Defector Lee Soyeon tries to help her son escape North Korea | Image: Ideal Partners Films
“Beyond Utopia,” a documentary about the perilous journeys of North Koreans looking to escape their oppressive regime, offers one of the most vivid depictions of defection to date — using camera phone videos to show the country from the inside.
Set for release in the U.S. on Monday, the film spotlights the efforts of Pastor Kim Seungeun of the Caleb Mission to help defectors navigate the treacherous paths from the DPRK’s claimed “utopia” to South Korea via China and Southeast Asia.
“Beyond Utopia,” a documentary about the perilous journeys of North Koreans looking to escape their oppressive regime, offers one of the most vivid depictions of defection to date — using camera phone videos to show the country from the inside.
Set for release in the U.S. on Monday, the film spotlights the efforts of Pastor Kim Seungeun of the Caleb Mission to help defectors navigate the treacherous paths from the DPRK’s claimed “utopia” to South Korea via China and Southeast Asia.
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Shreyas Reddy is a correspondent at NK News, based in Seoul. He previously worked as a researcher at BBC Monitoring, where his work focused on news and key people and organizations from the Korean Peninsula, Japan, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Follow him on Twitter.