Citi Series on Asian Arts and Culture

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Dear Pyongyang
YANG Yonghi. 2005. 107 min. Color. HDCAM.
In Korean and Japanese with English subtitles.

A second-generation Korean Japanese, filmmaker Yang Yonghi grew up not understanding why her father, originally from the southern part of the Korean peninsula, decided to pledge loyalty to North Korea, became the local leader of a pro-North Korea organization, and sent his three teenage sons, then aged 14 to 18, to live in Pyongyang in the 1970s. Shot in both Osaka and Pyongyang, this film documents the family's various reunions in the North Korean capital, the ritual of sending large boxes of supplies to Pyongyang, and the filmmaker's complex relationship with her father marked by both ideological conflicts and affection. The film provides a rare glimpse into the life of ethnic Koreans in Japan as well as life in Pyongyang. The filmmaker has been banned from entering North Korea since the release of this film. (A Tidepoint Pictures film.)

"The impossible personal and political quandaries experienced by ethnic Koreans living in Japan find gentle, touching expression in Yang Yonghi's docu, Dear Pyongyang." — Robert Koehler, Variety

Special Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival
Best Director of Documentary, Asian First Film Festival
Netpac Award, Berlin International Film Festival

About the Director
YANG Yonghi was born in Osaka, Japan. She has three older brothers and is the only daughter in her family, originally from Korea. In Osaka, she attended a school set up for North Korea loyalists. She studied Korean literature at the Korea University in Tokyo and later received an MA in Media Studies from the New School in New York. Yang has worked as a teacher, theater actress, radio host and TV news reporter. Yang has made a follow-up documentary to Dear Pyongyang, Sona, The Other Myself (2009), which observes the life of the filmmaker's young niece in North Korea. As a result of her work, the filmmaker has been banned from entering North Korea.

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This program is part of Citi Series on Asian Arts and Culture. This program is supported, in part, by the Japan Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts.