A child bride's silent scream in 1965 Korea — duty, poverty, and pipe-smoking tyranny.
Choi Eun-hee’s directorial debut The Girl Raised as a Future Daughter-In-Law is the story of ups and downs of a future daughter-in-law who, due to poverty, married an infant rich groom. A ruined widow’s daughter Jum-soon has no time to rest, as her mother-in-law treats her like a maid, leaving her with all the kitchen chores, house cleaning, grinding grain, and sewing, while the mother-in-law smokes a pipe and nitpicks on her. What allows Jum-soon to endure is her ‘duty as a woman’ taught to her since young and her child husband’s lovable yammering.
Acting
Choi Eun-hee directs herself — layered, unsentimental suffering.
Direction
Rare female auteur in 1960s Korean cinema.
Director
Choi Eun-hee
Choi Eun-hee
Jum-soon
Kim Hee-kap
Kim Jwa-su [Father in law]
Hwang Jeong-sun
Mrs. Park [Mother in law]
Park Nou-sik
Su-gil
Han Eun-jin
Mrs. Choi [Jum-soon's mother]
Seo Young-choon
Sam-ryong
Jang Won-bae
Bok-man [Husband]
Park Ok-cho
[Shaman]
Park Ji-hyeon
Bong-nyeo
Seok Gwi-nyeo
[Chil-deuk's mother]
Im Dong-hun
Mr. Yoon
Lee Gi-hong
Kim Se-ra
Yoon Bong-sa
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was Choi Eun-hee's sole directorial credit — she was kidnapped to North Korea in 1978 by Kim Jong-il to make propaganda films, then escaped in 1986.
The 'future daughter-in-law' (mi-nyeo) system was real — poor families essentially sold daughters as unpaid domestic labor, sometimes for decades before marriage.
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