Ahn Haeryong

I. Introduction

Ahn Hae-ryong is a South Korean documentary filmmaker and cinematographer. Ahn is an Asia Press writer and focused on the forgotten history of Korea by travelling in East and Southeast Asia.

II. Career

Ahn's documentary film My Heart Is Not Broken Yet (2009) documents a "unconventional" World War II victim, a former comfort woman Song Sin-do, who becomes something of a star in Japan while filing a lawsuit against the Japanese government.

But he truly made his mark in 2014 when he released what was the year's most controversial documentary The Truth Shall Not Sink with Sewol (2014), drawing criticisms from the government when it premiered at the 19th Busan International Film Festival and kicked off a massive debate about censorship in Korea. The film is a journalistic account of the Sewol ferry disaster – using audio recordings, news clips and interviews – to convincingly assert that the government were grossly negligent in their recovery efforts, which claimed the lives of over 300 people earlier that year.

III. Filmography

IV. Awards