Kwak Eun-mi’s debut film, A Tour Guide (믿을 수 있는 사람), spotlights the life of a North Korean defector living in South Korea (Han-young, played by the effervescent Lee Seol), who works as a tour guide for Chinese tourists, introducing famous South Korean landmarks she is alienated from. Han-young may look like a South Korean but her accent and status as a refugee elicit constant consternation and suspicion and she struggles to make a home out of a foreign land. The limbo facing a refugee is captured superbly by Eun-mi as the audience are shown, in a slice-of-life manner, Han-young’s life in South Korea, three years of struggles punctuated with some happy moments.
During the Q&A session after the movie, Lee Seol spoke briefly about her role as Desdemonda in Shakespeare’s Othello. It brought to my mind Desdemonda’s quote from Act 4 Scene 2: “His unkindness may defeat my life/But never taint my love.” It is these lines I paired with Han-young’s face of defiance in the movie’s ending shot, just as she is about to leave South Korea for an unknown destination. The dearth of kindness dealt to Han-young is reciprocated in equal measure, her unwavering resolve to forge a home for herself. It matters not where Han-young goes in the end, whether back to North Korea to see her mom, or to Germany to see her best friend, Jung-mi (played by the equally impressive Kyung-Hwa Oh), a fellow North Korean defector, or to somewhere else entirely. Especially for a migrant leading a precarious existence, home is not a single destination but a journey.
The Korean Independent Film Festival is screening at Babylon Berlin from 2 November to 10 November. More info can be found here: https://babylonberlin.eu/programm/festivals/korea-independent
Chan Wai Charles Wong 