A two-month-old baby is sent from Incheon to a small town in western Denmark. On paper, she is recorded as ‘abandoned,’ but the documents were falsified to speed up the adoption process. Homesick is a personal documentary made by the director who, after learning this truth, traces her own adoption history, as well as a political testimony about Korea’s overseas adoption system that was recognized as having committed human rights abuses by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2025. Through interviews with her Danish family, the director reveals the wounds of her adoptive family that has kept violence, alcoholism, divorce, and death hidden. In staged scenes featuring women adoptees dressed in white, the film imagines, beautifully and sadly, the life that might have unfolded had another choice been possible. The Danish title Hjemsøgt means ‘haunted’ but can also be read as ‘home’ (Hjem) + ’seek’ (søgt). Like the title, this deep, haunting film follows a woman who has wandered two worlds like a ghost, finally finding her voice as she searches for her home and roots.
A Korean-Danish visual anthropologist and documentary filmmaker. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Copenhagen and an MA in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester, and currently teaches at the university level. Her feature debut, A Colombian Family (2020), was selected for competition at CPH:DOX, received an Honourable Mention for Emerging International Filmmaker at Hot Docs, and won the main prize at the RAI Film Festival.
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
