Freedom That Demands Its Own Surrender

MOVIE REVIEW
Hana Korea
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Genre: Drama, Coming-of-Age, True Story, Human Rights, Social
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 43m
Director(s): Frederik Sølberg
Writer(s): Frederik Sølberg, Sharon Choi, Minji Kang
Cast: Kim Min-ha, Kim Joo-ryoung, Ahn Seo-hyun
Where to Watch: shown at the 2025 Busan International Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: HANA KOREA opens with a question that lingers with you: What happens when the place you fought so hard to reach doesn’t feel like home? Directed by Danish filmmaker Frederik Sølberg, this feature debut blurs the line between fiction and documentary to tell the story of Hyesun, a young woman who defies her North Korean regime only to discover that South Korea is not the promised land she had imagined. It is instead another arena of rules, expectations, and subtle alienations.

The film's strength lies in its intimate portrayal of Hyesun’s journey. Played with vulnerability by Kim Min-ha, Hyesun is introduced not as a symbol or case study, but as a daughter and a survivor. Her letters to her mother, still in the North, provide the film with a delicate inner voice. Through these letters, the audience is invited into Hyesun’s private world—her loneliness, her hopes, her moments of disorientation. Sølberg and co-writer Sharon Choi utilize this device brilliantly to cut through the noise of geopolitical narratives, instead focusing on the universal: the longing of a child for a parent, the search for belonging, and the fragile work of starting anew.

HANA KOREA situates itself at the intersection of personal resilience and systemic indifference. While North Korea looms in the background as a symbol of an oppressive past, South Korea emerges as a complex and multifaceted entity in its own right. Integration programs designed to teach democracy and independence feel alien to Hyesun, who must quickly adapt to technologies, bureaucracies, and codes she has never encountered before. Something as simple as using a credit card becomes a moment of overwhelming strangeness. Sølberg doesn’t sensationalize these adjustments—he lets the discomfort breathe, giving the audience space to feel how jarring everyday routines can be when nothing in their past has prepared them for them.

Kim Min-ha anchors the film with a performance that is both grounded and layered. She conveys the subtle oscillation between fragility and determination with precision—her hesitation in unfamiliar situations is as powerful as her quiet resolve to keep moving forward. The supporting cast adds intensity, particularly Kim Joo-ryoung, who embodies a South Korean mentor figure caught between genuine care and systemic limitations. Ahn Seo-hyun provides warmth in smaller but crucial moments, giving Hyesun a glimpse of companionship in a world where trust is scarce.

It does not present South Korea as purely liberating, nor does it reduce North Korea to mere caricature. Instead, Sølberg emphasizes the continuity of struggle. For Hyesun, fleeing the North was only one step; the harder task is learning how to live when liberation comes with conditions. The letters to her mother keep this struggle grounded, reminding viewers that freedom does not erase absence, and new beginnings do not heal every wound.

The screenplay, crafted by Sølberg and Sharon Choi, is carefully nuanced. Choi’s sensitivity to language ensures that the dialogue captures the complexity of cross-cultural adaptation, where translation is never seamless and meaning is always negotiated. This adds to the authenticity of the experience—when Hyesun struggles to articulate herself, the audience shares her disorientation.

The film’s pacing, at just over 100 minutes, allows for patience. Some sequences linger, but this feels intentional. Sølberg has brought his documentary instincts into fiction feature filmmaking, resisting the temptation to over-dramatize. The result is a work that feels immersive and observational, a portrait of lived experience rather than a dramatized “issue movie.”

Critically, HANA KOREA fits into a growing wave of cinema that humanizes the stories of North Korean refugees without turning them into propaganda or spectacle. It is less interested in the political theatre of divided nations and more concerned with the personal cost of displacement.

As a debut fiction feature, it also signals Sølberg’s versatility. Moving from documentaries to a narrative feature with documentary sensibility, he demonstrates how porous the boundary between the two forms can be. His ability to draw from real testimonies while crafting a cinematic story gives HANA KOREA an edge of authenticity that lingers. It also speaks to his background as both a filmmaker and musician—the film has a cadence, a quiet musicality in its progression, underscored by Jonas Bjerre’s restrained score.

HANA KOREA serves as a poignant reminder that liberation is not a destination, but a process. Hyesun’s story may be rooted in the unique context of the Korean peninsula, but its resonance is global. It speaks to anyone who has fled one system only to confront another, anyone who has felt foreign in a place that promised safety, and anyone who has had to reconcile with the shadows of their past while stepping into an uncertain future.

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[photo courtesy of NINE TAILED FOX, SEESAW PICTURES, SONNTAG PICTURES]

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