Portrait (2025)

The walls between us still behind

Overview

The classroom environment is like a microcosm of society. This film explores how value conflicts in the classroom will be a mirror that reflects the future we face. It asks what ‘true integration’ means through alienation, conflict, and reconciliation experienced by a South Korean trainee teacher in a North Korean school. It is not a story about political and institutional integration, but about how people with different values and educational philosophies coexist. In particular, ‘the loss of the portrait of the North Korean leader’ in the classroom represents far more than a mere incident. It displays how two teachers from different systems approach, perceive, and solve the same incident differently, highlighting the realistic challenges that might arise in a unified Korea.