“Beyond Utopia” Is Out Now And It Is Worth Watching

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Beyond Utopia is a moving documentary about the journey of a family from North Korea to South Korea. It isn’t as simple as crossing one border or catching one flight. Due to the ongoing war between the countries, people wishing to leave the North for the South often choose to trek through China. Yet it is not as easy as buying a plane ticket in China. Very few North Koreans have passports or can get permission to go to China. Most of them enter illegally. And despite widespread reports of imprisonment, torture, and execution, if the North Koreans are sent back to North Korea, China considers them to be economic migrants rather than refugees and sends them back to the place they were desperately trying to escape.

As such, they sometimes choose to travel thousands of kilometers through China, then across one or two Southeast Asian countries, before they make it to Thailand, which will recognize them as citizens of South Korea and allow them to be sent to the South, after what will hopefully be a brief arrest and detention in Thailand. Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar all have relationships with North Korea that can result in those who fled being sent back to the North instead of making it to the South.

Have your tissues handy. There are many sad stories in Beyond Utopia. There are tales of torture, rape, human trafficking, death, and dehumanization. It features the author of the book The Girl with Seven Names, Hyeonseo Lee, who shares fascinating tidbits of her experiences in North Korea.

The film gives a little background on North Korea and then focuses on the arduous journey. A pitiful and desperate family that has just learned that any family members of people who had defected in the last 3 years would be banished to unlivable places makes the drastic decision to take their chances by fleeing to China. As opposed to the many young women who fall victim to human trafficking, this family doesn’t fit the profile of sex or bride trafficking victims. Instead, when they are found in China near the border, a call is made to a pastor in South Korea to see if his church can come up with the funds to pay the network of brokers who can assist the family in reaching the South.

The pastor is none other than Seungeun Kim of Caleb Mission, a remarkable organization that gets undercover footage from inside North Korea. The pastor and his church initiate the rescue.

The events take place just before the pandemic, which is very fortunate for the family because pandemic restrictions would have made what was extremely difficult nearly impossible.

The documentary is well worth seeing. Though there have been other documentaries that follow defectors along their escape routes, this is the most recent one that I’m aware of, and each story is interesting.

One small criticism is that the film seemed to skip over much of the longest part of the journey, which is through China. Perhaps the directors found the footage in Southeast Asian jungles more compelling, but thousands of kilometers were unaccounted for, and I wonder what kind of checkpoints, surveillance, and other problems they faced during their time in China.

To better understand the secretive state of North Korea and the minds of the people there, check this one out.

Beyond Utopia is available now for streaming on Amazon.