Songs of Love from Hawaii

Songs of Love from Hawaii is a historical drama built around three separate stories that trace the experiences of Hawaii's earliest Korean immigrants. Among them is Lim Ok Soon, who arrived as a picture bride, while others endured isolation at Kalaupapa. Their lives are presented through musical performance and archival imagery set against Hawaiian landscapes, with the film blending animation, documentary and drama elements to consider themes of love, sacrifice and endurance.

The film is directed by Jinyoung Lee, who also wrote the screenplay with Gary Pak. It runs 62 minutes and was released in October 2024, produced by Now Production Films as a collaboration between the United States and Korea. Ye Su-jeong provides the narrator's voice, while the cast includes musicians Richard Yongjae O'Neill, Chee-Yun, Keola Beamer and Ignace Jang, along with Pak himself, appearing as themselves.

By combining historical narrative with music and documentary material, the film presents these immigrant histories through a format that mixes dramatic reconstruction and performance rather than a conventional narrative approach.