The Harmonium in My Memory

1963, a small village in the mountains. Kang Su-ha is twenty-one, fresh out of teacher training, and is posted to the village school. One of the pupils in his class is Hong-yeon: seventeen, and still in primary school because she started late. She falls in love with her teacher. She writes to him, tries to be like him, tries to be someone for him. But Su-ha has his eye on the other teacher at the school, Miss Yang. Meanwhile Hong-yeon has to look after her mother and her small brother at home. Lee Young-jae directs the Korean film; a hundred and sixteen minutes, with Jeon Do-yeon as Hong-yeon and Lee Byung-hun as Su-ha. Jeon swept that year's major acting awards in Korea for the part. The film tells the end of a childhood in the shape of a love story, and makes nobody in it ridiculous.