The Never-ending Pursuit for Survival and Place | Letters to My Hometown

Описание: In a conversation between parents and daughter which is at once raw, poignant, and hopeful, Rosa Kwon sits down for a heart-to-heart with her parents, David and Jean Yoon Kwon, to navigate the untranslated geography of their family’s history. While David and Jean Yoon departed from Pyeongyang and Shinuiju at an early age—their respective hometowns north of the 38th parallel—their candid and clarifying conversation with Rosa reveals how the greatest distance they’ve traveled isn’t across borders, but across the dining table.

For the senior Kwons, whose lives have encompassed Japanese occupation, the Korean War, and the oppressive Yushin regime of 1970s South Korea, emigration to the United States necessitated a singular focus on survival. Yet in the pursuit of the American dream, their heritage was eclipsed by the immediate demands of the present; in its place, a cultural and linguistic tension where Rosa has felt perpetually viewed through the lens of a seven-year-old, and a regret for what parents left lost in translation.

The family explores the friction between Rosa’s desire to reconnect with her heritage and her parents’ questioning of such a project’s 가치, or worth. From Rosa’s perspective, conversations like the one recorded with her parents serve as reasons enough: the conversational barrier had kept parents and children from speaking candidly with each other, leading to years of miscommunicated thoughts, feelings, and expectations. But through tears and newfound honesty, they begin to dismantle the barriers built by decades of unspoken truths, showing us that while the link to the motherland may be frayed, the path toward mutual understanding can always be rewritten—one translated text and one "I love you" at a time.

The 75 years of division and conflict from the Korean War have not only affected the first generation, who still long for their hometowns in North Korea, but also younger generations who have no memories of the conflict, yet many of whom have inherited the weight of uncertainty and the mission of searching for missing relatives.

This iteration of Letters to My Hometown invites audiences to listen and reflect upon intergenerational conversations of the Korean American community whose divided families have sustained the traumas of their homeland’s partition. Generously supported by @afsc_org, these conversations aim to take steps toward transforming the intergenerational traumas of the Korean War into opportunities for collective remembering, learning, and healing.

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