【Watch On-Demand (English subtitles)】available to rent on Vimeo

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/theotherhiroshima

​

【Synopsis】

Directorial debut by Park Soonam who had excavated the testimonies of Korean A-bomb victims whose presence in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was contingent upon Japan’s colonial occupation of Korea. This is a product of twenty years of Park’s embedded research in the “A-Bomb slum” of Hiroshima where she gathered precious testimonies, appealing to her compatriots that “there is no 38 degree parallel when it comes to the A-bomb.” The presence of Korean A-bomb victims sent a shockwave in Japan where Koreans were all but missing from the anti-nuclear peace movement. The film was screened in grassroots self-organized screenings  in 300 different locations. 

​

【Director's Note: Park Soo-nam】

The first time I went to Hiroshima to visit fellow zainichi hibakusha (Atomic-bomb survivors living in Japan) was in the summer of 1965. It had been twenty years since the bombing. That summer, the twentieth since liberation from Japanese colonial rule, South Korea was in turmoil. After thirteen long years negotiating for damages and the legal right to claim compensation, Korean Japanese talks reached an agreement. In 1961, Japan made a political settlement with Park Chung-hee's provisional government--which had assumed political control through a military coup d'etat-for the up to one hundred thousand Korean hibakusha who still had no public recognition. The amount was 2 billion dollars of fixed rate loans and 3 billion dollars of economic assistance. The protests all over Korea against the "ignominious foreign relations and the ratification of this "pact of treason, were reported in Japan day after day. It was in the midst of this situation that I entered Hiroshima. What I found there, however, was the deep silence and isolation of my compatriots, not one of whom would come forth as a hibakusha. Five years passed since my first trip to Hiroshima. Since the ROK-Japan rapprochement, the North-South opposition in Hiroshima had been intensifying. Appealing to my compatriots organized the Korean Hibakusha and began a testimonial movement in Hiroshima. The fight by hibakusha compatriots to reclaim their lives had begun. This resonated with South Korean hibakusha, who spoke out and established the "Association of South Korean Atomic Bomb Victims." Hibakusha who had worked for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries or had been conscripted began sending me letter after letter, asking me to publish them in Japan. In 1973, I published these letters in a collection of materials and testimony gathered from Korean hibakusha entitled Korea,Hiroshima, Half Japanese (Sanseido).This single film helped obtain the resolution "the Japanese government must redress Korean hibakusha who were bombed against their will as a result of colonial victimization" at the World Conference Against A-and H-Bombs(Gensuikin) in August 1987.Coming forty-two years after the bombing, the resolution was far too late. In response to my findings, the Association of South Korean Atomic Bomb Victims demanded 2.6 billion dollars in compensation from the Japanese government on December 6 of that year.

 

​

​

【4K Digital Scan, DVD】　

■ Please contact us for overseas shipping  
nutigafu@gmail.com　
(Song of Arirang Production Committee）

1986 / 58 minutes / 16mm / Japanese (w/o subtitles)

Director: Park Soonam

3,300 yen

This is a 4K digital remaster edition produced from camera negatives in 2020. As a bonus feature,

​

【DVD features】main content 58 minutes + Park Soonam Director’s Talk, 20 minutes
the DVD comes with Park Soonam’s director talk.

■ Library copies are available for educational institutions and public libraries: 20,000 yen (before tax）/ 60,000 yen (before tax) for audio-visual libraries and mediatheques that lend to groups and organizations

■ Please contact us separately if you are interested in hosting public screenings.

 

​

【Synopsis】

In the final hours of the Pacific War, Okinawa was the destination for Korean men conscripted as “military laborers” and Korean women taken as “comfort women.” Little is known about the number of casualties or their experiences. In 1989, Park Soonam started to track down the survivors of the Battle of Okinawa to record their testimonies. In 1990, Park visits Korea in search of former “military laborers” who had survived Okinawa and repatriated to Korea. The survivors vividly recount their experiences of their compatriots’ murder and about the “comfort women” to the Zainichi Korean female director. The film zeroes in on the murder of Korean “military laborers” and the presence of “comfort women” in Okinawa via testimonies of former Japanese soldiers. With the testimony of Pae Pon-gi, the only victim speaking up as a former “comfort woman” at the time, this film foreshadowed the “comfort women” issue debate that would rage for the rest of the 1990s, all together mobilizing 200,000 viewers in grassroots self-organized screenings.

​

【4K Digital Scan, DVD】　

■ Please contact us for overseas shipping  
nutigafu@gmail.com　
(Song of Arirang Production Committee）

1991 / 100 minutes / 16mm / Japanese (w/o subtitles)
【Bonus Feature】Message from Park Soonam, 16 minutes

Director: Park Soonam

3,300 yen

This is a 4K digital remaster edition produced from camera negatives in 2020. As a bonus feature,

【DVD features】main content 58 minutes + Park Soonam Director’s Talk, 20 minutes
the DVD comes with Park Soonam’s director talk.

■ Library copies are available for educational institutions and public libraries: 20,000 yen (before tax）/ 60,000 yen (before tax) for audio-visual libraries and mediatheques that lend to groups and organizations

■ Please contact us separately if you are interested in hosting public screenings.

 

​

【Watch On-Demand(Japanese subtitles)】available to rent on Vimeo

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/nutigafu 

【Watch On-Demand (English subtitles)】available to rent on Vimeo

​

​

【Synopsis】A feature-length documentary that witnesses twenty seven survivors of the Battle of Okinawa break their silence to testify the truth about the tragedy of “gyokusai,” forced group suicide, of Korean “military laborers” and “comfort women” brought from Korea. Just how were Okinawa citizens pressured and forced to commit group suicide in the final hours of the Pacific War, and what led to the near complete destruction of Korean military laborers and comfort women? Twenty years in the making since Song of Arirang—Voices from Okinawa (1991), Park Soonam’s third documentary returns to the subject of Korean military laborers and comfort women in Okinawa.

​

【Film Festivals and Awards】

Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival 2013 Special Invitation Films
Aichi International Women's Film Festival2013
５th Busan peace film festival2014 Grand Prize
2015 CNEX Documentary Film Festival l Invitation Films
 

【Trailer】https://youtu.be/2LzZ5rfXg6c【DVD】3,900 yen

■ Please contact us for overseas shipping  
nutigafu@gmail.com　
(Song of Arirang Production Committee）

Updated in 2021 with an additional bonus feature 

■Bonus Feature: testimonies of gyokusai (group suicides) survivors including Miyamura Haruko and Kaneshiro Shigeaki recorded in Naha in 2012 <22 minutes>
■ Please contact us separately if you are interested in hosting public screenings
■ Library copies are available for educational institutions and public libraries

■ Please contact us for DVDs with English and Korean subtitles or for overseas shipping
nutigafu@gmail.com　
(Song of Arirang Production Committee）

For more information on self-organized screenings 

→https://nutigafu.wixsite.com/park-soonam/events

※The DVD is made from the version that won the Grand Prize at the 5th Peace Film Festival, 2014, which contains an extra sequence on Okinawan “comfort women” added to the theatrically released version. 

【Watch On-Demand(Japanese subtitles)】available to rent on Vimeo

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/tinmoku

 

【Synopsis】This documentary film offers a precious intimate record of the group of women who broke a half-century of silence in the 1990s to come forward as former “comfort women” victimized by the Japanese Imperial Army. In Chungcheongbuk-do, Ms. Lee Ok-sun lives alone, making daily visits to a Buddhist temple. At age 17, she was taken to Northern Manchuria to serve in Japanese military’s “comfort station.” In 1994, Lee Ok-sun joined forces with 14 other victims to break the silence and demand an apology and reparations from the Japanese government. Traveling to Japan, the victims group sought direct talks with the government. Determined to have their dignity and honor restored, the halmonis (“grandmothers”) made multiple visits to Japan in pursuit of direct talks, but also to travel across Japan to publicly testify to their experiences. Park Soonam, a second-generation Zainichi Korean (Japan-born descendent of colonial-era migrants from Korea), accompanied the group to document their “han” (Korean for grudge, anger, but also demand for justice). 20 years on, as many of the struggle’s protagonists have passed away, to what extent does the agreement reached by Japan and Korea in 2015 offer a solution to the individual victims? The documentary seeks to pass on the “silence” of these living witnesses by weaving episodes of Lee’s life with documentary footages of the struggle recorded by the filmmaker during the 1990s as she closely followed the struggle. 

​

​

【Film Festivals and Awards】
2020 22nd Seoul International Women’s Film Festival 

2019 Resistance Film Festival, Korea, Best Director Award

2019 91st Kinema Junpo’s 10 Best Documentary Films

2016 DMZ International Documentary Film Festival-Special Award（102min Version）

2016 Seoul International Women's Film Festival（Rough cut）

2016 Shintoku The Imagined Forest Film Festival
2016 Seoul International Senior Film Festival

​

【Trailer】https://youtu.be/ExQCH9c7BE4

【The Silence DVD】This is a home release copy.

■Please contact us for overseas shipping  
nutigafu@gmail.com　
(Song of Arirang Production Committee）
☆For a limited time: 10% off 
4400 → 3960 yen
Director : Park Soonam
2017 / 117 minutes / HD / Korea-Japan Co-production
Subtitles: Japanese, Korean, English, JapaneseSDH (Subtitles for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing)
【Bonus Feature 1】Till the Day We Can Screen the Film（in Japanese w/o subtitles）
In 2018, historical revisionists sought to sabotage the screenings of The Silence. This is a record of the organizer-citizens as they resisted such challenge and successfully realized their screening events. 


【Bonus Feature 2】Lee Ok-sun’s Chang-go (Korean drum) performance (recorded in Yokohama in 1996)
【Bonus Feature 3】Director’s talk with Park Soonam, recorded on September 10, 2016, at the Japan premiere in Shin-Yokohama

​

■ Library copies are available for educational institutions and public libraries: 35,000 yen (before tax）/

90,000 yen (before tax) for audio-visual libraries and mediatheques