Our Divided Families Film — the full documentary — is now online! Please watch the film today!
Our Divided Families Film — the full documentary — is now online! Please watch the film today!
We’re launching the film online!
Please join the Divided Families Film directors Dr. Jason Ahn and Eugene Chung in a conversation about the making of this film. After six years of working on this project, the DFF team is excited to put the film online. Please join the conversation this Tuesday, 11-25, at 12PM EST. Please invite friends and family, and come with questions and stories!
Participant Link: https://plus.google.com/events/caer8urqflfhiujoel7aj1c21js
Viewer Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBhiWnLQs10
Thank you to everyone who came out to our Harvard screening last night! We got a lot of questions about you can get more involved. One way is to spread the word to divided family members about registering on the Divided-USA site to give Senator Mark Kirk and other congressmen more data points to push for this issue. Please click here:
Again, thank you for your ongoing support, and please spread the word about registration!
Suzanne Scholte and her North Korea Freedom Coalition are leading up Save North Korea Refugees Day this Monday. If you’re in DC, please consider showing up to this event. I’m copy/pasting her press release below.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
North Korean Escapees, Activists Call for Action to Save Refugees: Events at State Department, Chinatown
WHEN: Monday, September 22, 2014
Press Conference 4 pm at US State Department — across from C Street entrance
Dramatic Demonstration at 5 pm Chinatown — US-China Friendship Gate (7th & H NW)
(Washington, D.C.) … Members of the North Korea Freedom Coalition (NKFC), joined by North Korean escapees, will hold a press conference outside the State Department at 4 pm on Monday, September 22, 2014 and stage a demonstration at 5 pm in Chinatown to highlight the increasingly horrific situation facing North Koreans trying to escape to South Korea and other countries.
The dangers facing North Korean refugees has continued to escalate since Kim Jong Eun took power and China has recently stepped up deportations of those trying to help North Koreans making the situation increasingly dire. Even the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on North Korea decried China’s treatment of refugees when they concluded North Korea was guilty of crimes against humanity and gross violations of human rights.
“There is absolutely no reason for China to continue their brutal policy of repatriation,” said NKFC Chairman Suzanne Scholte. “North Koreans are the only refugees in the world who have an immediate place to go for resettlement as they are recognized as citizens of South Korea, and they have also been safely resettled in the United States and other countries.”
While NKFC has regularly highlighted China’s cruel action, it is also calling for the United States to do more.
Present at both events will be refugees who have resettled here who are deeply grateful to the United States but believe more must be done including Jo Jinhye, who established NKinUSA to help rescue North Koreans. Jo, who has testified before the UN Commission of Inquiry and the US Congress on the situation, will reveal current information on refugees in immediate peril.
“While China is guilty of horrific treatment of North Koreans, the United States must do more to help,” said Jason West, a spokesman for NKFC who is helping organize the events. “There are refugees right now who have been held in detention centers in Thailand for months simply because they want to resettle in the US.”
Each year NKFC has marked September 22nd as their annual Save North Korean Refugees Day as September 22nd marks the anniversary of the day in 1981 when China became a signatory to the Refugee Convention, an international agreement it violates every time it forces a North Korean back to North Korea.
The public is invited to participate in support of NKFC’s simultaneous calls for the United States to take more action to save refugees AND for the government of China to end their brutal, inhumane, and horrific treatment of North Korean men, women, and children. The public can sign their online petitions to President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama to save North Korean refugees.
The North Korea Freedom Coalition is a nonpartisan coalition founded to work for the freedom, human rights, and dignity of the North Korean people. The Coalition has public member organizations representing millions of people around the world along with many individual members. The Coalition also has private members that provide humanitarian relief inside North Korea and members in China and other nations that feed, shelter, and rescue North Korean refugees. For further information, please visit www.nkfreedom.org.
Media inquiries may be directed to Jason West at (301) 660-7009.
The Korea Institute at Harvard University is screening our finished documentary, Divided Families, in November! If you are in Boston, please come for the film screening on November 13, from 4:30-6:00PM. See below for details. Hope to see you there!
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Followed by a discussion session with Jason Ahn (Director, Executive Producer) and Jieun Baek (Producer)
Moderated by Carter J. Eckert, Yoon Se Young Professor of Korean History, Harvard University
About the Film:
When the border was drawn between North and South Korea, hundreds of thousands of family members were left divided. During the Korean War (1950-1953) even more families were dislocated in the chaos of war. Over 60 years have passed since then and many Koreans immigrated to the United States in search of peace and hope. There are an estimated 100,000 first generation Korean Americans with immediate family members in the North Korea. Many of the family members have already passed away, or are in their 70s-90s. Some have tried to contact their families through informal brokers, but this uncertain avenue has led many divided family members to become disillusioned. Though US Citizens, there are no formal mechanisms for family members in the United States to identify or even dream of reuniting with their families in North Korea. We hope that the film will raise awareness in the global community of this issue by documenting the stories of first generation Korean divided family members currently residing in the United States.
About the Directors & Producer:
Jason Ahn
Director, Executive Producer
While a Fulbright scholar to Korea, Jason Ahn became interested in divided families through Saemsori, an organization working towards formal family reunions between Korean Americans and Koreans living in North Korea. The necessity for a historical record of divided families and the power in showing stories through film inspired him to embark upon the Divided Families film.
Jason is interested in the intersection of film and social change. In the future, he hopes to make a difference as a practitioner of global health and social medicine. He is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is currently an emergency medicine resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. He earned his BA from the University of California, Berkeley.
Eugene Chung
Director, Executive Producer
Eugene Chung is a director and executive producer of Divided Families. He is an investor and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Previously, Eugene worked in film production at Pixar Animation Studios, private equity at Warburg Pincus, and investment banking at Morgan Stanley.
Eugene has written for The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review, and he has been involved with a number of social enterprises and non-profits. He worked in the rural Philippines with Unitus, a global microfinance accelerator, and has been involved with humanitarian work in North Korea. He earned his BS degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a Baker Scholar.
Jieun Baek
Producer
Jieun Baek is currently a Belfer Center fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government where she is writing about information access in North Korea and wider regional security issues. She graduated from the Master in Public Policy program in May, 2014 from the Kennedy School, where she concentrated in International and Global Affairs, and wrote her thesis on the regional impacts of the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon. Before graduate school, she worked at Google Headquarters in sales, and on information access projects for North Korean defectors. Jieun studied Government at Harvard University for her Bachelors degree, where she founded a student organization called Harvard Undergraduates for Human Rights in North Korea (H-RiNK). Jieun hopes to work on US policy in North Korea and the greater East Asian region. Jieun was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. As a hobby, Jieun keeps a blog called “Inalienable”(www.jieunbaek.com).
The Korea Institute acknowledges the generous support of the Kim Koo Foundation.