The Spy Gone North (공작)

With horrifying images of corpses being burned and starving children nibbling at them, this spy film by Yoon Jong-bin reveals rarely seen aspects of the North Korean dictatorship. And this within the contours of a polished genre film, a Korean version of the interchangeability of good and evil from novels of John le Carré. Based on the biography of a repentant spy, the intricately ramified screenplay paints a disconcerting picture of the two Koreas' intelligence services willing to do anything to maintain their power, even if it means coming to terms with their worst enemy. The internal struggle revolves around sabotaging the election victory of reformist candidate Kim Dae-jung, seen as a greater danger to the dictatorship in the South than the Stalinists from the North in the mid-1990s.

"A film about stellar spycraft that's been made with comparable steely intelligence, The Spy Gone North boasts little action but compensates with director Yoon Jong-bin's considerable ability to weave suspense while depicting the subtle maneuverings of a fraught covert operation." - Screen Daily