Schoolmistress is a film starring Li Ching, the Shaw Brothers Princess,′ who was the most popular Hong Kong actress in Korea after Susanna was released in 1967. This co-production is remarkable in two senses: first, it revives the melodrama, which was the most important genre in 1950s Korea-Hong Kong co-productions. Second, it is a rare case of a co-production that casts a Hong Kong actress in the frame of a Korean production. Schoolmistress follows a tradition of melodrama co-productions that started with Love with an Alien, the first Korea-Hong Kong co-production in 1957. Eun-young, born of a Chinese mother and Korean father, visits Korea to look for her long-lost father and she becomes a high school English teacher. After leaving her mother long ago and marrying a Korean woman, Eun-young′s father has another daughter, named Eun-ock. Unlike typical melodramas that focused on male-female romance, Schoolmistress is based on the emotional conflicts between half-sisters who finally meet as student and teacher. Love with an Alien ends with the tragic fate of a Korean guy and a Chinese girl in love, who are in fact blood relations. Schoolmistress also brings out the issue of kinship, not the difference between the two countries. It might be a hidden fantasy shared by two different nations′ people with similar cultures. (Cho Young-jung)