"You fell in love with Mom first, right?"

"Sure, but we fell in love with
each other at the same time."

"You proposed first, right?"

Film director Yang Yonghi is a second-generation Korean resident of Japan, born and raised in Osaka.

What a character...

North Korea and Japan.

Some 50 years ago, her family was torn apart between the two states, which have no diplomatic ties.

When her parents, devoted supporters of North Korea,

sent her brothers off to live in the North, Yonghi was only 6 years old.

Since she first picked up a camera at age 30,

she has spent decades exploring the story of her family, and herself, through her films.

"Dear Pyongyang," her first, internationally acclaimed documentary,

examined her love-hate relationship with her father.

What kind of guy then?

Anyone you love is fine!

You sure?
This video is evidence, you know.

You can't ever complain, Dad.

Just no Americans or Japanese.

But you said anyone!

How about a Frenchman?

That's another issue.

Her second film, "Sona, the Other Myself," focused on her niece, who was born in North Korea.

Yonghi has depicted the reality of her family and their lives in the separate realms of Japan and North Korea.

As I watched her run off,

I realized I was only a visitor,
and that Sona lived here.

This was her world.

Recently, I sensed a big change
inside of me.

I don't mind the color blue anymore.
I used to hate it.

I'd have vague thoughts about my brothers,
on the far shore of the sea.

But recently, I'm OK with blue.

"Why is that?"

I'm not sure.
I even want to wear blue clothes.

I feel like I've overcome
a hurdle of sorts.

The filmmaker Yang Yonghi has navigated through the troubled history of Japan and the Korean Peninsula,

torn between opposite poles.

We'll explore the half century of her quest for answers to the question, "Just who in the world am I?"

In 2022, her latest film, "Soup and Ideology," was released in South Korea as well as Japan.

Yonghi and her husband, who was also the producer of the film, traveled widely to attend screenings.

This film focuses on her mother's life, intertwined with the complexity of recent history.

"In her films, she has told the story
of her family's turbulent history."

The film achieved an unusually long-run for a documentary,

and special reports were carried on television news programs.

For more than 20 years,
I've been asking myself,

"Why make films that result in
a ban on seeing your family?"

"It doesn't pay well,
and it breaks your heart."

"Despite it all, you want to do this?"
I always ask myself.

But the answer has never been to quit.

"Our beloved marshal has sent
his love to the celebration of..."

This party celebrated the 70th birthday of Yonghi's father, a leader of a pro-North association in Japan.

My three sons live in Pyongyang.

I also have a daughter,
daughters-in-law,

My most important contribution, then,

would be to inspire
these young people...

to be passionate about Kim Il Sung's
and Kim Jong Il's doctrines.

"I was confused when he said
he hadn't been loyal enough."

"When he said he'd make his children
and grandchildren revolutionaries,

I almost ran from the hall."

I've struggled to come to terms
with my family,

my identity as a Korean in Japan,
as a woman,

as the daughter of my parents,
the sister of my brothers.

I've always wondered how
to be freed from all of that.

The answer was...

It can't be hidden, fudged, or avoided.
It has to be confronted.

It turned out that this self-questioning
continued all this time.

In the end,

what I show in my films is my parents,
or my family,

but throughout, I am the main character.

I have been making films
because I want to know myself.

I think it can be seen that way.

Yonghi was born in Ikuno Ward in Osaka in 1964.

Then, and now as well, the area has the highest concentration of ethnic Korean residents in Japan.

Japan annexed the Korean Peninsula in 1910.

Land reform and other factors fed widespread poverty, causing migrants to seek livelihood in Japan.

By the end of World War II, some 2 million Koreans were living in Japan,

including many who had been mobilized for the war effort.

Regular passenger service between Jeju Island and Osaka began in 1923,

bringing a steady stream of people to settle in the Ikuno area.

Yonghi's father was one of those migrants.

In 1945, after World War II ended,

the area of Korea north of the 38th parallel was occupied by the Soviet army,

while the American army occupied the southern part.

This division of Korea was formalized in 1948.

In the south, the capitalist Republic of Korea was established.

Shortly thereafter, the communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea was formed in the north.

This division was replicated within Japan.

Associations of Korean residents were divided between Chongryon, supporting the North,

and Mindan, supporting the South.

Although Yonghi's father was from southern Korea,

he became an activist in the North-affiliated Chongryon,

and devoted himself to carrying out its programs.

He married Yonghi's mother, who also had roots in Jeju Island but was born in Japan.

The couple became parents to Yonghi and her three older brothers.

Her hard-working mother managed a restaurant while supporting her activist husband and their children.

Yonghi was well-loved by her parents and raised side-by-side with the boys.

It was Yonghi's oldest brother, Kono, who exerted the strongest influence on her life.

My oldest brother Kono
would be happy,

as long as he had classical music
and delicious coffee.

How someone like him was raised

under a portrait of Kim Il Sung
is a mystery to me.

When I was 5 or 6, he was always
putting big headphones on me,

and playing loud Beethoven,
or Chopin.

He'd say, If you listen to good music,
it'll make your heart pure,

watch good movies,
and it'll make you smart.

It was like he was casting a spell
over his little sister.

These happy days for the family's children were brought to a sudden end.

In the late 1950s, Chongryon began mobilizing a movement of repatriation to North Korea.

While Koreans faced discrimination and poverty in Japan, the North was promoted as a "paradise on Earth."

Some 93,000 Korean residents and Japanese spouses left for the North.

Yonghi's father was an active organizer of this movement.

In 1971, his second and third sons, then only 16 and 14 years old, decided on their own to repatriate.

Several months later, an unexpected notice came from Chongryon.

It directed the family to send their eldest son, then 18, to North Korea as well.

My eldest brother didn't decide on his own
to go to North Korea.

To mark
Kim Il Sung's 60th birthday,

students from Korea University
were to be offered to him,

as what I call a "human gift."

For this project, about 200 students
were selected,

like being drafted.

"You have been selected, you must go,"
with a one-way ticket.

I couldn't say I'd miss him, or that
I didn't want him to go to North Korea,

because I was raised in a home

where repatriation was considered an honor.

Suppressing her sadness over being separated from her brothers,

Yonghi attended Chongryon-affiliated Korean schools.

She behaved like a model student, but in her heart, she continued to struggle.

I came from a patriotic household,
daughter of a Chongryon leader,

the only one left at home after
making the offering of my brothers,

so I was told to train to be
a pillar of Chongryon.

I was told I didn't have a choice.
That was the start of my agony.

I was influenced by the culture
outside of school.

I saw Japanese and Western films,

every week I'd go to the cinema,
I'd go to the theater.

There was a collision between
the totalitarianism taught at school,

and the individualism I obtained
outside of school.

Living in Japan,
I couldn't accept that

I didn't have the right
to make my own choices.

Despite her misgivings, Yonghi attended the pro-North Korea University in Japan,

and after graduation taught Korean literature at a Korean school, at the direction of Chongryon.

During that time, even more than the tensions with her father, Yonghi felt conflicted about her mother.

After her oldest son went to North Korea, her mother quit her job, became a fulltime Chongryon activist,

and devoted herself to sending "care packages" to the North.

What woud be best to send them?

Are you planning to sell these
in Pyongyang?

Maybe school supplies woud be best?

That's right.

"For Sona
'Take it every day, from Grandma.'"

Maybe they'll be doctors?
They're always asking for pencils.

A grandma can't help but splurge
when it comes to her grandchildren!

"Her sons and grandchildren have
survived because of her support."

"But she always tells people,

'My family lives well because
our leader takes good care of them.'"

My mother obstinately rejected
any criticism of North Korea.

Her support for the North
had no room for any complaints,

and her absolute rejection of the South
was like a physical allergy.

She was very determined about this.

Seeing my father, I could understand

how he felt he had made a decision
to live his life in that way,

and that he wasn't prepared
to give it all up.

I could see that, but with my mother...

her total obstinance
was hard for me to bear.

She might have needed to be that way,
to carry on.

Conforming to the demands of her parents and Chongryon,

Yonghi's life in Japan proceeded, intertwined with North Korea.

It was her brother Kono who spurred her to change direction.

In 1992, Yonghi made a visit to North Korea,

where she had dinner with her brothers at a restaurant in Pyongyang.

Kono suddenly stood up and began singing
symphony music in a loud voice.

I was totally surprised...

I thought he was joking,
but he was serious.

His eyes were glittering,

and I sensed he saw
an orchestra before him,

and that he was actually
hearing the music with great resonance.

At that time, classical music, as a symbol of the West, was prohibited in North Korea.

The records Kono brought from Japan were exposed,

and he was forced to engage in severe self-criticism of his capitalist tendencies.

He began to suffer mental illness.

I began to wonder what
had been the point of his life.

It made me decide that,
from then on in my life,

I would never again
live for something or someone else,

not for some company, some organization,
or for some country.

In 1997, Yonghi moved to New York.

She had decided to use the medium of film to express the thoughts she had kept locked inside since she was 6 years old.

Defying her father's intense opposition, she entered graduate school in the US,

where she studied documentary filmmaking for 6 years.

She worked at bars late into the night to fund her studies at The New School.

Four years after arriving in New York,

the family planned to gather in Pyongyang to celebrate her father's 70th birthday with her brothers.

Knowing this would be an important scene for her film, Yonghi began preparing to shoot the gathering.

That was when the simultaneous terror attacks on New York and Washington took place.

Whether we bring our enemies to justice...

The US had previously designated North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism.

After 9/11, Yonghi learned that her visa status might be in jeopardy.

The person who provided support to Yonghi at that time was her supervising professor, Deirdre Boyle.

We often got together and she cried.

I think this was another one of those crying moments. And she said,

"What am I going to do? I have to go, but I don't want to go if I can't come back."

And I said to her, "Let me see what I can do."

And I didn't know what I could do,

but it was such a strange time that everything was or wasn't possible, and you've just got to find out.

And I went to the director of the program, and I said, "We need to write a letter for her."

This is not someone who's a terrorist coming from North Korea,

because that was already seen by many as a strike against her.

Yonghi submitted the university's letter, obtained permission to re-enter the US, and left for North Korea.

When Boyle saw her off, she told Yonghi she believed in her filmmaking,

in her love for her family, and in their love for her.

The film Yonghi made, "Dear Pyongyang," was acclaimed in Japan and overseas.

In the film, she confronts her father with the questions she had been unable to articulate for many years.

It took 9 years from the start of the project until its completion.

Have you had regrets about
sending your sons away?

I had no alternative then.

But I wish I didn't have to send them.

How old were you when you sent
your sons to North Korea?

How old was I?

Let's see...

About 32, 33 years ago...

You were 43 or 44?

We had exciting prospects
for our future...

because the pro-North movement
had made great progress.

I know we were too optimistic.

Yonghi later wrote,

"When I was editing, I had no hesitation about using the scene where my father voices regret."

"I anticipated this would cause endless repercussions, but I didn't waver."

"After 'Dear Pyongyang' was released, Chongryon urged me to write a letter of apology."

"When I ignored them, I was prohibited from entering North Korea."

"After my last visit in 2005, I have been unable to see my family."

I'm dealing directly with
my background and family,

in documentaries that use
the names and faces of my family,

revealing all that in a film.

Exposing it to the world.

Subjects who are in North Korea
might be punished because of my films.

Their lives might be affected.

That pressure, that sense of guilt,
was hard to bear.

"Do you still want to do this? Will you?"

I've been asking myself this question
for more than 20 years.

Stated in the extreme,

say, if I continue making films,
my brothers could be placed in detention.

How'd I respond to the question
"What would you do?"

"What would you do?"

Well... I don't want to say,
"I'll quit then."

Until now, fear has forced people
to remain silent.

With families in North Korea,

they can't speak the truth,
or talk about what they know.

I wanted to put an end to that.

Not out of righteousness...

If asked if I'll continue,
even if they're detained,

I can't answer brightly, "I'll continue!"

But I felt strongly I didn't want to say,
"I'll quit."

I can say that now,
after years of questioning.

It's really merciless.

But unless you're committed
to being merciless,

you can't make films like these.

Even though she was unable to see her brothers, Yonghi didn't give up depicting her family through her films.

In 2011, she tried her hand at directing her first dramatic film.

Her youngest brother, Konmin, developed a tumor

and, after 5 years of pleas by his parents, he was allowed to come to Japan for medical treatment.

This happened in 1999.

Yonghi developed a script based on these actual experiences.

"Our Homeland" is the story of an older brother, who returns to Japan for medical treatment after an absence of 25 years.

Yonghi was able to explore profound emotions and conflicts in ways that her documentaries could not convey.

This is just hypothetical,
you understand...

You're to meet some people you're
told to, and then report about it.

That kind of work.

As a job?

Tell that to whoever put you
up to this.

Tell them that I'm an enemy
to their country's ideology.

Why are siblings forced
to have a conversation like this?

There's an anger that has no outlet.

Why do we need to say these things?

Is it some kind of shabby...

country, or system, or organization,
or who knows what?

The sister takes her anger out on her brother's North Korean minder who urged him to recruit her as a spy.

I hate you and your country!

"That country you hate...

is where

your brother and I live."

"Until the day we die."

Where the actress Ando Sakura says,
"I hate you and your country!"

Delivering that line was one
of the reasons to make that film.

But even more than that
was the line,

"Until the day we die."

When confronted with the reality
that they live in that country,

Ando's sense of futility...

Ando's character has a purity,
because she's still a child.

Being open and direct,
that child was me.

I'm really just a brat.

Like getting angry,
and stomping your feet.

Something you say rebounds on you,
that's definitely me.

I casually say
I'm doing what I want to do,

but by doing what I want,
I'm unable to see my family,

it haunts my dreams every night.

So that's my reality too.

When I saw Ando, stomping her feet,

I thought, "That's me, making my films."

My films are me, stomping my feet.

They don't change reality,
they're just kicking and flailing.

No one pays much attention,
I'm just struggling there on my own.

But at the core of that film is a deep...
a quiet but very deep anger.

When I made "Our Homeland,"
many people said, "Will you be all right?"

They'd lower their voices.

People around Chongryon said that,
and people in the film industry.

In Hollywood, they make films
about their country's stupidity,

South Koreans do as well,
and nobody questions that.

Why do they say that when it comes to
a film about North Korea?

It's placed in a different slot,
that country is untouchable.

They treat it gingerly.

I don't treat it with caution,
I think I just treat it fairly.

I won't make it untouchable,
because I don't want to be.

I've spent my whole life saying,
"I am not untouchable."

It's like, "Come on, really."

"It ain't untouchable. Touch it more.
Let's all touch it more."

North Korea, repatriation,
Korean residents, Korean schools,

Chongryon, defectors from the North.

By doing so, I believe
we'll understand each other better.

Not just positive images,
toeing the line.

These are our concerns,
these are the things we struggle with.

We have to show that.

That's what I think.

I don't want those things
to be untouchable.

My parents' way of living,
my brothers' existence, me as well.

"Our Homeland" was honored at the Berlin International Film Festival and elsewhere around the world.

Yonghi appeared to stand on the world stage with great confidence.

However, out of the limelight, she was stretched to the limit, physically and emotionally.

Her brother Kono, who introduced her to the wonders of cinema, had died in July 2009.

In November of that year, her father, who had been fighting the effects of a stroke, also died.

Her mother took his ashes to be interred in Pyongyang.

Unable to visit her brothers or her father's grave in Pyongyang,

Yonghi often quarreled with her mother, who went so far as to borrow money to send care packages to the family in the North.

I found it hard to carry on alone.

I would cry and say I wanted to die,
not really out of self-pity...

Though I didn't have the courage to die.

After "Our Homeland," Yonghi went 10 years without making a new film as a director.

"As we embroider the beautiful rivers
and mountains of our homeland in silk..."

The one who helped ease Yonghi's pain was her mother,

with whom she had a troubled relationship ever since her brothers were sent to North Korea.

Many women were killed
on Jeju Island.

People were forced to line up
on the grounds of a school,

and a machine gun mowed them down.

Yonghi's mother, Junghi, began to talk about the traumatic experiences she had kept locked inside

since she lived through the April 3rd Uprising on Jeju Island in 1948.

At end of World War II, Junghi evacuated from Japan to her mother's birthplace on Jeju Island.

She became engaged to a man, with her parents' approval, and was enjoying the flowering of her youth.

However, after the war, the Korean Peninsula was divided between American and Soviet occupation,

and the standoff had deepened by the spring of 1948.

On Jeju Island, communists opposed a plan to hold elections limited to southern Korea,

and they launched an armed uprising that was violently suppressed by army and police forces.

The intense conflict continued for 6 years, sweeping up many innocent islanders.

"Using the tactic of shooting
anything that moved,

villagers were slaughtered
in the hunt for 'reds.'"

One of every 10 islanders, some 30,000 people, were killed in this tragedy.

Junghi's lover and his family were killed, as were the relatives who had taken her in.

Fleeing for their lives, she and her younger siblings were smuggled out by boat

and managed to return safely to Osaka.

After that, Junghi never spoke about Jeju, and she told Yonghi that she had never been there.

In the late 1980s, as South Korean democratization progressed, investigations of the incident began.

The government found that the state had committed severe human rights violations,

and in 2006 then-President Roh Moo-hyun apologized to the islanders.

It was an offense of state power,
so we must address it before moving on.

More than 70 years after the uprising,

surveys of the survivors and efforts to compensate the families of the victims continue.

After Yonghi's father died, her mother continued to live alone.

When Yonghi visited her in Osaka, she would sometimes share some of her memories of Jeju Island.

Yonghi began to document these fragmentary memories as a form of testimony.

However, she had not yet found the drive to produce a new film.

"A suit in this heat?"

A turning point came when she met Arai Kaoru, a Japanese man who would become her husband.

This day was the first time Kaoru had met Yonghi's mother.

30... 40.

Her mother had always said Yonghi should marry a Korean man, but her stance that day was surprising.

She spent hours preparing her specialty, a Jeju Island-style chicken soup.

- "The soup looks delicious."
- We'll let it stew.

"He's here."

"He's in a suit despite the heat."

"Come in."

Nice to meet you.
I'm Arai Kaoru.

The day Kaoru came to meet my mother,

I was filming the scene,

but I was honestly really surprised,
and quite moved by it.

My mother's behavior toward him,
and his toward her...

it was like they were diplomats.

They avoided topics
that might cause conflict,

dispensed with unnecessary questions
and explanations.

They kept smiling,
as if to keep the peace,

showing each other consideration,
sharing a meal, and then parting.

When I got back to Tokyo,

he said, "We'll make sure
your mother lives a long life."

That really surprised me.

He was fully committed
to being a family.

This guy is awesome, I thought.

After that...

I decided I wanted
to film the two of them.

To me, family was always
very troublesome and irritating,

but I began to see
it could be a really good thing.

In April 2018, Yonghi brought her mother to visit Jeju Island,

70 years after her traumatic experiences during the uprising.

Her mother had begun showing symptoms of dementia several years earlier.

Yonghi and her husband, who supported the film as its producer,

were committed to preserving the fading memories of her mother.

"When she was walking here 70 years ago,
she said,

she saw many corpses of villagers
mercilessly killed, and she wept."

"To get through police checkpoints,

the children pretended that they were
just out for a stroll."

"It must have been terrifying."

"How did my 18-year old mother
muster that courage?"

This is the research institute.

They paid a visit to an institute that carries out research into the April 3rd Uprising.

But coming here and seeing...

Having memories of this place
must've been unbearable.

Even a few days here is hard...

I wonder how you deal with it.

In my heart, I have long blamed my mother.

How could she send my brothers away?

But I can't blame her
after what I've seen.

It's hard for me to resolve.

I haven't addressed this in my films,
including "Soup and Ideology,"

but my mother had an older brother,
as well as her younger brother.

That brother...

was a soldier in the Japanese army.

He was sent to fight in the South Pacific,
and he never returned.

The family was never notified
of his death in battle.

That means,

my mother was born during
the era of colonial rule...

in 1930, when Korea was a Japanese colony.

It was hard for her to consider Japan,
her birthplace, as her own country.

When she went to her parents' birthplace,
it was even more cruel...

With her own eyes, she witnessed
Koreans killing each other,

and she lost her fiance.

Returning to Japan,

she chose North Korea,
over Japan and the South.

She sent all her sons there,
but it wasn't Paradise,

her oldest son suffered mental illness,
and died before her.

My mother had an intense desire
to have a homeland, a motherland.

She couldn't lose North Korea,
the last place she believed in.

In the midst of that,
she lived bravely,

uncomplaining and good-spirited,
and that took tremendous will power.

Now in my late 50s, I realized...

that I am the daughter of a refugee.

I was led to discover a new identity
as the daughter of a refugee.

That is an incredibly precious...

experience.

Becoming aware of this
led to a strong boost of self-confidence.

- "Self-confidence?"
- Yes.

Understanding something deeply
increases one's confidence.

So, in place of my doubts about
how my mother felt about South Korea,

I found a way...

to work out the puzzle, find an answer.

It provided an opportunity,
something like a guidepost.

It was a gift...
I see it like that.

"Believing she lives with all her family,

Mother began praying every day."

"Later, she suffered a stroke
and is now hospitalized."

"Someday, I'll have to deliver her ashes
to Pyongyang, where Father is buried."

In January 2022, Yonghi's mother passed away, before the film was released in Japan.

In November 2022, Yonghi brought the film about her mother to Jeju Island.

The first screening was sponsored by an organization

that is involved in preserving the memory of the April 3rd Uprising.

The audience included survivors and families of the victims.

How will they respond to the story of Yonghi's mother,

who loved Jeju Island but saw no choice but to put her faith in North Korea?

There is really very little
for me to say to you.

You are the families
of victims of the April 3rd Uprising,

or you grew up around parents
who had survived the trauma.

I...

I usually don't cry, but today...

I survived the April 3rd Uprising,
but I was only 3, so I don't remember.

People I am related to
also went to North Korea,

and probably believed that ideology,
but I was unable to ask about this.

Today, seeing your film,

I learned about other Jeju islanders
who had no choice but to go to the North,

and I really felt that pain once again,
I share that pain.

Watching this film
brought the word "fate" to mind.

If your parent's fate was different,
would I have seen this film?

As a "daughter of Jeju Island,"

do you have plans to make
other films about Jeju?

In order to make a feature film
here on Jeju Island,

I'll have to become a director
who can command a much larger budget.

But I'll think about it.

Meeting director Yang made me cry.

I was moved by the film.

If only her mother had been healthy
a little while longer,

she might have overcome her pain,
so she could die in peace.

I would like to have seen that.

That's my only regret.

This film makes me think about my life,
and helps me open up my heart.

- "It's liberating."
- I think so.

So I have great respect for the director,
for what she did as a daughter.

I'm very aware, now,

of how much my mother wanted to
love Jeju and the memory of her fiance.

I think she wanted to love Jeju
from the bottom of her heart.

For me, now...

I used to say I didn't have
much use for a "homeland,"

but this place has become
very special to me.

I haven't spent enough time here
to call it my homeland,

but I want to return and get to know better
the place of my mother's youth.

I have the feeling my parents...

thinking that someday
I would see this as my homeland,

they left that opportunity to me.

Someday, I hope it will become that.

Yonghi has now begun writing the script for a new dramatic film.

I went to North Korea 10 times,
stayed in an apartment, and traveled.

I met my brothers' workmates,
friends of my nieces and nephews,

Japanese women who came to the North
as wives of repatriates.

I want to depict those people in film.

That's about all I can do.

If you ask me why, it would be a waste
to keep it all for myself.

Because they are wonderful people.

I met really wonderful people,
in Pyongyang,

in Sinuiju, in Wonsan, in Hamhung.

Of course, there were awful incidents.

But I met wonderful people who were
living full lives amidst all that.

They were very brave.

I encountered
many unforgettable people,

and I want to mold their stories
and rework them into a tale.

I don't want their lives
to come to nothing.

It'll be fun.

Cause it's a film.