A ‘human story of immigration history’ capturing the lives of early immigrants and their descendants… winning consecutive awards in North America and Europe.

Rubbing Work on Korean Immigrant Tombstones at a Cemetery in Oahu, Hawaii

(Seoul = Yonhap News) This past August, members of the Korean Artists Association of Hawaii carried out tombstone rubbing work for early Korean immigrants at a cemetery in Oahu, Hawaii. 

[Photo provided by the Gosong Cultural Foundation]

The documentary Beyond the Waves, produced by Hawaii Korean Broadcasting KBFD, has been invited to and awarded at film festivals around the world—including New York, Los Angeles, Greece, and Chile—achieving an exceptional level of international recognition for a documentary on Korean immigration history.

The film takes as its central narrative the “Immigration History Human Story” project led by the Jemulpo Club in Incheon. It documents an international collaborative archive effort to restore the traces of early Korean immigrants who departed from Jemulpo Port in 1903, and to connect their stories with the lives and memories of their descendants in Hawaii.

The documentary has recently been officially invited to or awarded at major film festivals across North America, Europe, and South America. Achievements include:

• Winner of Best Feature Documentary (October) at the New York International Film Awards (NYIFA)

• Official selection and finalist in the competition category at the LA Film Awards (LAFA)

• Recognized as an Outstanding Work at the Athens International Monthly Art Film Festival (AIMAFF) in Greece

• Official selection at an independent film festival in Chile

It is rare for a Korean immigration-themed documentary to receive simultaneous attention from multiple international film festivals, suggesting that the film’s message and narrative have resonated strongly with global audiences.

(Seoul = Yonhap News) In this photo, taken last August at the Jemulpo Club in Incheon, Koh Seo-sook, chair of the Gosong Cultural Foundation, views tombstone rubbings at the Hawaii Immigration Human Story exhibition. 

[Photo provided by the Gosong Cultural Foundation]

At the center of the documentary is the Hawaii Korean Tombstone Rubbing project led by Koh Seo-sook, chair of the Gosong Cultural Foundation.

Koh has spent years locating the tombstones of early Korean immigrants who died over a century ago while working on sugarcane plantations in Hawaii, creating rubbings to restore inscriptions whose names had faded away. The film captures this rubbing work as “a symbolic return of forgotten immigrant memories back to their hometown of Incheon.”

The joint project that transported these tombstone rubbings from Hawaii to the Jemulpo Club in Incheon and exhibited them there is portrayed as a symbolic moment in which the memories of “the place they left” and “the place that remained” are woven back into a single narrative.

The documentary structures itself with the Jemulpo Club’s initiative as its core axis, surrounded by diverse efforts undertaken within the Hawaiian Korean community.

The Korean Festival organized by the Korean Association of Hawaii, a representative local event that passes on cultural roots to second- and third-generation Korean Americans, is featured with scenes that highlight the vibrancy of the Hawaiian Korean community.

In addition, the 8.15K Korean Independence Historic Site Walk, jointly organized by the Korean American Foundation and the Hawaii Immigration Research Center, is shown as a civic-participation program that connects Korean independence historical sites across Hawaii along an 8.15 km route—capturing moments of Korean Americans and Koreans walking together and sharing collective memory.

‘Beyond the Waves’ Officially Selected and Named Finalist in the Competition Category at the LA Film Awards (LAFA)

[Photo provided by the Gosong Cultural Foundation]

All of these local community activities align with the spirit of the tombstone rubbing project and reinforce the message that “the story of Korean immigration is still alive and unfolding here today.”

Ultimately, the film weaves these elements into a single narrative under the theme of “the return of memory”—reading names again, walking paths again, and reconnecting roots.

The production team stated, “Additional international film festival screenings are upcoming, and the Hawaii Gosong Cultural Foundation is preparing an expanded immigration-history archive project, along with exhibitions and citizen-participation programs, through 2026.”

By Park Hyun-soo