This video looks at South Korea's uncomfortable but growing acceptance of North Korea over a two-year period. Filmmaker Solrun Hoaas, director of Pyongyang Diaries, an earlier film on North Korea, gained unprecedented access to former political prisoners, student dissidents, writers, artists, and others affected by a Government caught between its new open-door "Sunshine Policy" and the remnants of a Cold War anticommunist mentality. The video is a combination of the essay genre and the filmmaker’s journey of exploration, an effort to unravel the issues that intrigue and puzzle her about Korean society and its engagement with the North. It draws on footage recorded from 1998 to 2000, which has been a period of economic upheaval and enormous change in Korea, particularly in the relationship between North and South Korea.

Directed by Solrun Hoaas
2001, color, 73 mins.
Purchase: $295 Rental: $95

“...could very well spark discussions in classrooms.” - Library Journal

"Rushing to Sunshine provide[s] an excellent audiovisual aid for teachers at nearly all grade levels above elementary school to teach about North and South Korea...It is a coherent and compelling study in attitudes toward unification and North Korea...Does a good job of moving between the general and the particular, focusing on the large issues of South Korean ambivalence toward the North, the national security laws, and the role of the Left in Korean politics, and the smaller issues..." - Prof. R. Richard Grinker, The Journal of Asian Studies