The 1996 TV debate that made a director seek out Shin Suk-ok

"If you don't want to apologize, then don't. It's obvious from your attitude that you don't. An apology isn't an apology if the other person can't accept it."

Shin Suk-ok said this on 13 September 1996, on the TV Asahi debate show Igi Ari! ("I object!"). The topic was the "comfort women", women forced into wartime sexual slavery by Japan's military. She rebutted a right-wing guest point by point, and she never stopped smiling.

Shin is a third-generation Zainichi Korean, meaning an ethnic Korean born and raised in Japan. Director Lee Il-ha, now 52, came to Japan to study in 2000 and watched the broadcast later. He was so thrilled that he shouted "Hooray!" in his tiny tatami room of about 6.6 square metres.

Then he started looking for her. In 2013, while covering anti-Korean protests in Japan, he finally met Shin, now 67, and said he wanted to make a documentary about her. Her answer: if it's a Zainichi sob story, goodbye. She wanted something that could be passed on to the next generation.