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DMZ Docs Industry Projects



Guest Workers

Sanhah LEE

  • Korea, Germany
  • 90min
  • DCP
  • color

Synopsis

Where did the Korean-German nurses, or ¡°guest workers¡±, go? We are revisiting the women who went to Germany after half a century. We remove the narrative of nationalism deeply rooted in Korean society and listen to the voices based on the unheard history and identity of individuals. Today, their voices are echoed not far away. From a country of emigrants to a country of immigrants, South Korea has now become a home to guest workers. In an age of the increasingly gendered nature of immigration and outsourced domestic labor, the stories of migrant women in South Korea deserves attention. From the struggle for the right to stay in Germany to the anti-discrimination law campaign in Korea in 2022. The time and place may be different, but the lives of migrants are connected to each other. Meet the guest workers in the field of life transcending the times and borders. 

Review

​I had the pleasure of talking to first-generation Korean migrant women who arrived in Germany 50 years ago to volunteer at a hospice organization for Koreans. The story of their lives was beyond anything I could have imagined. Korean nurses and miners dispatched to Germany can be found in textbooks and propaganda films as contributors to Park Chung-hee¡¯s economic development plan. They are portrayed as our innocent sisters and brothers. However, few people are aware of their pro-democracy movement and the fight for the right to stay in Germany in the 1970s. In the past, female workers were sent to Germany under the labor export program designed for attracting foreign reserves. They have joined forces with other female workers from Korea¡¯s Dongil Textile and YH Trading. Then, how are immigrant women living in Korea now? Is our society prepared to face the perceptions, bias, and unreasonable discrimination against immigrants who are living with us in various ways? What can we see in the process of repeated migration of people over the centuries? 

Director

  • Sanhah LEE

     

Credit

  • Producer¹Ý¹ÚÁöÀº Jieun BANPARK