Abstract:

One of the most successful Korean documentaries ever, Our School focuses on a surprising historical anomaly: senior year at a North Korean-affiliated school in Hokkaido, Japan. The North Korean association in Japan (Chongryon) emerged at the end of the Korean War, when ethnic Koreans who did not opt for Japanese citizenship re-registered their nationalities with one of the divided Koreas. The ardently communist Chongryon still operates numerous schools, banks, social clubs, and pachinko parlors across Japan. In this quietly observational film, Kim Jung-il's portrait watches from the classroom walls as students prepare for a field trip to Pyongyang, study socialist ideals, and face consumerist temptations from the bustling world outside. Korean-speakers will be fascinated to hear the students' one-of-a-kind dialect, a fusion of quaintly outmoded pre-WWII Korean and 21st century Japanese slang.