Cinematic Testimony to the Repatriation of Zainichi Koreans to North Korea in Yang Yonghi’s Autobiographical Films

This article explores the cinematic potential of representing a silenced history of Korean residents in Japan who were repatriated to their “homeland” (North Korea) by examining Yang Yonghi’s films, Dear Pyongyang (2006), Sona, the Other Myself (2009) and Our Homeland (2012). About 94,000 Koreans in Japan were repatriated to North Korea between 1959 and 1984, but stories of these individuals after their repatriation are largely unknown due to the tightly controlled information about their lives in North Korea and the complex geopolitical relations among South Korea, North Korea and Japan. The repatriates and their families’ experience of separation and multiple displacements is a historical disaster borne of Japanese colonialism and the Cold War. Yang’s autobiographical films visualise the silenced suffering of repatriates in a poignant handling of space, objects and sound that articulates their affective reaction to their homeland. Yang’s works thus make two important contributions to our understanding of the historical disaster: they highlight the ambiguity of the homeland for the repatriates while functioning as a cinematic testimony to the silenced suffering of the repatriates and their families

Archaeology · Colonialism · Ethnology · Geopolitics · Homeland · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Repatriation · Sociology · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Gender Studies · History · Japanese History and Culture · Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies · Law

• Witnessing and Remembering Trauma in Northeast Asia in the Visual Age

  Hong Kal, Jooyeon Rhee•Asian Studies Review•2022

  Incluir item

• Reaching for the past

  Open Access•Junhyoung Lee, Alexander Dukalskis•Globalizations•2024

  Incluir item

• Occupations of Korea and Japan and the Origins of the Korean Diaspora in Japan

  Mark E Caprio, Yu Jia•Diaspora without homeland•2009

  Incluir item

• Aesthetics and World Politics

  Open Access•R Bleiker•Aesthetics and World Politics•2009

  Incluir item

• A long way home

  Shota Tsai Ogawa•Journal of Japanese and Korean…•2017

  Incluir item

• The Politics of Aesthetics

  Open Access•John Walker, John A Walker•The Art Book•2005

  Incluir item

• North Korea in South Korea–Japan relations as a source of mutual security anxiety among democratic societies

  Seung Hyok Lee•International Relations of the…•2015

  Incluir item

• Borderline Japan

  Miriam Kingsberg•Social History•2011

  Incluir item

• Korea's forgotten atomic bomb victims

  Kurt W Tong•Bulletin of Concerned Asian…•1991

  Incluir item

• The Great Kanto Earthquake and the Massacre of Koreans in 1923

  Ryang, Sonia Ryang•Anthropological Quarterly•2003

  Incluir item

• Zainichi Cinema

  Open Access•Oliver Dew•Zainichi Cinema•2016

  Incluir item

• Politics, Identification, and Subjectivization

  Jacques Rancière•October•1992

  Incluir item

• Gendered Modernity and Ethnicized Citizenship

  Open Access•H Y Choo•Gender & Society•2006

  Incluir item