Goodbye My Love North Korea
(Kim Soyoung, 2017, 89 min, South Korea, Korean w/ English subtitles, Color, Digital)
Q&A to follow w/ filmmaker Kim Soyoung
Goodbye My Love North Korea looks back on the lives of 8 young North Koreans who went to study at the Moscow Film School in Russia right after the Korean War. In Moscow, they named themselves the ‘8 Squad’ and formed a deep and lasting friendship. By 1958, they had become political exiles after denouncing KIM Il-sung and sought political asylum. As the group became a kind of mini-diaspora across several Eurasian countries, they made their own mission statement and kept active in their own fields of film, novels, and the press. Interviews of survivors, sentences from novels and letters from their homes demonstrate their political conviction, passion towards art, and also a longing for their home. Even though they had to live apart from their families as a diaspora, they are fortunate to have each other.
Sponsored by the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute (APSI), Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES), Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), Asian American Studies Program (AASP), and Duke Korea Forum.