The documentary film Dear Pyongyang illuminates the lives of Zainichi Koreans who have resided in Japan since Korean independence, capturing the complex layers of modern Korean history. Director Yang Yonghi focuses on her father, who dedicated his life to North Korean ideology, ultimately relocating his three sons permanently to North Korea. Centering on her father’s 70th birthday celebration in Pyongyang and journey from Japan to North Korea, the director attempts to unravel the inner sentiments her father experienced throughout his almost 55-year struggle in Japan. The film captures him reflecting on his life while grappling with the reality of his only daughter in Japan and the precarious nature of her national identity as a North Korean, which she holds with respect for her father’s convictions.

The film is full of dissonance, marked by the gap between generations, the complexities of nationality, ideological differences, and the physical divide between Japan and North Korea. By shedding light on her father’s story, Yang Yonghi seeks to reconcile the discrepancies of her life as a North Korean national living in Japan. The major tension lies in their contrasting realities; her father maintains a spiritual and ideological bridge to North Korea, whereas Yonghi perceives it as an isolated and disconnected land with no true link to the world she inhabits other than the fact that her older brothers’ families are still there. As the film shows the ocean bound for North Korea, Yonghi’s voiceover asks, “Have Choson [North Korea] and Japan been connected or separated by this ocean [East Sea]?”

The issue of nationality is the one thing that still connects the two countries within her family. The film opens with a casual conversation between father and daughter regarding her future partner’s nationality. The father teasingly yet firmly insists that she should avoid Japanese or American men, arguing that she ought to find a Korean man—even if he is indifferent to his Korean identity. Whenever Yonghi says she wants to change her nationality to South Korean or Japanese, his father prevents her from changing hers. Father thought it personal, and if his daughter changes it, then he might feel a denial of his life.

While it is easy to condemn Yonghi’s father for sending his sons to North Korea and preventing his daughter Yonghi from changing her nationality, the film captures her profoundly ambivalent emotions. During the bus journey from Wonsan Port to Pyongyang, Yonghi observes a stark discrepancy between the tour guide’s scripted praise of North Korea’s achievements and the unfiltered landscape passing by outside. For Yonghi, however, those sounds are not just foreign accents; they evoke a deep-seated sense of comfort as a person who grew up within the North Korean educational institutions in Japan.

A sharp discrepancy between father and daughter emerges during the speech at his seventieth birthday party. The tension was fundamentally a matter of how deeply each had embodied North Korean ideology. While Mr. Yang spoke about the generosity of North Korean leaders Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jeong-il, insisting that the family should appreciate the fortune of serving them, Yonghi felt a mix of confusion and anxiety. As a mediator of this film, Yonghi constantly asks what this ‘fatherland’ truly means to her family and whether this ideology is worth it, especially knowing what her brothers have suffered. Ultimately, it was a matter of how deeply one had embodied the ideology of North Korea, and it clearly displayed the accumulated generational gaps between them.

The father’s suit, heavy with medals of honor, only heightens these strange feelings. While his forceful speech and formal attire seem to confirm his North Korean ideology, they paradoxically reveal a sense of vulnerability—as if he must equip himself with these strong words and symbols. This tension continues as his grandson plays the piano. While Mr. Yang watches with pure joy, his son, who sits on the floor and has always loved classical music, watches his own son play with a look of layered emotions.

It is easy to categorize this film as a mere tragedy of post-independence Korean history. While true, such a label fails to capture the full weight of the images on screen. To fully comprehend this film, we must view it from the perspective of the family. Heonik Kwon contends in After the Korean War: An Intimate History that the violence of the Korean War was characterized by the obliteration of trust and familial bonds. Ideology dragged these intimate relationships into the public sphere, turning the family into a space of struggle. Following Kwon’s logic, Mr. Yang’s defense of the ‘inevitable’ decision to send his sons to North Korea represents more than just a political opinion; it also embodies the ongoing Cold War within the Zainichi community after the Korean War. For the Yangs, the family became a contested space where they had to prove public ideological loyalty, and they continued to embody this ideology throughout their daily lives.

Yonghi’s perspective in the film provides a crucial clue on how to reclaim a dismantled family in the midst of a historical typhoon. A key element is the trajectory of Mr. Yang as he begins to understand his children. Whenever the family meets the brothers in the North, the only words they can say are ‘Ganbatte’ (Stay strong/Hang in there). However, there is a poignant dissonance in its delivery. The brothers speak the best words permitted by their reality, yet Yonghi responds in the intimate, casual tone of everyday language. If the older brother’s Ganbatte signals how the national ideology has occupied the private space, Yonghi’s reply seeks to reclaim that same word, pulling it back within the family’s boundary. This simple exchange acknowledges that while their separation was an inevitable consequence of the era, the family remains the only entity capable of giving meaning to such a fragmented existence.

In the final scenes, when Yonghi jokes about her father’s unfulfilled beliefs, her mother’s reply—that faith is worth it when it has aged—revisits the North Korean ‘utopian’ ideal not as a political reality but as a lived history. While ideology once dictated the meaning of parents’ lives, the film suggests that their aged belief was never a purely political construct. Instead, its innermost premise was likely the preservation of familial ties—a desperate, long-term effort to keep the family whole. As the film concludes, Yonghi speaks with her hospitalized father through the lens of compassion. His journey was never tender. His rigid choices caused deep pain and hurt those closest to him. Yet, ironically, it is within this very family that the healing of those wounds begins. In a new era where Cold War ideologies have dissolved, the desperate need for resilience is visualized by Yonghi’s camera through the enduring bonds of kinship. Through this view, she finally reaches a place where she can truly begin to understand the complex, burdened life of her father.

*This review was written after the correspondence with Wonjun Kang (UC Irvine).*