Seoul: CinemaDAL [distributor], 2017. One online resource (89 min.) In Korean with English subtitles.
At the centre of Soyoung Kim’s 2017 documentary Goodbye My Love, North Korea (Gutbai mai leobeu NK) is a group of eight North Korean filmmakers who sought political asylum in the Soviet Union in 1958. Initially sent to study at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (or VGIK) in 1952, the eight were critical of the Kim Il-sung regime and its consolidation of power following the 1956 August Faction Incident. Calling themselves the 8-Jin (paljin) or “Genuine 8,” the eight christened themselves both as individuals (with new surnames) and as a group with the Chinese character for truth, 眞.
Truth, and especially filmic truth, is just one of Goodbye My Love’s many concerns, as it deploys historical found footage of the Soviet Union and North Korea, film clips, dramatic reenactments, readings of poetry and prose, as well as folk songs in relaying the account of the 8-Jin. But the bulk of the work falls on the shoulders of the two surviving members, cinematographer Kim Jong-hun (Kim Jin) and director Choi Kuk-in (Choi Jin), who are joined by Zinida Ivanova, widow to writer Han Dae-yong (Han Jin). Interviews with the three present an overview of the group’s experience from the Korean War to their initial study abroad, their public criticism of Kim Il-sung, to exile and beyond.
In addition to bringing much-needed attention to the 8-Jin, Goodbye My Love also effectively demonstrates why the eight are such compelling subjects, a fact that the film seems to be well aware of. Frequently pushed into the foreground, Kim, Choi, and Ivanova engagingly, colloquially, and often humorously recount what is ultimately the story of their own lives, but do so in a manner that clearly illustrates the stakes in terms of both Korean history and Korean film history. In other words, the subjects of Goodbye My Love do not simply wax poetic on their personal histories; instead, the three maintain an acute sense of historical consciousness. As a result, the film effectively raises a number of salient and even pressing concerns both through and in relation to its subjects.
After all, Good My Love, North Korea is a film about North Koreans and North Korea, a point worth noting when considering that the nation continues to remain a perpetual source of fear and anxiety. With so much of contemporary English-language public discourse on North Korea positioning its citizens as either indoctrinated or feeble, the account of the 8-Jin reminds us that the history of North Korea is like that of any country, inasmuch as it includes both instances of hegemony and resistance. It is thus noteworthy, especially in the context of South Korean Cold War history, that Goodbye My Love does not shy away from the national and political positions of its subjects. As a result, Goodbye My Love asks the viewer to grapple with the fact that even though the eight are dissenters, their quarrel is explicitly with Kim Il-sung, and not necessarily with North Korea, either as a political idea or as a historical nation-state.
It is in that space for critical consideration that one of the gaps of Goodbye, My Love reveals itself. While Soyoung Kim and a few crew members appear at a few points in the film, neither she nor Goodbye My Love makes explicitly political claims per se, and it becomes a bit more difficult to read the position of the film. Of course, this is not to suggest that the political coordinates of Goodbye My Love or its filmmakers must be absolutely clear, but as a result, certain moments in the film could be read as advocations for thornier points such as ethnic nationalism (Shin Gi-wook, Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy, Stanford University Press, 2006), as with Choi’s argument regarding reunification or when relatedly, he and Kim Jong-hun discuss the shared trauma of Japanese imperialism (and how it unites the two Koreas).
In some sense, Goodbye My Love must perform this sort of tightrope act. Because the film has both an international and domestic audience in mind, we must consider the fact that South Korea has historically maintained intense anti-communist sentiments that remain to this day. That the film positions the presumed viewer (both in South Korea and beyond) in relation to documentary subjects that occupy a fundamentally oppositional ideological position is ultimately admirable. It is also one of the ways in which Goodbye My Love skillfully broaches questions of nationalism, identity, and communism. Through the events of the 8-Jin’s lives, Goodbye My Love delves into the incredibly entangled history and geopolitics of the region, tying the question of Korean sovereignty—both in terms of Japanese colonialism and the North-South split itself in relation to the USSR and the US—with the political agency of the filmmakers, both the 8-Jin and of Goodbye My Love.
It is in that affinity between the 8-Jin and Soyoung Kim, in craft, that Goodbye My Love becomes perhaps its most stimulating. Weaving in fascinating footage from the group’s work in North Korea, the Soviet Union, and Kazakhstan, Goodbye My Love raises questions regarding cinema, particularly in terms of mass culture, ideology, and education in dialogue with Lenin and Soviet filmmakers such as Eisenstein, Vertov, and Pudovkin. The film thus asks the viewer to consider what it means for a South Korean documentary filmmaker to use principles of montage to construct a film on North Korean defectors. In doing so, Goodbye My Love, North Korea presents a subtle and nuanced challenge to the idea that shared identity, whether in ethnic or national terms, is the primary way in which new relations can be forged. The practice of both Soyoung Kim and the 8-Jin themselves suggests otherwise.
Se Young Kim
Colby College, Waterville, USA