Will ‘Beyond Utopia’ get an Oscar in March?

“Beyond Utopia” — a documentary film packed with exigent moments of two North Korean families escaping their fatherland in search of freedom — hit the screen in more than 600 movie theaters last October in the United States. The...

Chang Se-jeongThe author is an editorial writer of the JoongAng Ilbo.

“Beyond Utopia” — a documentary film packed with exigent moments of two North Korean families escaping their fatherland in search of freedom — hit the screen in more than 600 movie theaters last October in the United States. The release of a North Korea-related documentary in America is very rare. The sensational film received the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival for independent films and later the Best Documentary and Best Doc Editing Awards at the Woodstock Film Festival in September last year.

Before the 2024 Academy Awards ceremony on March 10, the Board of Governors included “Beyond Utopia” in its list of 15 preliminary nominees for the Best Documentary category out of 114 entries. Variety, a leading U.S. entertainment news outlet, called the film directed by Madeleine Gavin “a frontrunner to land an Oscar nomination this year for best documentary feature.” The Oscar nomination period will run from Jan. 11 through Jan. 16, and the official nominees will be named on Jan. 23. (Final voting is slated for Feb. 22-27.) “City of Joy,” a 2016 documentary directed by Gavin, made a splash on Netflix. Denis Mukwege — a Congolese gynecologist and human rights activist against wartime sexual violence, who appears in the film — was awarded the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize at age 68.

“Beyond Utopia” received great appreciation for its graphic description of nerve-racking moments. The tickets were fully sold out when it premiered at the Busan International Film Festival last October. Senior officials at the ministries of diplomacy, unification, national defense and the Korea Human Rights Commission also viewed the film.

The documentary is to be released in Japan this Friday and in Korea on Jan. 31. If “Beyond Utopia” is officially nominated for — or wins — an Oscar, President Yoon Suk Yeol will likely go see the film.

Rev. Kim Seong-eun, left, the pastor at Caleb Mission in Cheonan, South Chungcheong, also known as “Korean Schindler” in the U.S. and Europe, and North Korean defector-turned-writer Lee Hyeon-seo — the executive producer of the Sundance award-winning “Beyond Utopia” and the English narrator for the documentary on the nerve-racking journey of two North Korean families from their fatherland to China, Vietnam and Laos to South Korea in search of freedom — pose for a photo before showing the film in the National Assembly in December. [CHANG SE-JEONG]

In a big conference room of the National Assembly last month, Rep. Thae Yong-ho — a North Korean defector-turned-lawmaker in South Korea — held a preview of the movie for foreign diplomats from Sweden, Turkey, Mexico, Latvia, Estonia and the Apostolic Nunciature to Korea. The members of the two North Korean families in the documentary were also there. They promised to participate in campaigns for North Korean human rights and North Korean defectors.

The documentary shows all the efforts by Pastor Kim Seong-eun, 58, of Caleb Mission in Cheonan, South Chungcheong, to plan and implement the defection of the two North Korean families headed by a man surnamed Roh, 53, and a woman surnamed Lee, 48. The pastor, known as “Korean Schindler” in the U.S. and Europe, rescued more than 1,000 North Korean defectors over the past ten years. This time, their tense life on the North Korea-China border was secretly recorded by Chinese farmers and so-called “defector helpers” by smartphones — and their next journey from China to Vietnam was taped by former North Korean defectors who flew back to China to help them. Their life in Vietnam, Laos and South Korea was covered by a South Korean team.

After the showing of the documentary in the National Assembly, Jinpyong, 10, the second daughter of Roh, said, “At the time of defection, I didn’t know. But after we arrived in South Korea, the North Korean regime felt like a devil.” Her mother, Lee, said she prayed for having just a plain meal with her son she left behind. “Whenever I think of our families back in North Korea, I feel guilty and suffer from trauma,” she confessed.

I sat with Rev. Kim Seong-eon, who played a pivotal role in turning the taped records into a documentary film. After studying theology at Baekseok University, he served as a pastor at a small church in North Jeolla from 1998. After watching the miserable North Korean children begging for food in Tumen, a border city in China, around 2000, he decided to dedicate his life to helping North Korean defectors.

Movie poster of "Beyond Utopia."

His determination eventually led to his marriage to a North Korean defector he had met at the North-China border. While working hard to help her safe defection to the South, he discovered many defection routes. But after falling on the ground while helping a defector to flee to South Korea, he suffered a serious injury. He even had to extract the gallbladder in 2019 for infections, not to mention losing his own son due to his birth defects. The following are excerpts from the interview.

Q. On what occasion did you participate in the production of the documentary?A. It all began after a staffer of the documentary director contacted me in 2019 to get help in making a documentary on the tough lives of North Korean people and defectors.

How many North Korean defectors have you rescued? The first was my wife. I have so far saved more than 1,000 defectors, including about 300 whom I rescued on my own. The three defectors I saved last November include a woman who had been sold to a Chinese man to bear his son.

It reportedly takes at least 2 million won ($1,520) for a North Korean to defect safely. Is that true? As defectors must give “brokers” some of the settlement money they receive from the South Korean government, people tend to see it as “dirty money.” But brokers are a “necessary evil.” Those who studied theology in China are reliable.

What do you think of China’s forcible repatriation of more than 500 North Korean defectors last October? I hope the Chinese government at least recognizes North Korean defectors as refugees. Beijing replied to the United Nations that there was no evidence of torture against them in North Korea. However, the existence of 35,000 North Korean defectors in China itself is the proof.

The resolution denouncing China’s forcible repatriation of North Korean defectors was endorsed by 253 out of 260 lawmakers in our National Assembly. Seven others, including Rep. Yoon Mi-hyang and Rep. Back Hye-ryun, abstained from voting. What do you think of that? I strongly doubt the identity of those lawmakers who abstained from the vote. Before becoming the president, Moon Jae-in as a lawyer in 1996 defended Korean Chinese crew members who murdered the Korean skipper and other fishermen on a deep sea tuna fishing vessel. As the president, Moon’s government forcibly deported two young North Korean fishermen to North Korea on the same murder charge while aboard a fishing boat. Ironically, politicians who fought for democracy and human rights during their college days are keeping silence on human rights of North Korean defectors.

Anything you want from the Yoon Suk Yeol administration? I thank the government for creating an environment where North Korean defectors can give testimonies on the human rights conditions in North Korea. I hope the conservative government makes more effort to persuade the Chinese government to send the defectors to a third country.

I also interviewed North Korean defector-turned-writer Lee Hyeon-seo, 43, who served as the executive producer of “Beyond Utopia” and also did the English narration for the documentary. Born in Hyesan, Yangkang Province, Lee crossed the Amnok (Yalu) River to flee to China at age 17 and landed in South Korea in 2008. She studied English and Chinese at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Her TED talk in 2013, for the first time as a North Korean defector, drew keen attention.

The 12-munite speech on YouTube about her witnessing of a public execution at age 7 and the stories about her last-minute rescue of her family from North Korea hit more than 40 million clicks around the world. At the invitation of U.S. President Donald Trump on February 2018, she visited the White House with other eight North Korean defectors to ask the U.S. government to help restrain China from repatriating them against their will. The following are excerpts from the interview.

Q. Why did you flee North Korea? A. At school, we were taught that North Korea is the paradise on earth. But watching Chinese dramas, I found that I had been brainwashed by the North Korean regime. So I wanted to find the truth with my own eyes.

You became a best-selling author in the U.S. after your speech at TED. I refused a publication offer for a book at first. But I accepted the publisher’s proposal that I play the role as a bridge to tell the North Korean reality to the rest of the world. The result was “The Girl with Seven Names” published in 2015. The book was translated into Korean and published in Korea last April.

How come the book was made into a documentary? When I held a book signing event in the U.S., actor Robert De Niro, 80, approached and asked me, “Hyeonseo, what can I do for you?” I asked him to help us to produce a film about North Korean defectors. Then someone in the signing event delivered my book to the production staff of the documentary. Some mysterious power must have been working at the time.

Any words to say to the audience? This film is not about the conservative or liberal, but about the stories of the people who escaped from the dystopia of North Korea. I hope audiences see the documentary just as a reflection of the people we forgot.

Do you enjoy real freedom now? It took 10 years for me to accept South Korea as my eternal home. Today, I thank God for giving me small freedom to drink a cup of coffee by the sunlit window.