Kang’s fiancee and relatives.
“My mother is someone who desperately wanted a homeland. She wanted to belong to Jeju but she was forced to leave. She didn’t see her place in Japan,” Yang said. “She was looking for a government that she could trust, and she believed in North Korea.”
That is where Yang’s two surviving brothers remain.
Despite the struggles facing her, Yang said she still wanted to speak out.
“Since I was young, I was constantly told: ‘don’t say this, don’t say that, always say this’,” she said.
“I realized I wanted to do it whatever the price.”
The Portuguese never established a presence on Taiwan, but they must have traded with the indigenous people because later traders reported that the locals referred to parts of deer using Portuguese words. What goods might the Portuguese have offered their indigenous trade partners? Among them must have been slaves, for the Portuguese dealt slaves across Asia. Though we often speak of “Portuguese” ships, imagining them as picturesque vessels manned by pointy-bearded Iberians, in Asia Portuguese shipping between local destinations was crewed by Asian seamen, with a handful of white or Eurasian officers. “Even the great carracks of 1,000-2,000 tons which plied
It’s only half the size of its more famous counterpart in Taipei, but the Botanical Garden of the National Museum of Nature Science (NMNS, 國立自然科學博物館植物園) is surely one of urban Taiwan’s most inviting green spaces. Covering 4.5 hectares immediately northeast of the government-run museum in Taichung’s North District (北區), the garden features more than 700 plant species, many of which are labeled in Chinese but not in English. Since its establishment in 1999, the site’s managers have done their best to replicate a number of native ecosystems, dividing the site into eight areas. The name of the Coral Atoll Zone might
Nuclear power is getting a second look in Southeast Asia as countries prepare to meet surging energy demand as they vie for artificial intelligence-focused data centers. Several Southeast Asian nations are reviving mothballed nuclear plans and setting ambitious targets and nearly half of the region could, if they pursue those goals, have nuclear energy in the 2030s. Even countries without current plans have signaled their interest. Southeast Asia has never produced a single watt of nuclear energy, despite long-held atomic ambitions. But that may soon change as pressure mounts to reduce emissions that contribute to climate change, while meeting growing power needs. The
On Monday morning, in quick succession, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) released statements announcing “that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平) have invited KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to lead a delegation on a visit to the mainland” as the KMT’s press release worded it. The KMT’s press release added “Chairwoman Cheng expressed her gratitude for the invitation and has gladly accepted it.” Beijing’s official Xinhua news release described Song Tao (宋濤), head of the Taiwan Work Office of the CCP Central Committee, as
RSS