Trafficking and sexual exploitation of female refugees from North Korea

Ryŏhaeng [려행] (2016, 86m)

• Director: Im, Hŭng-sun [임 흥순]
• Synopsis: Ryŏhaeng("journey" in North Korean) is a film that mixes fiction and documentary. It tells the stories of women refugees from North Korea. The work was conceived to reflect upon North-South Korean relations and their changing circumstances, and also to reflect upon the public and social role that art can play. Approximately 30,000 North Korea refugees currently live in South Korea, and the vast majority of them work in low-paying and dangerous jobs and experience difficulty adapting to the new environment in South Korea. It is hoped that with Ryŏhaeng viewers would travel in North Korea, albeit in our imagination only, to remember and to imagine what people were like before the North-South division. It is said that Anyang, according to its Chinese characters, is a city where one comforts one’s mind and rests one’s body. If it is indeed true, would it not be fitting to take the thorniest problems of Korean society today—the North-South division, labor struggles, and wide-spread ideological animosity—bring them here, and recover the souls of nature and people?

[Trailer]