This was one of the movies I knew I couldn’t miss at the festival because the topic was so unique and interesting – the story revolves around a gay North Korean defector and his efforts in adapting to life in South Korea. With such a specific theme, I was really curious about the story the filmmaker wanted to tell through this film.

3670 is the first feature film by director Park Joon Ho and follows Cheol-jun (played by Cho You Hyun), a North Korean defector who’s trying to adapt to life in South Korea, including finding love. He ends up meeting Yeong-jun (played by Kim Hyeon Mok) at a gay mixer and the two end up becoming friends, with Yeong-jun inviting Cheol-jun into his own gay community. However, their relationship starts to fall apart due to misunderstandings…

[WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD] 

We start off strong with a bed scene where we are introduced to the main character Cheol-jun who’s a gay North Korean defector trying to make new (specifically gay) friends in the South. He drags his introverted self to a gay mixer which ends up being rather uneventful, other than doing a love shot with Yeong-jun. Feeling rather alone and lonely as a gay defector (he doesn’t know anyone else like him), we see him add a line to his dating app profile – hoping to meet a fellow gay defector friend.

So what’s Cheol-jun’s life like in South Korea? He attends a church service that’s specifically for defectors – apparently they give scholarships to defectors but they need to mark their attendance in church, hangs out with fellow defectors, and works part-time at a convenience store. We see how everyone who does end up talking to Cheol-jun is often just fascinated by his background as a defector (quite a human thing to be curious about things you don’t know) but don’t really try to get to know him more as just a fellow human.

That is, until Yeong-jun drops by the convenience store that Cheol-jun works in – apparently it’s in his neighborhood! Yeong-jun is rather extroverted and after finding out that they’re both the same age (born in 1997), he invites Cheol-jun to the ‘97 club that he’s a part of to try and get him to be part of the community and make new friends.

Unfortunately, during a birthday party, Yeong-jun sees Cheol-jun coming out from “the dark room” where guys hook up, and he starts giving Cheol-jun the cold shoulder. But Cheol-jun had actually just found out he didn’t like his crush after his crush kissed him. D R A M A. You should be able to guess by now who he has feelings for, right? The worst part is… it is mutual. Why is that the worst part? Because it ended before it had a chance to start. Talk about frustrating.

The romance (or lack of) bit aside, the film also shows us other struggles of North Korean defectors living in the South. We see the stiff competition to get into university, feeling homesick while looking at their hometown through the binoculars at the DMZ, needing to raise huge amounts of money to get brokers to bring their family members over… It was also a reminder of how important one’s support system is when you live in a foreign land – despite him being the only gay defector he knows, Cheol-jun still had a solid group of defector friends he could trust and lean on. I couldn’t help but tear up when Cheol-jun was trying to come out to his friends and one of them just said – “I know.” The feeling of being accepted just as you are… is priceless.

I personally really enjoyed this movie with its vibrant colours and slice-of-life vibes, even if the romance bit frustrated me to the point of tears. I was half-expecting a friends-to-lovers trope and not getting that ending, at least not shown in the movie, broke my heart. There’s just something particularly devastating about mutual love that doesn’t get realised…

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This film was screened at the 2025 Jeonju International Film Festival.

3670 won the Watcha’s Award, the CGV Award, and the Distribution Support Prize (Sponsored by JIWON) for the Korean competition section of the 26th JEONJU International Film Festival. Kim Hyeon Mok also won the Best Actor award for his portrayal of Yeong-jun. Congratulations to the team!