Early morning on January 13th, 1903, a steamship named SS Gaelic, carrying about 100 Koreans, docked in Honolulu Harbor. They were the first Korean immigrants to Hawaii and wanted to start new lives. Between 1903 and August in 1905, approximately 7,400 immigrants, most of them male, arrived in Hawaii to also start new lives. Finding …
Syngman Rhee, the founding president of the Republic of Korea spent a total of thirty years in Hawaii. The first 25 years occurred before he was elected the founding president and five years were after he resigned from the presidency. What is the significance of 30 years in one’s life span? What does Syngman Rhee’s …
Ji-wan is a filmmaker at the crux of a mid-life crisis, flatlining in a middling career after her 3rd film is a flop and stuck in a loveless marriage. Then she gets a catalyst of an opportunity to jump start her career–a restoration of a 1960s classic that purportedly is directed by Korea’s first female …
On January 13, 1903, the first group of Koreans arrived in Hawai‘i, marking this day as Korean American Day. But the U.S. and Korea first established diplomatic relations through a treaty in 1882. In the treaty, Korea is referred to as ‘Chosen.’ However, since 1903, only two Korean Americans have been elected to US Congress. …
Police officer So-eun reluctantly agrees to stand in as the mother of a kidnapped child. When the investigation stalls out, she receives a mysterious phone call. The caller, accusing her of a bad impersonation, demands that she deliver the ransom or her own son will pay the consequences…. Out of options, and unable to inform …
Freddie (Park Ji-Min), a young French woman, finds herself spontaneously tracking down the South Korean birth parents she has never met while on vacation in Seoul. Unfolding across several specific time periods in Freddie’s life, usually tethered to her birth country (geographically and metaphorically), the film’s time-jumping narrative weaves in twists and turns, chronicling the …
In this breathtaking revenge thriller, a part-time TGIF server named “Freddie” Pil-ju (Lee Sung-min), in his 80s and suffering from alzheimer’s disease, embarks on a long-awaited vengeance plot against pro-Japanese Imperialism collaborators that led to his family’s death decades before. Recruiting his young work bestie “Jason” In-kyu (Nam Joo-huck) as a driver, he sets off …
When the Korean police decide to transport an assortment of Korea’s most notorious criminals back from the Philippines via cargo ship (a la CON AIR, but on a boat!), the potential for things to go very wrong is palpable. And it is not long before trouble is afoot. The ultraviolent Jong-du (Seo In-guk) has his …
Young Sohee (Kim Si-eun) is a bubbly, tenacious vocational high-school student with a fiery temperament living in rural Korea. She is excited when she lands an externship at a major internet provider’s call center, but the prized office job turns out to be a nightmarish workplace. She is placed under immense pressure from the company …
For the past five years, Chan-woo has been trying to enlist in the police academy. Although he is obsessed in applying even after a litany of rejections, he is a ubiquitous slacker, and can’t even afford to pay for the application fees, resulting in him asking his friend to lend him money. His friend agrees …
With aloha, HIFF acknowledges its occupation of ancestral, traditional and contemporary lands of the Native Hawaiian people, the Kānaka Maoli.
With gratitude, we honor the ʻāina itself and the generations who steward it.