Naro’s Search for Space
Directed by Haeryun Kang. Currently in production.
South Korea has the lowest fertility rate in the world. Naro Island is its microcosm, with a strange cosmic twist.
Naro Island is home to South Korea's Space Center. Living just a few feet away is Jaewon, the last child of the village. His bedroom shakes when rockets are launched from a nearby shore. What is the meaning of shooting a billion-dollar rocket into space from an island that may no longer have children in its future? On Naro, a rural, aging society, very different versions of a Korean future collide: on the one hand, an image of cosmic expansion. On the other, Naro is an extreme, fast-forward microcosm of South Korea, where children are increasingly a rarity.
Director’s Statement
Islands are probably what I love most about the Korean landscape. I’ve been going to as many as I can for years, as a journalist, filmmaker and a curious traveler. With the exception of big islands like Jeju, most of them are filled with the aura of death and disappearance – in a few decades, most of them likely won’t be inhabited. Will Naro Island be different? Can it be saved from a future of oblivion, thanks to the space industry?
Space is a fascinating presence on Naro Island. Most islanders range from optimism and positivity to indifference and complete normalization of a rocket launch creating a semi-earthquake in their backyard. The space industry provides an alternative hope for the island, where the average age for the residents is over 60 and its schools are in danger of closing down. But this hope is also full of ambiguities; as the industry fulfills its promise to expand, the very expansion can demolish the villages and the old ways of life.
Our film explores these ambiguities and meditates on mortality, the cognitive dissonance between the local and the cosmic – through the very earthbound lives of the islanders right next to this transplanetary industry.
