- Songs From the North
Tonight at 6 PM South Korean-born, Massachusetts-based filmmaker Soon-Mi Yoo will introduce her documentary feature Songs From the North at the Gene Siskel Film Center. The movie represents an attempt to understand North Korean society on human terms, which alone makes it a must-see. In the West our understanding of the subject is informed primarily by North Korean propaganda and reports from outside news organizations, neither of which presents a clear picture of everyday life in that country. (The Guardian, though, has been trying to rectify this problem with an ongoing series of articles called “Ask a North Korean.”) South Koreans may have an even more limited perspective, since their government strictly regulates what citizens are allowed to see of North Korea—and given the hostile relationship between North and South, the images they get are overwhelmingly negative. Yoo, who shot footage for her movie over three trips to North Korea between 2011 and 2012, claims to have made Songs as much for her own edification as for the public’s.
Yoo’s answer isn’t skeptical. “Maybe their tears come from the fact that being an orphan in Korean society—both North and South—and not having parents to protect you is considered the worst possible fate. [The boy’s] story of abandonment by his father is basically the story of North Korea. They are orphans whose biological parents do not have the strength to protect them from outside threats, such as attacks by the U.S.” The U.S. has attacked North Korea before, and the most sobering passages of Songs concern atrocities perpetuated by the U.S. during the Korean War. Yoo presents firsthand accounts of wartime atrocities taken from a North Korean history museum and the U.S. National Archive. None of the findings reflect well on the U.S.
