SynopsisHong You-jung, who had lived her 42 years of life as a legally dead, is now preparing to apply for the gender correction procedure. She cannot afford to take a sex reassignment surgery (SRS) and her neighbors keep discouraging her by saying that her attempt will come to a failure.

Program Note
To become 2 presents us with questions about femininity by following a transgender woman’s process of reclaiming her family register and amending her gender record, after previously leading a ghost-like existence. The male-to-female transgendered HONG Yu-jeong, who starts her day with an early morning newspaper round, got kicked out of her home because of her gender identity and was pronounced dead after her parents had reported her missing. Since then, she had to live without an identity card, outside the protection of the law and society. The film depicts how, because of her sexuality and gender identity, HONG is subjected to social prejudice and is easily exploited in the workplace.
This documentary shows the living and working conditions in which HONG finds herself by taking us along the cramped room she lives in and the narrow alleys people drive through on their motorbikes; it illustrates the socio-cultural place available to those with socially taboo gender and sexuality. As part of the procedure to amend her gender record, HONG must prove that she is “female”. Yet, how is femininity to be proven? Who has the right to determine someone else’s gender? By pursuing these questions, To become 2 reveals the structural violence present in Korean society that controls gender through systematic means such as resident registration and medical discourse. [HONG So-in]