Recommended: Library Journal

This ongoing collection of independent documentaries provides a better understanding and insight into the Korea of today through an examination of the pressing societal issues of the day.

Titles include:

Crossing Three Borders: Risking your Life in the Diplomatic Game
Guided by Pastor Peter Jung, a South Korean activist, nine defectors are gathered in a Southern China village. North Korean defectors are internationally accepted as refugees, yet China does not recognize them as such. So, the plan is to cross into Vietnam because if they are arrested in China, they face repatriation, which in turn leads to imprisonment, or worse.

With the help of Pastor Jung, the nine refugees cross successfully by night into Vietnam. But the South Korean Embassy refuses to accept the defectors. Still in hiding, a search begins for an Embassy that might offer safe harbour and refugee status. There is some hope that the Danish diplomatic mission will offer assistance, but once out in the open, their position known, they are at risk. The penalties threatened by China are not to be taken lightly….

Fukushima: Long Term Effects of Nuclear Disasters
South Korea is only a few thousand kilometers from Fukushima, location of the last nuclear disaster. While Japanese authorities are trying to minimize the long-term impact of the accident, South
Korean filmmakers set out to visit Chernobyl, 20 years after the disaster, to assess the reality of the long-term impact of this type of accident and what it may portend for Fukushima and the region.

The House of Sharing: Conversations with Korean Comfort Women of the Japanese Army
During the Second World War, the Japanese Imperial Army abducted almost 200,000 young Korean women to torture and use as sex slaves. The few women who had the chance to return home, passed the end of their lives as pariahs of society. Eight of them, now in their eighties, keep on fighting for justice, even though their time is short.

Over the course of one year, female director Hein S. Seok captured the daily lives of these survivors to collect their stories through their sincere words, paintings and songs. In this film, these “Halumni”  (grandmothers), loving and full of humor, are no longer just victims of inhumanity, or the symbol of a vital fight: they have become our very own grandmothers.