Is this the defin­i­tive film on the con­flict between North and South Korea?

There are some whose knowl­edge of the fraught polit­i­cal machi­na­tions on the Kore­an penin­su­la begins and ends with the nuke-obsessed exploits of Kim Jong-un. The real­i­ty is that is that this is just the tip of an extreme­ly huge ice­berg. Rela­tions between North and South Korea have been high­ly com­bustible through­out the post-war era, but it hasn’t always been through bald mil­i­tary aggres­sion or pub­lic dis­plays of inter­nal might. It has been the cold­est of cold wars, with pet­ty polit­i­cal point-scor­ing achieved through all man­ner of insid­i­ous manoeuvres.

Kim Dong-won is a doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er and mem­ber of the PURN Pro­duc­tion col­lec­tive. His epic and under-seen 2003 doc­u­men­tary, Repa­tri­a­tion, man­ages to con­cen­trate down this occa­sion­al­ly sur­re­al con­flict by focus­ing on a sin­gle, heart­break­ing aspect. Dur­ing the ear­ly ​’90s Kim was based in a small shan­ty town in the South and nev­er seemed to be with­out his trusty video cam­era. Two avun­cu­lar old men were invit­ed to live in the town, despite the fact that they had just com­plet­ed lengthy prison sen­tences. They were kind­ly, artic­u­late and polit­i­cal­ly engaged, hap­py to dis­cuss their lives and muck in with any chores and civic duties. Both men had been cap­tured in the ear­ly ​’70s while work­ing as spies for the North – nabbed before they’d made it on to dry land.

They quick­ly became bar­gain­ing chips, but there wasn’t real­ly a sense that they were to be trad­ed with cap­tors from the North, more that they would be placed on a pedestal and made an exam­ple of. This was a self-con­scious bat­tle of ide­o­log­i­cal suprema­cy more than a pub­lic fist fight. The price of free­dom would be to denounce their com­mu­nist father­land and accept the cap­i­tal­ist utopia of the South. What is unique about the two men encoun­tered by Kim is that they both resist­ed heavy tor­ture (includ­ing water­board­ing) and refused to be ​“con­vert­ed”. They loved their home­land and wouldn’t be turned on that fer­vent belief.

Repa­tri­a­tion is the sto­ry of these and oth­er ​“grand­pa” fig­ures, and the sto­ry even­tu­al­ly segues into chart­ing their tumul­tuous jour­ney back north. What’s strik­ing is that they come across as entire­ly nor­mal, friend­ly, learned men, yet they remain stead­fast­ly unwill­ing to lie about the feel­ings they have for the North, how­ev­er poor­ly mat­ters were por­trayed in the media. We see them meet­ing up on char­i­ty-organ­ised retreats and singing sedi­tious folk songs togeth­er, explain­ing that their upbring­ing was hap­py and that they can’t be so eas­i­ly uproot­ed from the cul­ture that forged them.

Kim’s style of film­mak­ing is mea­sured and unhys­ter­i­cal. He nar­rates over the footage in a hushed, reflec­tive man­ner, occa­sion­al­ly even crank­ing up a sen­ti­men­tal synth back­track to empha­sise his emo­tion­al con­nec­tion to these dis­placed men. As diplo­mat­ic mis­sions fail and calmed ten­sions sud­den­ly flair back up, the seem­ing­ly sim­ple task of allow­ing these men to live out the short remain­der of their lives in the coun­try they love reveals itself as an impos­si­ble one. Even though the film is about the very spe­cif­ic chess game of trad­ing pris­on­ers of war, it also speaks of a broad­er break­down in com­mu­ni­ca­tions between nations, and the craven­ness with which one coun­try will manip­u­late a dis­tress­ing sit­u­a­tion for their own nefar­i­ous polit­i­cal gains. Kim, mean­while, stands along­side his sub­jects – livid that both sides could treat them with such contempt.

Repa­tri­a­tion receives a rare screen­ing as part of the Lon­don Kore­an Film Festival’s Doc­u­men­tary Fort­night which runs from 11 to 19 August. It’s the cen­tre­piece of a ret­ro­spec­tive of Kim’s doc­u­men­tary work, which also includes The Sang­gye­dong Olympics, The Six Day Fight in Myeong-Dong Cathe­dral and Jung Il-woo, My Friend.

For more infor­ma­tion head­to kore​an​film​.co​.uk