The trailer for The Korean Class is out now!
- James Smith
- Jul 13
- 1 min read
In New Malden, London, home to Europe’s largest North Korean diaspora, defector Choi Seung-chul founded the Hankyoreh School to teach children their parents’ language and instill in them a sense of identity as children of North Korean heritage growing up in Britain.
The school struggled for years until Dr. Lee Hyang-kyu, a South Korean educator, joined him. Together, they set out to build a “unification school,” but decades shaped by opposing systems (state control in the North and democratic freedom in the South) proved impossible to reconcile. Though they spoke the same language, their values diverged, and their shared dream, once flourishing, slowly unraveled.
Filmed over ten years, this documentary reveals how even a shared language can fail to bridge lived experience, asking: if words are not enough, what does it truly take for two worlds to understand each other.
In a world fractured by conflict far beyond the Korean Peninsula, is reconciliation ever truly possible?
Watch the trailer here:
