71 minutes / Color
English; Korean / English subtitles
Release: 2017
Copyright: 2016
"There are five kinds of families that buy us," says Mrs. B over dinner and drinks with fellow North Korean exiles living in China. "The first type, either the father or the mother is missing and the son can't get married. Then there are the very poor families, like my husband's. In the third type, the man is handicapped... mentally handicapped too. They're all poor. We're sold to families like that."
Mrs. B (we don't learn her real name) is something of an expert when it comes to the trafficking of North Koreans. In 2003, at age 37, she left her husband and two sons behind in North Korea, crossed the icy Tumen River into China, and was sold into marriage. When we meet her a decade later, she's running a robust trafficking business from her home on a small farm in northern China. While her husband fixes equipment and brings in the harvest, she's on her cellphone negotiating with people smugglers, bringing in karaoke girls, and advising newly smuggled clients on how to avoid detection and deportation.
MRS. B, A NORTH KOREAN WOMAN is a closely observed verite portrait of a world-weary woman who finds herself between countries, between worlds, and between families. Unable to bring her North Korean family to China, Mrs. B eventually arranges to get them into South Korea (where her husband was originally held under suspicion of espionage). Now, she plans to return to Seoul herself, seek refugee status, see her Korean husband and sons again, and then send for her Chinese husband and his octogenarian parents.
Director Jero Yun runs considerable risks, jammed into the back of a car with Mrs B as she welcomes a newly smuggled young mother into the country, and joining her and a group of women as they travel all the way across China to Thailand -- by bus and car, and on a long night-time trek through fields with a crying baby -- seeking a better life.
By focusing so tightly on one person, Yun offers a powerful look at the mundane realities of life for both trafficker and trafficked, overturning cliched notions about a necessarily mysterious trade.
"Reveals sentiments very much out of sync with the mainstream representations of North Korea, its people and its relationship with its neighbors ... Powerful."—The Hollywood Reporter
Select Accolades
The first film about the Kyrgyz tradition of bride kidnapping takes viewers inside families, to talk with kidnapped brides who have managed to escape as well as those who are making homes with their new husbands.
Petr Lom | 2005 | 51 minutes | Color | Kyrgistan | English subtitles
A gripping cinema verite documentary that shows how China's one-child policy plays out in the daily lives of women in one Chinese village.
XU Huijing | 2014 | 68 minutes | Color | Mandarin | English subtitles
In West Africa many young women, who dream of escaping a life of misery by marrying a rich, white foreigner, surf the Internet for marriage proposals.
Francois Ducat | 2009 | 53 minutes | Color
A fascinating portrait of one North Korean girl and her parents in the year as she prepares to join the Korean Children's Union on Kim Jong-Il's birthday.
Vitaly Mansky | 2016 | 110 minutes | Color | English; Korean | English subtitles
