Koryo Saram

Koryo Saram - The Unreliable People

Film Screening Monday July7th at the Film Forum 5pm

documentary film produced and directed by David Chung

Co-director Matt Dibble, Executive Producer Meredith Woo

In 1937, Josef Stalin began a campaign of massive ethnic cleansing,

forcibly deporting everyone of Korean origin in Far East Russia

to the steppe country of Central Asia, 3700 miles away. Y. David

Chung and Matt Dibble’s documentary charts the extraordinary

untold history of the Koryo Saram (the Soviet Korean phrase

for Korean person), dubbed “The Unreliable People” by Stalin.

Through never-before-seen historical footage and emotional personal

accounts from the original Koryo Saram, a lost history is

pieced together, one that survived Stalin’s mandate to eradicate

the Korean language and tradition. In Kazakh, Korean or Russian,

the film asks questions that all immigrants can relate to: how to

hold onto one’s traditions, and how to save one’s culture from

being overwhelmed.

www.koryosaram.net