Beyond Utopia (2022)

This is the story of North Korea, and the fate of those who dare to try to leave. Documentaries with life-or-death stakes, not to mention wider resonance in our increasingly unsettled geopolitical world, don’t get much more nerve-racking than this one. The world’s bad-actor states are well-known from the worrying news they regularly produce. But only North Korea’s brand of isolated, propaganda-fueled tyranny seems to inspire reportage steeped in the weird — thanks in part to the dangerous whims of its current leader and the coddling by America’s former president. This is a stark rebuttal to anyone who thinks that you can negotiate with this kind of paranoid leadership. There is a mix of situations presented here, and the cinematography is poor, mainly because there is no recreated footage, all the scenes with people are legit, and therefore quite grainy at times. That does nothing to lessen the emotional impact of this film. It focuses on a family leaving illegally, but mixed in with the account of someone who escaped and another who's son is captired escaping and his ultimate fate. The family leaving are the Roh's, and they are helped by pastor Seungeun Kim in Seoul, who has links to the vast Underground Railroad that helps smuggle people from North to South Korea. It is quite the journey, because crossing the demilitarized zone is not an option--there are an estimated 2 million landmines on the border dividing Korea. So you must go north, to China. Crossing that river border, we learn, is only the start of the danger: the pathway requires traversing the length of China, crossing Vietnam and Laos, before real safety is achieved by entering Thailand. At any point before then, authorities could catch the Rohs and deport them back to a North Korea brutally vengeful toward defectors. The treatment of the disloyal, as detailed by interviews with experts including U.S. official Sue Mi Terry, author Barbara Demick and defector-activist Hyeonseo Lee, is more chilling than you can imagine. The story ends with COVID, which makes travel through China impossible, and threfore shuts down the whole operation. This is a must see documentary.