The film shows long-lost images of the early 20th-century Korean Peninsula, before the Korean War separated the North and South. The images include women spinning on cotton wheels, families making traditional tteok (rice cakes), a look at Dongsomun (Seoul’s ancient East Gate), which was destroyed just years later, and missionary activities in what is now North Korean territory. The footage was once stored in a German monastery, but later the Nazi government, which sided with Japan in World War II, tried to confiscate it because some of it could be interpreted as espousing a critical view toward the Japanese occupational regime in Korea. Fortunately, a monk saved the film, hiding it behind a stone wall in the basement before he died during the war. The film was rediscovered in 1975 during a renovation.
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