Believe It Or Not
반신반의

  • Release Date

    2018

  • Runtime

    32 mins

Believe It Or Not (2018) – a project by PARKing CHANce (the collective name used by Park Chan-kyong and Park Chan-wook) – follows the dramatic life of a North Korean woman who is sent to Seoul for some unknown mission then brought back to the North ten years later. Through the help of government officials from both sides, she is able to move back and forth between the two countries. However, the exact roles she serves, and what each side hopes to achieve through her undertaking remains uncertain to viewers. In contrast to the more structuralist approach of Sets and Flying, this film introduces a number of meticulously composed symbolic elements, such as the North Korean interrogation room and the Seoul apartment of the protagonist being only opposite sides of the same wall. Through this, the directors convey the almost hyper-real theatricality of the narrative, which was developed from their research into North Korean defectors and their experiences. Over many years of division‚ North and South Korea have become like a hall of mirrors, constantly reflecting and distorting the image of the other, to the point where it has become almost impossible to separate reality from fiction.