Based on the 2016 award-winning novel “Winter in Sokcho” by Elisa Shua Dusapin, filmmaker Koya Kamura’s adaption and debut feature film, is a quiet introspection on what identity, beauty, and self-confidence looks like in modern day South Korea.
Through the eyes of Soo-ha (Bella Kim), a mid-twenties young South Korean woman searching for some semblance of the familiar in the unfamiliar French graphic novelist Yan Kerrand (Roschdy Zem), who’s looking for his own font of inspiration in an unfamiliar city, Koya (Homesick, Kidnapping John Malkovich) and co-writer Stéphane Ly-Cuong weave a story about two people, a city, and maybe a country looking for answers in learning to accept themselves, faults and all.
In spring, summer, and fall, Sokcho, a small coastal city located in North Western South Korea, is vibrant with a bustling fishing industry and curious tourists visiting to partake of the city’s seafood delicacies for which it’s famous, and to get as close as politically allowed to the infamous DMZ. That invisible border line along the 38th parallel splitting the Korean peninsula into North and South in 1948. Guests stay at the many pensions and guesthouses for respite, and for Soo-ha who works at The Blue House (not so subtly named after the presidential residence in Seoul), cooking and tending to the needs of guests offers her a way to meet new people while maintaining distance.
But that all changes the day Yan Kerrand arrives to find lodging in this cold and quiet town. Shy upon first meeting him, Soo-ha, encouraged by her kindly boss Mr. Park (Ryu Tae-ho) to speak to their new arrival in French, a language which she spent years studying as a university student but had little opportunity to use in a casual setting. Both Soo-ha and Kerrand are curious about each other, mutually attracted by their individual reserved natures and penchant for quietly observing the world as it moves and shifts around them. However, seeing the chance to learn about Sokcho and Korea from the perspective of a local, Kerrand takes the chance to have Soo-ha be his personal tour guide.
In the days following his arrival, she takes him on a tour to the Goseong DMZ Museum – where curiously the receptionist speaks Soo-ha in English rather than Korean, and welcomes Kerrand in French. Here, they walk around the exhibits listening to audio history of the decades of conflict that wracked the peninsula until armistice was declared in 1948. It’s with this scene that I realised how intimate sharing earphones can be. Intimate not in a sexual way, but intimate in the way huddling closely to a trusted confidant and sharing one’s innermost thoughts without fear of judgement, is. On open lookouts dotting the landscape, they look at the jagged mountain tops relaying folktales and stories about dragons, women’s bodies, and flying fish spreading their wings across the surface of the sea.
Through each interaction, Kerrand and Soo-ha gradually open up like the earliest spring blooms, revealing more of what makes them intriguing to each other. He learns that Soo-ha’s interest in learning French stemmed from her longing for a father she’s never met. A Frenchman fisherman, her mother (Park Mi-hyeon) knew for only a brief while before he left to return to the seas. This absence of a man who remains a mystery to her, has created a sense of discontent and uncertainty within Soo-ha about who she is as a woman, a daughter, and even a Korean.
With careful observation, it becomes quite obvious that Soo-ha’s shy nature and insecurities are as visible as the bright white surgical bandages obscuring the identity of a mysterious female guest whose presence feels like an eerie symbol of a culture obsessed with looks and fixing perceived flaws. This unnamed and unknown woman, is often seen sitting quietly sipping tea and eating food prepared by Soo-ha, is as sad a figure as she is intriguing. Could she be a celebrity, a university student, a young mother, or even a tourist from overseas partaking in the specialities of the plastic surgery capital of the world?
Whoever she may have been, she serves as a reminder of how women are influenced to change their identities, the features that make them unique, into someone almost indistinguishable from oh so many others all for the sake of being pleasing to the eye of strangers. A cultural belief and norm demonstrated in Soo-ha’s boyfriend Jun-ho (Gong Do-yu), casually suggesting that if she moves with him to Seoul, she’d be better suited to and accepted in the bustling metropolitan city if she altered her face. Not once is the tremendous pain, long recovery period, and real danger plastic surgery entails ever mentioned or considered.
As Soo-ha tries to figure out who she is and who she wants to be, Kerrand himself reveals his enigmatic nature. He licks paint brushes, tastes ink, and chews on bits of paper to test their quality because it’s only if they meet his standards can they be of use to him as tools for illustrating the thoughts and images flowing through his mind. Through Kerran’s art one of the most beautiful elements of Winter in Sokcho takes shape. The lines of the human body.
As the characters speak of the imperfections they see in Soo-ha and their own bodies, the audience is shown that these so-called faults are what makes the human body to be brilliantly beautiful. They take shape with animated black and white swoops and glides across the canvas of the screen. And begs the question why is seeing the soft curves and folds of a woman’s body beautiful when painted on a canvas or sculpted in cold marble, but seen as ugly and undesirable in the true nakedness of flesh.
Though winter can feel like the longest season of them all, with its frigid air that creates a thin veil of emotional obscurity and uncertainty, it’s the one that allows us to appreciate the vivid colors of spring blooms, the rolling waves of unfrozen ocean waves and fresh air as signs of new beginnings. For Kerrand the closing of winter in Sokcho signals a new chapter in his next book, and for Soo-ha a change in attitude and her relationships.
Winter in Sokcho had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, and screened in the world cinema program of the 2025 Jeonju International Film Festival.
In my interview with Koya we spoke of the themes of characters searching for answers about their lives in his films – 2019’s award-winning short Homesick, Winter in Sokcho, and his current project Evaporated, working out the complicated chemistry and dynamics of their characters with Bella and Roschdy, and the importance of the mystery woman to the film’s narrative.
Carolyn Hinds
Freelance Film Critic, Journalist, Podcaster & YouTuber
African American Film Critics Association Member, Tomatometer-Approved Critic
Host & Producer Carolyn Talks…, and So Here’s What Happened! Podcast
Bylines at Authory.com/CarolynHinds
Twitter & Instagram: @CarrieCnh12
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