You Call This Paradise? The Chilling Reality Of Life In North Korea Exposed In ‘Beyond Utopia’ – For The Love Of Docs

North Korea is an earthly paradise – at least, that’s the fiction its people are fed from birth by their dictatorial government. The reality is far, far grimmer, almost unimaginably so. 

Just how dreadful conditions are in the country becomes clear in the documentary Beyond Utopia, directed by Madeleine Gavin. The film, winner of awards at Sundance, the Sydney Film Festival, Hamptons International Film Festival, and Woodstock Film Festival, among others, screened as part of Deadline’s For the Love of Docs virtual event series. It includes video surreptitiously recorded by ordinary citizens – “These incredibly brave North Koreans who were risking their lives to shoot out of the sleeves of their coats, out of paper bags to get the truth of their country out,” Gavin explained during a Q&A after the screening.

Some of the scenes are truly shocking: Children marched from school to watch public executions. Teens executed for watching South Korean media. The citizenry forced to collect their own excrement, which is then used to enrich soil for raising crops; the country is too poor to afford conventional fertilizer.

The North Korean regime, of course, doesn’t want any of this information getting beyond its borders.

“Really the only way that they still exist as a country is because they have kept their people hermetically sealed from the rest of the world. No internet, a vast spy system that creates an environment where husbands and wives can’t even trust each other,” Gavin noted, adding that she was stunned by what she learned making her film. “The levels of peculiarities and just bizarre things was one after the other.”

Not surprisingly, given how difficult life is for North Koreans, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, in recent years have attempted to escape. Reaching South Korea directly is impossible because North Korea has strewn millions of landmines on its side of the DMZ. That leaves a single means of egress over land.

“The only route really is through China,” explained Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst who is a producer of the film and appears in the documentary. “And they have been doing it, risking their lives, because there’s no other option.”

Beyond Utopia documents in real time an attempt by three generations of one family to escape to South Korea — two young kids, their parents and octogenarian grandma. The mother of the two young ones got a glimpse of life on the outside after one of her brothers successfully defected. Before she made her own dash to freedom with her family, she would talk to her sibling on video calls and marvel at the “luxuries” he was enjoying in South Korea.

“They’re washing their face in the bathroom. There’s water in the bathroom,” Terry said. “Even a simple thing like that she was not aware of.”

A hero of the film is Sung-eun Kim, known as Pastor Kim, who has created a modern-day Underground Railroad to help people escape North Korea. The incredibly arduous journey typical involves crossing the Yalu River into China, from there to Vietnam, then Laos and into Thailand before reaching the ultimate destination of South Korea.

“He is such an extraordinary person. He made a promise to his God a long time ago that he would not only devote his life to doing this work, but that he would travel with defectors every step of the way,” Gavin said, adding the rescues involve him putting his life on the line. “He was helping someone over the [Yalu] river and he slipped on the ice and broke his neck. He’s got metal in his neck. He fell off a cliff in Laos. He doesn’t go into China anymore because he literally can’t because of possibly being kidnapped [and sent] into North Korea.” 

Gavin continued, “He goes into Laos, he goes into Vietnam, he goes into Cambodia. The routes change depending on what’s going in the moment geopolitically. And he risks his life every single time he goes on the boat over the Mekong [River] into Thailand… He has been shot at on that boat in the past. He’s told me many times how scared he is so often in this and how painful it is for him trying to traverse these jungles and mountains with all of his injuries. But he made this promise, and he feels like he has to follow through on it.”

Watch the full conversation in the video above.

For the Love of Docs is a virtual Deadline event series sponsored by National Geographic in partnership with the International Documentary Association (IDA). The series continues with a new film screening each Tuesday through December 12. Next up, on December 5, is Invisible Beauty, directed by Bethann Hardison and Frédéric Tcheng.