“Was it hard to watch? It was hard for me while editing, too (laughs).”

Indie Space in Mapo-gu, Seoul, on the 3rd. Director Lee Il-ha (52) struck up a friendly conversation with viewers who had just finished watching his documentary film <Youth Politics White Paper - Show Me the Justice>. Laughter rippled through the audience. In a year when, after illegal martial law, voices filled the squares from both left and right, viewers likely accustomed to hearing only the voices of their ‘own camp’ may find watching this film a decidedly unusual experience.

The film interweaves the political bids of Kim Chang-in (36), a ‘progressive youth’ from the campus activist scene, and Kim Hyun-jin (43), a self-employed gym owner and ‘conservative youth’. Their journeys begin around 2020, when both hoped to become youth proportional-representation candidates in the 21st National Assembly election. Aside from a single moment on a patch of lawn outside the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, Chang-in and Hyun-jin do not meet.

If not for the director, the two might never have crossed paths in their lifetimes. Chang-in, a ‘democratic socialist’, debates policy and campaign strategy with comrades in a cramped office. His words, dreaming of equality, are academic and idealistic, which is to say, unlikely to gather practical votes.

By contrast, Hyun-jin’s language is agitational yet excessively raw. As a gym owner who made his own way after moving up to Seoul, policies such as minimum wage hikes, which he sees as “leftists’ policies”, strike him as a ‘thieving mentality’. In 2019 he not only joined a solidarity fast when Hwang Kyo-ahn, former Liberty Korea Party leader, went on hunger strike; head-shaving protests, a three-steps-one-bow march, and solo pickets are, to him, acts of patriotism. Support pouring in from ‘patriotic citizens’ on the street and on YouTube pushes him toward even more extreme actions.

Whom you empathize with will inevitably depend on your political orientation. A key virtue of the film is that it places their stories in parallel with equal weight. Wherever you stand, for half of the 106-minute running time you are forced to watch the other side you would usually ignore. In the process, even if you do not come to understand, you unexpectedly grow fond.

The film ends and then begins. Shown at independent·art cinemas, it launched with a first screening on the 24th of last month, and after each screening it hosts an audience-participation talk show with a different concept. The director named it not a ‘post-screening talk (GV)’ but the ‘Cheongjeongbaek Show’. Stand-up comedians, politicians and YouTubers from conservative and progressive camps, and film directors appear in varying combinations with Chang-in·Hyun-jin.

In a call on the 5th, the director explained the purpose of the show: “Because we are in a situation where the establishment and the non-establishment, and progressives and conservatives, do not even think about trying to understand one another, I wanted to create a space for them to talk.” People say ‘you are not supposed to talk politics’, yet in the public forum the director has thrown open, each individual political orientation becomes a cheerful topic of conversation.

At some shows, the program proceeds based on questionnaires filled out by the audience, and the questions differ each time. ‘In a presidential election, if you had to choose between Chang-in and Hyun-jin, whom would you choose as president?’ ‘Why did you not become a politician?’ and the like.

Another strength of the Cheongjeongbaek Show is that it lets you glimpse the present lives of Chang-in and Hyun-jin, who might otherwise have remained only characters in a documentary. The film is a six-year record from 2019 to 2024. Most of the shooting wrapped before the political event of illegal martial law. By allowing audiences to ask directly about the past year that did not make it into the documentary, the Cheongjeongbaek Show lends the film a sense of immediacy. At the Cheongjeongbaek Show on the 3rd, which this reporter observed, what stood out were the brusque interactions between Chang-in and Hyun-jin, who did not seem at all friendly with each other even as they stood before the audience together, and the director’s enthusiastic response, as if he found it all fascinating.

For now it is a ‘youth’ politics white paper, but the director plans to follow the lives of the two men over a long span, like the film , which was shot over 12 years. “I think they may at some point become a city councilor or a member of the National Assembly. If we make <Middle-aged Politics White Paper> while they are in office, and <Senior Politics White Paper> after retirement, would that not lay out the political history of the Republic of Korea?” Hearing this, Hyun-jin shook his head and said, “It seems the director would have to live a very long time. It is not realistic.”

<Youth Politics White Paper - Show Me the Justice> is slated to tour and screen nationwide through June, when local elections are held. In February, screenings have been confirmed in Seoul·Gangneung·Daegu, among other cities. The director said, “Because it is a small film, we are opening theaters one by one,” adding, “We plan the Cheongjeongbaek Show with various concepts, such as recording the guest stand-up comedians’ conversations in podcast form.”