The Secret Tables
Korea | TV 60min x2 | 4K UHD | Color
Logline
Eighty years after Korea was divided, how is the table set in the world's most closed country? Follow a glass of beer and a bowl of noodles back to the land, the rivers, and the hands behind them.
Synopsis
Evening in Pyongyang. A glass of beer is poured. Trace the foam backwards and the hop fields of the Kaema Plateau open up. Episode One follows four dishes on a Pyongyang table into the mountains, rivers and seas of the North. Episode Two crosses the DMZ: a kimchi class in Cheongju, jars of fermented fish in Sokcho, a brewery outside Seoul where liquors once brewed in secret in the North now carry labels. Same ingredients, same fermentation, same season. Eighty years of division could not separate the hands that cut, boil, ferment and brew.
Director's Statement
Most documentaries about North Korea start with dictators, weapons and surveillance. We start at the table. Food carries memory, identity, land and season, and everyone understands it. Stovecat Studio holds an official filming agreement issued by North Korean authorities and an archive of more than 400 hours of 4K footage, built over years of work on North Korean subjects. That access lets us do what food documentaries need most: follow the people who grow, cook and remember. This is not a food travelogue. It is a map of a divided peninsula, drawn by what is on the plate.
Director JIN Jungmo
JIN Jungmo produces at Stovecat Studio, and leads the project's English-language pitching. Credits include North Korea: A Year in the Wilderness (KBS), Hometown of My Childhood (MBC) and Northern Landscapes (KBS). Currently directing MBC's investigative strand.
Producer KIM Myeong-hwan
KIM Myeonghwan is a director and CEO of Stovecat Studio. Credits include North Korea: A Year in the Wilderness (KBS/TVF International, 40+ territories), Miracle Odyssey: The Inter-Korean Railway (MBC) and Northern Landscapes (KBS). Former CP at JTBC.