Repatriation (film)

Cho Chang-son speaks about his reason for coming to the south in the documentary Repatriation (2003).

Repatriation is a 2003 documentary film by south Korean director Kim Dong Won. The film documents the lives of unconverted long-term prisoners, north Korean loyalists imprisoned and tortured in south Korea for decades who never renounced their support for DPRK and Juche, and who were eventually gradually released from prison in the 1990s.

Many of them were arrested as spies, and some spent over 40 years in prison for their refusal to disavow the DPRK. While in prison, many of them were held in solitary confinement and subjected to extensive torture. They were referred to only as "converts" and "converts-to-be", reflecting that refusal to convert was considered a non-option. In the late 1990s, amnesty was declared for certain elderly and ill prisoners.

The filmmaker Kim Dong Won developed a close relationship with some of them after they moved to his neighborhood after their release from prison. This friendship eventually led him to a film project, which spanned 12 years and 800 hours of videotaping. The film documents their views on Korea's partition, their daily hardships as they attempt to adjust to south Korean society as well as their struggle for repatriation to the north.

As the unconverted long-term prisoners began to be released, many of them sought repatriation to the DPRK. Some were able to return to DPRK, notably many of them in the year 2000, but others remain in the south, being denied their requests for repatriation. Those who returned to the DPRK were met with celebrations and fanfare welcoming them as heroes, while those remaining in South Korea generally live in poverty and in nursing homes, some without social security numbers.

Another film by the same director, titled The 2nd Repatriation, was released in 2022 and follows the lives of the former prisoners who remained in south Korea but who have been urging for a second repatriation so that they can return to DPRK. One of the men who was also present in the first documentary, torture victim Kim Young-sik, is mentioned in the sequel's description on the Jeonju International Film Festival website: "Among them, Kim Youngshik, who was forced to defect to South Korea, is worried whether extradition will even become a reality—he is conflicted, as he would have to give up the years of his life he has built in South Korea and he has lost all contact with his family in North Korea."

See also

• Unconverted long-term prisoners
• Republic of Korea#Unconverted long-term prisoners