AllMovie

As the last survivors to remember a unified Korea gradually succumb to the ravages of time - many without ever seeing their grandchildren on the other side of the DMZ - filmmaker Lee Min Sook draws on her journalistic insight to better understand the reasons that her homeland as been divided for more than fifty years. When the Soviet-occupied North and the American-ruled South went to war in the 1950s, generations of Korean families were hopelessly torn apart. In the following decades, those families have been forbidden to have even the most cursory contact with their long lost loved ones. With this film, Lee attempts to gain a better understanding of the country she left when she was just a young girl by examining the lives of those most profoundly affected by this deeply divisive conflict. From the South Korean tour guide who continually relives her harrowing escape from the North for curious tourists to the lucky family that won a rare, state-sanctioned family reunion at a remote North Korean facility, these are the stories of the people whose lives have been forever changed by forces far beyond their control.