In World War II Japan forced many South Korean girls into sexual slavery. Known as "comfort woman," they were abducted as teenagers and shipped off to the front to service as many as 30 troopers a day. In 1991, some of them began testifying about their experiences. Byun Young-Joo worked with such women for two years on her previous film The Murmuring, a documentary which broke nearly a half century of silence on the subject and was screened at the  Amnesty International Film Festival in 1996. A "sharing house" was then established for former comfort women and provided the setting for Habitual Sadness, a documentary showing the enduring wounds but strong spirit of these women. "During our time together, these women slowly grew more comfortable and eventually even bold in front of the camera. As I watched them change, I felt as much joy as sadness, a habitual sadness that is always weighing on our lives," said the director. Habitual Sadness was a major success in South Korea and a hit at the Hong Kong Film Festival.

Director´s Note: "What could be more frightening to a person who suddenly reveals herself to the world after fifty years of shame and silence, than to have people forget that determination, as if to tell you not to dare dream that all your hard-found courage could change the world? Myself, I wanted only to express one thing: Let us not forget. We cannot forget. It is with these words of resolution that I repay what these women have helped me learn over the last five years."

Buyn Young-Joo was born in 1996. She studied Law at Ewha Women´s University and Film at Chung-Ang University and was a member in a women´s film group "Bariteo" and director of "Green Image". Now she is the head of "Vista", a documentary film production group. She made her directorial debut in 1993 with the video work A Woman-being in Asia, which documents the situation of a "Geisha tour" in Cheju Island. While shooting this film, she met a woman prostituting to pay for her mother´s medical care, who suffered from the experiences as a comfort woman during WWII. Realizing that this issue was still affecting the lives of Korean women today, she set out to film The Murmuring (1995), the first of the "Harumoni" trilogy with Habitual Sadness (1997) and the now-in-production My Own Breathing.

Filmography:  The Murmuring, 1995 (director); A Woman-Being in Asia, 1993 (director); The Line of Battle, 1991 (photography, editor); Our Children, 1990 (photography, editor); Even the Weed Has Its Own Name, 1990 (scriptwriter, photography).