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Yoon Ga-eun was not a name many would have recognised in South Korea.

That is until her movie about a teenager who is a survivor of sexual violence became a dark-horse hit.

“It hasn’t really sunk in yet,” indie filmmaker Ms Yoon told BBC Korean at a studio in Seoul in late November. “Now I just feel almost blank – just grateful, and also a bit scared.”

The World of Love has been dubbed the “movie of the year” by Korean media for its touching, empathetic portrayal of life after trauma. Instead of recreating the crime, the movie tells the story of what comes after: the everyday life of high-schooler Joo-in, from school to romance to family and friendships, and all the moments of conflict and joy that go along with it.

It has earned the praise of critics and audiences, and more than $1.1m in box office revenue since its debut in October. Viewers have given it a 9 out of 10 on South Korea’s largest search portal, Naver.

“Simply a masterpiece,” is how Bong Jun-ho, director of the globally acclaimed film Parasite and the first Korean to win an Oscar, described it. He called himself the “head of the Seoul branch of Yoon Ga-eun’s fan club”.

The film has resonated in a deeply patriarchal country, where women say they fight hard just to be heard. And its surprising success is a sign of the growing willingness to engage in conversations about sexual violence and how survivors are treated.

The World of Love may not seem like an obvious choice for movie-goers.

The Korean title, “Joo-in of the World”, says little about the plot. While it stars Parasite actor Jang Hye-jin and K-drama star Go Min-si, the lead is played by Seo Su-bin, a new face on the big screen.

At its heart, this is a story about the the life of 17-year-old Joo-in.

Everything is going well for her. She is popular at school, has a devoted boyfriend, and lives with a caring mum and adorable younger brother.

Tension begins over her refusal to sign a petition at school. A man who assaulted a 10-year-old child is about to be released from jail into her neighbourhood. So a fellow student starts a petition calling for the suspension of his release. Joo-in is the only one who refuses to sign.

She objects to a single line in the petition: “Sexual violence leaves deep wounds that never heal and completely destroys a person’s life and soul.”

“I can’t agree with this statement,” Joo-in tells the student who drafted it.

The standoff ends up revealing her secret: she was raped by a relative when she was younger.

Despite the harrowing theme, Ms Yoon is determined to explore the fullness of Joo-in’s life, whose name means “owner” or “master” in Korean, alluding to the autonomy Ms Yoon envisioned for her character.

Journalists who attended the media screening received a hand-written letter from Ms Yoon asking them to avoid mentioning sexual violence while covering the film.

“The story is more about how we look at her,” Ms Yoon explained to the BBC, adding that she didn’t want to pin a label – childhood sexual abuse survivor – on her protagonist.

“Because Joo-in herself refuses that. It’s one part of her identity and it shakes her, but she insists, ‘That’s not all I am’.”

When she decided to make a film about sexual violence, Ms Yoon was clear about one thing. She did not want it to be predictable.

During her research, she said she “watched pretty much everything that was out there” on this subject. She spoke with survivors and consulted activists. Those conversations shattered the “prejudice” she carried, an ignorance that “reduces a person entirely to their wound”.

“We spent so much time talking about completely ordinary concerns,” she said. “Worries about work, family, friendships and romances, about needing to lose weight or gain weight or exercise more. I think those moments dissolved even that last tiny bit of prejudice I still had.”

This touched audiences.

Those who liked the film say it challenges the stereotypes we project onto survivors of sexual crimes, encouraging audiences to see them differently – people who are part of society and trying to live their lives like everyone else.

When Seo Jinwon, a children’s book editor watched the film in Seoul, she said, the cinema “fell completely silent” as the film ended.

“No-one rushed to leave. I stayed and watched the end credits. I walked out of the cinema thinking, ‘I want to be a good adult who can stand beside all the children and teenagers who are trying so hard to grow up’.”

A sexual violence survivor who wished to remain anonoymous said she had an urge to “stretch my arms and cheer” when she walked out of the cinema.

“Joo-in gave me so much. At the end, it felt like she was smiling at me and saying, ‘I am living well, so let’s keep living well together’.”

The World of Love is doing what activists have long worked towards, according to Cho Eunhee, director of Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center who worked as a consultant on the film.

The timing, she added, “is incredibly right”.

After the 2017–2018 MeToo movement, it became easier for survivors to share their stories, and the country grew more protective and understanding towards them. By 2025, when Ms Yoon’s film was released, “people were more prepared to empathise with a story like this,” Ms Cho said.

She wonders if, even a few years earlier, the film would have “found this level of public understanding”.

While the MeToo movement sparked conversations about harassment and assaults in workplaces and outside the home, exposing abuse within families, she said, is still widely seen as “spitting in one’s own face” – but this movie has made more room to talk about it.

The World of Love is not without its critics. Some viewers, including survivors, said it felt unrepresentative of their reality because it downplayed the fear and lasting damage of abuse, portraying families as more supportive than they often were.

But criticism does not overshadow the film’s value, critic Min Youngjun said, adding that The World of Love has created a healthy space for talking about sexual violence and its victims.

“The mark of a good film is not how many people liked it versus didn’t like it. What matters is whether it creates a space in which we can talk to each other about what it has put on the table.”

University professor Xavier Crettiez admits that he doesn’t know the real names of many of the students on his course.

This is a highly unusual state of affairs in the world of academia, but Prof Crettiez’s work is far from standard.

Instead, he helps train France’s spies.

“I rarely know the intelligence agents’ backgrounds when they are sent on the course, and I doubt the names I’m given are genuine anyway,” he says.

If you wanted to create a setting for a spy school, then the campus of Sciences Po Saint-Germain on the outskirts of Paris seems a good fit.

With dour, even gloomy-looking, early 20th Century buildings surrounded by busy, drab roads and large, intimidating metal gates, it has a very discreet feel.

Where it does stand out is its unique diploma that brings together more typical students in their early 20s, and active members of the French secret services, usually between the ages of 35 and 50.

The course is called Diplôme sur le Renseignement et les Menaces Globales, which translates as Diploma of Intelligence and Global Threats.

It was developed by the university in association with the Academie du Renseignement, the training arm of the French secret services.

This came following a request from French authorities a decade ago. After the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, the government went on a large recruitment drive within the French intelligence agencies.

It asked Sciences Po, one of France’s leading universities, to come up with a new course to both train potential new spies, and provide continuous training for current agents.

Large French companies were also quick to show an interest, both in getting their security staff onto the course, and snapping up many of the younger graduates.

The diploma is made up of 120 hours of classwork with modules spread over four months. For external students – the spies and those on placement from businesses – it costs around €5,000 ($5,900; £4,400).

The core aim of the course is to identify threats wherever they are, and how to track and overcome them. The key topics include the economics of organized crime, Islamic jihadism, business intelligence gathering and political violence.

To attend one of the classes and speak to the students I had to be vetted first by the French security services. The theme of the lesson I joined was “intelligence and over-reliance on technology”.

One of the students I speak to is a man in his 40s who goes by the name Roger. He tells me in very precise, clipped English that he is investment banker. He adds: “I provide consultancy across west Africa, and I joined the course to provide risk assessments to my clients there.”

Prof Crettiez, who teaches political radicalisation, says there has been a huge expansion in the French secret services in recent years. And that there are now around 20,000 agents in what he called the “inner circle”.

This is made up of the DGSE, which looks at matters overseas, and is the French equivalent of the UK’s MI6 or the US’s CIA. And the DGSI, which focuses on threats within France, like the UK’s MI5 or the US’s FBI.

But he says it’s not just about terrorism. “There are the two main security agencies, but also Tracfin an intelligence agency which specializes in money laundering.

“It is preoccupied with the surge in mafia activity, especially in southern France, including corruption in the public and private sectors mainly due to massive profits in illegal drug trafficking.”

Other lecturers on the course include a DGSE official once located in Moscow, a former French ambassador to Libya, and a senior official from Tracfin. The head of security at the French energy giant EDF also runs one module.

The private sector’s interest in the diploma is said to be continuing to grow. Big businesses, especially in the defence and aerospace sector, but also French luxury goods firms, are increasingly keen to hire the students as they face relentless cybersecurity and spying threats as well as sabotage.

Recently graduates have been snapped up by the French mobile phone operator Orange, aerospace and defence giant Thales, and LVHM, which owns everything from Louis Vuitton and Dior to champagne brands Dom Perignon and Krug.

Twenty eight students are enrolled in this year’s class. Six are spies. You can tell who they are, as they are the ones huddled together during class breaks, away from the young students, and not too overwhelmed with joy when I approach them.

Without saying their exact roles, and with arms crossed, one says the course is considered a fast-track stepping stone for a promotion from the office to field work. Another says he gets fresh ideas being in this academic environment. They signed the day’s attendance form with just their first names.

One of the younger students, Alexandre Hubert, 21, says he wanted a deeper understanding of the looming economic war between Europe and China. “Looking at intelligence gathering from a James Bond viewpoint is not relevant, the job is analysing risk and working out how to counteract it,” he tells me.

Another class member, Valentine Guillot, also 21, says she was inspired by the popular, fictional French TV spy drama Le Bureau. “Coming here to discover this world which I didn’t know anything about except for the TV series has been a remarkable opportunity, and now I am very keen to join the security services.”

Nearly half of the students in the class are in fact women. And this is a relatively recent development according to one of the lecturers, Sebastien-Yves Laurent, a specialist on technology in spying.

“Women’s interest in intelligence gathering is new,” he says. “They are interested because they think it will provide for a better world.

“And if there is one common thread amongst all these young students it’s that they are very patriotic and that is new compared to 20 years ago.

If you are keen to apply to get on the course, French citizenship is an essential requirement, although some dual citizens are accepted.

Yet Prof Crettiez says he has to be wary. “I regularly get applications from very attractive Israeli and Russian women with amazing CVs. Unsurprisingly they are binned immediately.”

In a recent group photo of the class you can immediately tell who the spies are – they had their backs to the camera.

While all the students and professional spies I met are trim and athletic, Prof Crettiez is also keen to dispel the myth of James Bond-like adventure.

“Few new recruits will end up in the field,” he says. “Most French intelligence agencies jobs are desk bound.”

Donald Trump has warned Venezuela’s new leader Delcy Rodríguez she could “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro” if she “doesn’t do what’s right”.

His comments to US magazine The Atlantic came as the country’s deposed president Nicolás Maduro was set to appear in a New York court on Monday.

The US accuses Maduro, who is charged with drug trafficking and weapons offences, of running a “narco-terrorist” regime, a claim he denies.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has insisted the US is not at war with Venezuela, after air strikes in Caracas on Saturday led to Maduro and his wife being taken into custody and transported to the US.

Some Democratic lawmakers said the operation was an “act of war”.

In an interview with The Atlantic on Sunday, Trump said of Rodríguez: “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”

He added that for Venezuela,”Regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse”.

On Saturday, Trump had vowed the US would “run” the country until “a safe and proper and judicious transition” was possible.

Trump also promised US oil companies would move into the country to fix infrastructure “and start making money for the country”.

Despite the US president’s claims, Maduro’s allies remain in charge.

The Cuban government has said 32 “brave Cuban combatants” died when US forces attacked and captured Maduro and his wife. Cuba – a longstanding socialist ally of Maduro – has announced two days of national mourning.

In several TV interviews on Sunday morning, Rubio defended the US’s military operation in Venezuela, stressing the action did not mean the US is at war with the South American country.

“We are at war against drug trafficking organisations. That’s not a war against Venezuela,” Rubio told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday morning.

The secretary of state also told CBS that if Venezuela doesn’t “make the right decisions”, the US “will retain multiple levers of leverage to ensure that our interests are protected”.

That includes the “quarantine” the US has placed on Venezuela’s oil, he said.

“We’re going to judge everything by what they do, and we’re going to see what they do,” he added.

Maduro, who leads the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and has been in power since 2013, has frequently been accused of repressing opposition groups and silencing dissent in Venezuela, at times with the use of violence.

He is widely seen by opponents within his country as well as by foreign governments as having illegitimately won Venezuela’s 2024 election.

Venezuela’s left-wing leader and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured at their compound and flown to the US, as part of a dramatic special forces operation in the early hours of Saturday that also saw strikes on military bases.

The couple have since been charged with weapon and drug offences and are set to appear at a court in New York on Monday.

Maduro has denied being a cartel leader and has accused the US of using its “war on drugs” as an excuse to try to depose him and get its hands on Venezuela’s oil.

While US officials have said that no American troops were harmed in the attacks, Venezuela’s Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino said a “large part” of Maduro’s security team and “soldiers and innocent civilians” were killed in the US operation.

When asked why congressional authorisation wasn’t sought before the US operation in Venezuela, Rubio told ABC it “wasn’t necessary because this wasn’t an invasion”.

He described it as a “law enforcement operation”, and said Maduro was arrested on the ground by FBI agents.

You can’t notify Congress of an operation like this because “it will leak”, he added.

Maduro’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez is now the interim president after being sworn in by the nation’s Supreme Court. The country’s military has also given its backing to her. She will sworn in as president on Monday in Caracas, at 08:00 local time (12:00 GMT).

Speaking to US media outlets, Rubio was asked if the US recognises Rodríguez as the legitimate president of Venezuela.

He answered that “this is not about the legitimate president” as the US does not recognise the regime as legitimate.

Some Democratic lawmakers have condemned the administration’s actions.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the secretive military operation, which was conducted without approval from Congress, “was not simply a narcotics operation”.

“It was an act of war,” Jeffries told NBC’s Meet the Press.

“This was a military action involving Delta Force, involving the army, apparently involving thousands of troops, involving at least 150 military aircraft, perhaps involving dozens of ships off the coast of Venezuela and South America.”

Jim Himes, the most senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, told CBS Face the Nation he had had “zero outreach” from the Trump administration, adding “no Democrat that I’m aware of has had any outreach”.

In an interview with ABC This Week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer questioned the legality of the US operation.

Schumer said that while he believes Maduro is a horrible person, “You don’t treat lawlessness with other lawlessness”.

“We have learned through the years when America tries to do regime change and nation building in this way, the American people pay the price in both blood and in dollars,” Schumer said.

He added that Trump had abandoned his campaign promise of “no more endless wars.

Both Schumer and Jeffries vowed to support a resolution that, if passed in both houses, would prohibit Trump from taking any further action in Venezuela without Congressional approval.

In a joint statement, the governments of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay and Spain said the US’s military actions “constitute an extremely dangerous precedent for peace and regional security and endanger the civilian population”.

They said they wanted a solution to the Venezuela situation to come from peaceful means such as dialogue and negotiation.

They also expressed concern about external control that is “incompatible with international law” and “threatens the political, economic, and social stability of the region”.