South Korean films that address North Korean themes have changed in the decades since South Korea’s democratization. Whereas films in the 1990s presented North Koreans as villains, by the 2000s most films took a more nuanced approach, presenting North Koreans as complex people with the potential to adapt in South Korean society. This paper analyzes three films from the mid-2000s dealing with North Korean issues (A Bold Family [2005], Over the Border [2006], and Welcome to Dongmakgol [2005]) in the context of the South Korean political landscape and North-South relations at the time. The paper argues that mid-2000s films represent a transitional point in the filmic depiction of North Koreans in South Korean film, opening up possibilities of hybridity in Korean identity. These films exhibit an almost ethnographic impulse to document everyday life, and as such contribute broadly to a visual anthropology of North-South Korean relations.