Hello, Stranger

After A Shark, an absurdist story about a rotting shark in a heatwave, Kim Dong-Hyun surprises us with this humane, touching wintery tale set in the parallel universe of the uprooted – that can be found in Korea in this case. For more than 50 years, North and South Korea have gone their separate ways. A broad demilitarised zone cuts across the country and it is not easy to get out of North Korea. But some do manage.
Jin-Wook is such a North Korean refugee who has passed the citizenship course at the refugee centre. He finds himself in a bare apartment in an outer suburb of Seoul with rows of apartment blocks all looking the same. On his first evening there, he goes to buy a blanket in the megastore. He is so stunned by what he sees that he can’t find his way back to his apartment. Jin-Wook ends up in the car of the female taxi-driver Hae-Jung, who had managed to flee the North 10 years before. Together they drive through the night in the hope that Jin-Wook will recognize his apartment block. He only finds it when it’s light again. A few days later, when Jin-Wook is on his way to refugee friends who now live in Pusan, in the bus he meets an illegal Vietnamese, Tingwoon. He’s looking for his girlfriend, who was sent to Korea to marry a Korean husband. The handicapped leading the blind. Winner of the Netpac Award at the 2007 Pusan Film Festival. (GT)

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