North Korea routinely pillories the U.S. as an empire of evil, a leader of gangsters and a warmonger destroying peace on the peninsula as part of propaganda that has vilified Washington since the days of the Korean War.

But for one unprecedented movie, the Kim regime made the unusual decision to work with American filmmakers to tell a story that aimed to transcend the political divide between the two Koreas.

“The Other Side of the Mountain” was released in 1992 and was born out of an unlikely collaboration between North Korea and the Korean American Joon Bai