A Hometown in Heart with Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean subtitles
is a 1948 South Korean film directed by Yoon Yong-gyu.
Set in post-war Korea, A Hometown in Heart follows Doseong, a lonely orphan boy raised in a secluded Buddhist temple, whose quiet life changes when a young widow comes to pray for her late son. Drawn to her warmth and reminded of the mother he barely remembers, Doseong begins to dream of a world beyond the temple walls — a world of love, loss, and longing that mirrors the fragile hope of a nation rebuilding its soul.
The film was directed by Yoon Yong‑gyu, who began his major career in South Korea but later defected to North Korea before the outbreak of the Korean War.
“A Hometown in Heart” was produced in the early years of the Republic of Korea, just after the end of Japanese colonial rule (1910-45) and prior to the full escalation of the Korean War in 1950. This places the film in a very unstable, transitional national context.
The film engages deeply with Buddhist themes—setting much of its action in a mountain temple and exploring the notion of karma, abandonment and belonging. These religious motifs reflect the spiritual as well as social uncertainties in post-colonial South Korea.
Historically, South Korean filmmaking in the late 1940s was still emerging. The film appears on lists of South Korean films produced between 1948-1959, a period marked by limited resources, social upheaval and the imminent onset of war.
