K-Family Affairs review – childhood memories act as chronicle of South Korean democracy

Nam Arum’s debut documentary weaves intimate home videos and family stories into an interrogation of the aftermath of Chun Doo-hwan’s dictatorship

The personal and the political collide in Nam Arum’s astonishingly assured debut, an astute chronicle of South Korean politics through the lens of family memories. Weaving intimate home videos with poignant archival footage, the film-maker makes tangible the invisible link between the private and the public spheres.

As a family portrait, Nam’s documentary refreshingly moves on from the usual emphasis on generational differences, focusing instead on how youthful idealism metamorphoses over the years. As part of the pro-democracy 386 generation who came of age during Chun Doo-hwan’s military dictatorship, Nam’s parents were politically active as students. Their paths following their marriage, however, took contrasting turns. Once an optimistic investigative journalist, her father chose to become a civil servant instead, and with each change of government he was arbitrarily shuffled between departments. Nam’s mother, on the other hand, devotes her time to women’s rights groups.