TV Reviews : ‘P.O.V.’ Looks at ‘The Two Koreas’

The Cold War isn’t quite over.

No, we’re not referring to the Perestroika That Almost Got Away, but that forgotten fringe of superpower tensions, North and South Korea. Peripatetic filmmakers Christine Choy and JT Takagi try to bring the Korean tragedy out of the shadows of back-page media coverage with their documentary for PBS’ “P.O.V.” series, “Homes Apart: The Two Koreas” (tonight at 10:30 p.m., KCET Channel 28).

Their film never quite clears away the shadows, though, which is a testimony to the enormously complex sociopolitical dilemma on the Korean peninsula.

Choy and Takagi wisely focus their attention on a divided family, the Paks, torn apart by a 37-year-old border. After a lengthy struggle to pierce the Bamboo Curtain, Mr. Pak, an American, actually does, and reunites with his North Korean sister.

Still, it’s a failed strategy to personalize the Korean tragedy, because we never come to know the Paks. Trying to get to know North Korea is even tougher, and Takagi vents her frustration at her “guided tour” of the coldly totalitarian North.

South Korea, hot on Japan’s capitalist heels, is burdened with deeply alienated youth, a government haplessly flirting with democracy after years of authoritarian rule and an American occupying force at the last outpost of the Cold War. Takagi and Choy make the border posts look absurd, with stolid soldiers looking tough on both sides, but not even the written narration by “M. Butterfly” playwright David Henry Hwang makes the Koreas more comprehensible than before.