Films feature before and after German reunification

By Kang Hyun-kyung

The Goethe Institute in Seoul has screened a series of films featuring German reunification from last week and is also preparing for a conference to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The anniversary of the historic event coincides with a full-blown debate here in Korea after President Park Gen-hye pushed for the drive to achieve a unified Korea.

On Wednesday, the award-winning film “The Lives of Others” was screened at the German state-run institute. Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the 2006 film deals with the German Democratic Republic secret service agents’ monitoring of East Berlin.

Stefan Dreyer, the head of the institute, encouraged Korean audiences interested in the German unification to take advantage of the film series to have an idea of the possible consequences of unification of the Korean Peninsula through the German experience.

“The fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9 in 1989 was the first step to German reunification which was realized a year later,” Dreyer said.

“The Goethe Institute will reflect this historic date with a number of programs, among them an international conference about the Asian perception of the fall of the wall, as well as artistic intervention in the Demilitarized Zone,” he said.

During the conference slated for November, participants will explore the significance of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the transnational interconnectivity between the event and East Asian region.

Dreyer said the film series is presented in three topics. The first one is the history of a divided Germany and classics such as the East German film “Divided Sky” from the early 1960s and the award-winning “The Lives of Others,” he said.

Movies in the second topic feature the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification process.

“We will also show films which depict the long way from political to internal and cultural unification, which as we all know, took at least 15-20 years. And of course we hope that with reflecting German history of the last 40-50 years in the medium of film we can make a meaningful contribution to the current unification debate in Korea,” said Dreyer.

The screening of German films highlighting before and after reunification came amid a heated debate on unification here in Korea.

President Park proposed the so-called Dresden Doctrine calling for an increase of human-to-human exchanges between the two Koreas, humanitarian assistance to the North to help malnourished women and children, and win-win cooperation to exploit natural resources in the North. She made the offer during her visit to Germany last month.

North Korea rejected this, issuing strongly-worded criticism against the Park government.

The North alleged that the Dresden proposal was no more than a plot to absorb the North Korean economy into the South.