DANCE TOWN

Korea, 2010, 95 minutes, Colour
Ra Mi- Ran.
Directed by Jeon Kyu- Hwan.

Dance Town sounds far too chirpy a title for such a sad, almost despairing film.

We do not usually see many films with a North Korean setting. While Dance Town opens with vistas of Seoul but also shows a middle-aged woman being sick on a bridge, most of the film is flashback. The woman, a former table tennis champion. divorced from a cheating husband, now happily re-married, lives in a suburb or Pyongyang. Her husband goes on business trips to the south and brings home illegal cosmetics and DVDs. He does errands for unknown sources. But, she is soon advised by her husband to escape to the south.

The film is about the plight of refugees from the north, some initial suspicions on the part of officials and interrogations and continued surveillance and phone tapping. There is a welcome from government, social and religious (US Protestant) groups. She is able to share experiences with other refugees but she is basically lonely, anxious about her husband in the north. She is also exploited and abused by an envious policeman.
There are some sub-plots concerning social workers, Methodist missionaries and a schoolgirl who takes abortofacient pills.

Downbeat even to the end, serving as a sad reminder that the aftermath of escape can be highly traumatic.

1. Korea, North and South? The history? The separation? Refugees from the North, the role of the South?

2. Pyong Yang and life there, ordinary, police state, suspicions of the South, fears of capitalism, executions?

3. The contrast with the affluence and freedoms of Seoul?

4. The title, its meaning, picture of the south, streets and freeways, cars, buildings, apartments, churches? Korea of the 21st century? The musical score?

5. The credits, the old-fashioned filming, the buses and the past – the table tennis, the cheating husband and the demands of loyalty to the president, remarriage, happy home life, love? The southern jells/gels(**??no idea) , the DVDs, watching the DVD, the sensual pleasure? Life in the North?

6. The warning, Rhee and her collecting her things, disposing of the DVDs and the other goods, the Chinese boat, the other escapees, arriving in the South? The official interrogations? Suspicions? The social worker, the menstruation? The apartment, the ID, the money – yet surveillance and phone-tapping? Rhee alone, the shops, eating alone, the chatter of the schoolgirls, the freedom of the streets? The church? The accordion man and his story? Working in the laundry? Gaining a life? Pining for her husband?

7. The police episode, her ID card, the two policemen talking about the refugees, the government subsidies, the envy? The policeman coming to the laundry, inviting Rhee for the meal, talking about comrades, the second meal, the drinking, the violent sex in the alley, the thief taking her money? Exploitation?

8. The schoolgirl, discovering her pregnancy, her mother working in the laundry, giving her money, buying the abortion pills, her bleeding, finally seeing her inhaling and collapsing in the reeds?

9. Rhee and her life, the effect of the rape, the robbery, her illness? News of her husband’s execution? The glimpses of the executions in the snow? Her photo of him? Her being ill, peeling the apple, slitting her wrists?

10. Her care for her, her living, her grief? Her hope?

11. The minor characters, the social worker, her mother and her aunt and the ageing, dying? The charity work? Singing in the choir? The American Methodist pastor and his wife, his religious talk?

12. The South, quality of life, the symbol of the exploitative policeman, of the pregnant schoolgirl and her waste of her life?