students' program II

Arum’s par­ents are part of the proud 386 gen­er­a­tion*, which played a sig­nif­i­cant role in achiev­ing democ­ra­ti­za­tion in South Korea. Eager to pass on a better world to Arum, her father became a public ser­vant, and her mother, a fem­i­nist activist. How­ev­er, at the age of 18, she came face to face with the Sewol ferry dis­as­ter, which left numer­ous vic­tims due to the mal­func­tion­ing nation­al system. To her dismay, even Arum’s father was involved in man­ag­ing the after­math of the acci­dent, prompt­ing her to ques­tion the democ­ra­cy craft­ed by the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion. Nav­i­gat­ing through Korean polit­i­cal his­to­ry via her fam­i­ly’s jour­ney, Arum reflects on her gen­er­a­tion’s role, span­ning from the 2014 Sewol ferry dis­as­ter to the impeach­ment, #MeToo move­ment, and the 2022 pres­i­den­tial election.

*The “386 gen­er­a­tion” refers to South Kore­ans who were born in the 1960s, stud­ied in the 1980s and became highly polit­i­cal­ly active, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the fight for democ­ra­cy and social jus­tice. The term alludes to the latest com­put­er model at the time, the Intel 386.

Arum Nam, born in 1995, is a doc­u­men­tary direc­tor based in Seoul, South Korea, cur­rent­ly pur­su­ing a master’s degree in doc­u­men­tary at the Korea Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Arts. She direct­ed a short doc­u­men­tary called FEMI, which tells the story of a fem­i­nist mother, and co-direct­ed TELEPORTING with Japan­ese direc­tors during the pan­dem­ic. K-FAMILY AFFAIRS is her first fea­ture documentary.