View the trailer at: https://youtu.be/mUy740Q2_pg?si=V2r3ErulG4q5GHnv

Throughout the era of military dictatorships in South Korea, Kim Dae-jung was the country’s most celebrated—and persecuted—politician. Kim survived a death sentence, years of imprisonment, and an assassination attempt to become the president in post-democratization South Korea at the age of 74. In 2000, Kim was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Directed by Kim Hwanki, the documentary follows Kim Dae-jung’s political career from the 1960s when he was a newcomer to his famous “return home” in 1987, a tour that took him to Gwangju, a southwestern city where a massacre of civilians by the military had taken place just years before. The film contains never-before-seen footages of Kim on death row, speaking eloquently on Korea’s future. “Kim Dae-jung Must Not Die” is a vivid record of the remarkable life and times of South Korea’s most famous champion of democracy.

Directed by Min Hwanki
Presented in Korean and English with English Subtitles

The Korean Cinema NOW 2025 series features critical picks of recent Korean film hits. Screened at the State Theater, all films are free and open to the public.