An Engaged Reading of the North Korean Film “The Wheels of Happiness”

Valérie Gelézeau (1, 2)

1 CRC-CCJ - Centre de Recherches sur la Corée
2 CCJ - Chine, Corée, Japon

This essay is based on a Seminar EHESS 2014-2015 “Studying North Korea: An Introduction” in which the film The Wheels of Happiness (Haengbok-ŭi sure pakwi, 2010) was shown. Initially approached as a review exercise internal to the seminar, the students’ commentaries on several of the film’s more salient themes were sufficiently rich to form the basis of a stand-alone text in French. After much work, this text became a short essay (Gelézeau et al., « Les roues du bonheur, un film nord-coréen », Korea Analysis, juillet 2015, p. 42-47), before being fleshed out into this final article in English.

Mots clés: The Wheels of Happiness; North Korean cinema; architects; women; Pyongyang

Domaines: Sociologie; Architecture, aménagement de l'espace; Art et histoire de l'art; Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Valérie Gelézeau. An Engaged Reading of the North Korean Film “The Wheels of Happiness”. 2019. ⟨hal-02240911⟩