In a defector's new life, Kim Min-ha finds a story for everyone

"It didn't feel like I was reading fiction," Kim Min-ha says of the script for "Hana Korea." "It felt like reading someone's diary." She had her reasons.

The film casts her as Hye-sun, a 21-year-old from North Korea's Ryanggang Province who defected to the South to pay her mother's medical bills back home.

Her narrative is built around a series of letters she writes home in voice-over.

Stories like Hye-sun's are hardly scarce on Korean screens, but they mostly belong to documentaries and talk sh ...