June 5, 2008 (Bloomberg, Review by Heejin Koo)

North Korean defector Yong Soo bites his lip as he listens on a cellphone in Seoul to the son he left behind and hasn’t seen for years. “Mother’s dead; I’m sorry it’s my fault!” the 11-year-old boy cries, breaking into an anguished wail. “It’s all right, Joon, it’s all right,” the father says impotently to the boy, who is now himself on the run from North Korean and Chinese agents in China.Based on the life of a North Korean defector and his family, director Kim Tae Gyun’s “Crossing” gives a stark account of the hardships of North Korean refugees as they flee famine and persecution in one of the world’s most isolated nations.

Kim’s film doesn’t sugarcoat the life of the people living under Kim Jong Il’s regime, nor does he hype the drama of defection. Instead, it gives a face to the suffering through the story of a father trying to help his family survive.Yong Soo, played by South Korean actor Cha In Pyo, is a coal miner in North Korea’s northern province of Hamkyong Namdo. He decides to cross illegally into China to get medicine and food for his wife and son Joon, played by Shin Myeong Cheol. While running from Chinese agents, Yong Soo loses the money he earned as a lumberjack in China. He joins a group of North Koreans who storm the German embassy in Shenyang, fighting their way through the Chinese guards. Yong Soo defects to South Korea and works as a mechanic at a small factory, saving his wages and government relocation money for his family. Yet his frail wife dies and his son Joon embarks on his own perilous quest to join his father.

‘Arduous March’

The character Yong Soo is based on numerous accounts of North Korean defectors, but key elements of the film follow the case of Yoo Sang Joon, well known to South Koreans. Yoo, 44, fled to China with his older son in 1998, after losing his wife and younger son during the so-called “arduous march” in the mid ’90s, when floods, droughts and isolation caused a famine that killed as many as 1 million people.

During a crackdown on North Korean refugees by Chinese authorities, Yoo left his remaining son with a Korean-Chinese family and crossed into South Korea. He scrimped and saved to bring his son to join him. Yoo’s son died of exhaustion and dehydration in the Gobi desert as he tried to escape to Mongolia to evade North Korean agents and Chinese border guards. Kim didn’t consult with Yoo before or during the production of the movie, which began four years ago, because he wanted to keep the project secret.

Under Wraps

“I didn’t want the government getting involved, nor did I want to adversely affect the activities of groups that help North Korean defectors operating in China,” Kim said after a May 30 screening in Seoul. Yoo, who lives in Seoul after being released from a Chinese prison in December for helping North Korean refugees, said he doesn’t plan to watch the film. “It is too close to my heart — I think it will break,” he said in a telephone interview. He wants the film to “give a face to the plight of the North Korean refugees in China, and raise awareness of the matter in South Korea, and hopefully around the world.” North Koreans can’t cross directly into South Korea because the border is separated by a landmine-strewn demilitarized zone. Instead, many cross into China and try to make their way by another route to South Korea.

Firing Squad

There are an estimated 300,000 North Korean defectors in China, according to human rights groups. The Chinese government does not recognize them as refugees and, under an agreement with Kim Jong Il’s regime, sends them back to North Korea to face political “re-education” at prison camps or the firing squad, refugees say.

Assistant director Kim Chul Young and some other members of the production staff are North Korean defectors, adding to the authenticity of the film, which cost little more than 6 billion won ($5.8 million) and was funded by Vantage Holdings Co. and the Public Official Benefit Association.Parts of the movie were filmed in China and Mongolia. Yong Soo’s village was created on farmland in Kangwon-do, South Korea, based on accounts from refugees. “It could have been my own home town,” said Kim Young Il, 30, who defected from North Korea in 1996 and saw the May 30 screening. “The way they talk, the scenery, the story, it was so believable. I’ve been through it.”

Kim said half of any profit from the film will go to help North Korean defectors. He hopes to take the movie to international film festivals and perhaps distribute it overseas. Cha, known for his romantic leads in ’90s Korean soap operas, said he hesitated before taking on the role. He talked with North Korean defectors and practiced the Hamkyong Namdo accent with them, a tone unfamiliar to most South Koreans.“I realize now just how ignorant I was about the plight of our brothers and sisters in North Korea,” Cha said at the screening. “Now that I have learned, I cannot stand idly by.”
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Peter M. Beck

Weekly Chosun/Korea Herald
Published 30 May 2008 [1037 words]

I have often remarked that I never cease to be amazed at how little concern the average South Korean has for North Korea. Few people seem to care how many North Koreans may starve this year as the threat of renewed famine looms. Even missile and nuclear tests are now non-events. There is a new Korean movie that opens June 5 that I hope will change all of that. Anyone who cares about the fate of the Korean people should go see “The Crossing.”

Though it did not win any awards at the Cannes Film Festival last week, “The Crossing” is simply the best film ever made—documentary or otherwise—about the plight of North Koreans. I had the good fortune of watching an advance screening of the film as part of North Korea Freedom Week in Washington, D.C. Attendance was not as strong as I had hoped, but there was hardly a dry eye in the theater and one defector could not stop sobbing after the film ended.

At first glance, this is not the film one would expect from a director, Kim Tae-kyun, best known for churning out fluff like “First Kiss” (kissu halggayo) and “A Romance of Their Own” (neukdae eui yuhok). On top of that, the director cast Asian heartthrob Cha In-pyo in the lead role as a North Korean father desperate to save his sick wife. Yet, in an interview with DailyNK, Kim, 47, reveals that his father was a North Korean refugee who, like my father-in-law, passed away not knowing the fate of his loved ones in the North.

A documentary about North Korean street children (ggotjebi) inspired Kim to make the movie, but it would be ten years before his dream could become a reality. He was repeatedly told that he would never be able to secure the necessary financial backers, and Cha In-pyo turned him down four times before agreeing to take the lead role.

What makes “The Crossing” so powerful is not just that it is a tear-jerker, but that it gets almost every detail right. From the joys and hardships faced by the average North Korean and the unspeakable horrors that take place in the notorious gulags (suyongso) to the perils of crossing into China and Mongolia as well as the difficulty of resettlement in the South, the movie is incredibly realistic. In fact, the director’s biggest concern was getting the conditions right. To that end, he met with more than 100 defectors. The only scene where a few of us have questioned the accuracy is when Cha is able to turn on a light in the middle of the night in what might be Hoeryeong.

To say that this is the best film or play to ever depict the plight of the North Korean people is unfortunately not saying very much because few films have been made and those that have have serious limitations. The first film to receive widespread attention was the documentary “Seoul Train” (2005), made by two first-time American filmmakers. It is an important film documenting the underground railroad to get North Koreans out of China, but the production qualities leave much to be desired and it is weighed down by too many talking heads—not exactly a recipe for commercial success. Meanwhile, “Typhoon” (2006) is the opposite—a blockbuster devoid of any meaningful content. The movie focuses on a defector bent on revenge. Unfortunately, this defector lacks any counterparts in the real world. Despite being one of the worst films I have ever seen (defector Kang Chul-hwan’s favorable review in Chosun Ilbo notwithstanding), amazingly, the movie stands as the most popular film of all time in Korea with over 4.2 million tickets sold.

The most impressive work I had seen prior to “The Crossing” was the improbable musical “Yoduk Story.” Amazingly, weaving songs and dance numberss in between horrific scenes from one of North Korea’s worst gulags actually works. In fact, a variation on one of the most powerful lines of the play, when the existence of God is questioned, is also used in “The Crossing.” One of the Yodok prisoners sings, “Dear God, are you there? Please don’t just take care of South Korea” (abeoji, keogi kyesijyo. Namjoseon eman gajimashigo). Unfortunately, the play was performed at a small theatre at the southern edge of Seoul. Only 200,000 people saw the performance. Gulag survivor Shin Dong-hyeok, who published his memoirs last year, told me recently that no film or play could capture the horrors he experienced, much the way most American combat veterans in Iraq claim that no film—documentary or otherwise—can accurately convey their experiences. However, I am willing to venture that “The Crossing” comes as close to conveying the real situation as is humanly possible.

The question is, will South Korean movie goers invest their precious time and money to go see “The Crossing,” even if it is devoid of the “Hollywood-style” special effects found in “Typhoon”? I sincerely hope so. While the film did not win any awards in Cannes, recent news reports suggest that international film buyers showed a keen interest in the film. The director hopes to attract five million viewers, but I would be impressed if half that number see the film. A film like “The Crossing” could dramatically raise public awareness about the South’s brothers to the North. Films like “Supersize Me” and “An Inconvenient Truth” have helped tens of millions view McDonalds and global warming in an entirely new light.

Finally, we must ask an even more difficult question. To what extent will this film be smuggled into North Korea? We know that South Korean dramas and films are seeping into the North via the porous border with China, but will North Koreans want to see how a South Korean director portrays life in their country? Pianist Kim Cheol-woong, who defected from the North because of his love for jazz music, thinks he has the answer. He told me that after viewing the film, he thought there was a real possibility of “`The Crossing’ Effect” taking hold in the North, thereby encouraging even more North Koreans to flee their homeland. I cannot help but wonder if Seoul is prepared for such a possibility.