Using gunfire through fugitives, Beyond Utopia is a gripping film about the man of God on a project to free North Koreans, end brainwashing, and topple Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian regime.
As Kim Jong-un’s recent visit to Moscow in a 55 km/h exercise demonstrated, the art of leaving North Korea can be a complex affair that requires bulletproof windows, a helicopter on board, and lobsters through the plate.
In contrast, Kim Seongeun, also known as Pastor Kim, oversees another kind of exit from North Korea: clandestine, highly damaging and unauthorized escapes from Kim Jong-un’s insane totalitarian regime. Based in Seoul and founder of Caleb Mission, Pastor Kim has been in the escape business since 2000. His exploits are now the subject of Beyond Utopia, a gripping film that won the Audience Award for American Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
While it offers a predictable dystopian vision of life in North Korea, the film’s true price lies in showing firsthand the desperate efforts of a circle of relatives of five fugitives (the Woos, plus an 80-year-old grandmother) to escape North Korea. A deranged dynasty that has been ruining their country since 1948. Pastor Kim, who begins his journey to freedom by phone from South Korea, is a devout Christian with a gentle smile, who has come to his vocation after seeing a score of bloated corpses floating on the heavily guarded beach. Tumen River that separates North Korea from China.
Like Oskar Schindler of Germany, Nicholas Winton of Great Britain, and Angel Sanz Briz of Spain, Pastor Kim obviously realizes that the preference for saving the persecuted can be a limitation, especially when it is also a devout vocation. “Once you realize you can save innocent lives, it’s hard to stop,” he says, adding that he believes he has freed another 1,000 people from tyranny in 20 years, many of whom are undertaking dangerous journeys through China, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand.
Naturally, there’s a limit to what he can reveal about how he guides refugees through the jungle and through the Mekong but, judging by the film, he’s obviously not acting as a wing and a prayer. Everything is meticulously planned, requiring a network of shelters to be run through “middlemen” motivated primarily by cash and not ideology. Beijing fails to recognize asylum seekers and promptly repatriates anyone captured, sending them back to horrific detention camps. Secrecy is paramount.
Much of the filming of Beyond Utopia is done via mobile phones, owned by the refugees and their ground handling personnel. Not all rescues work in every circumstance. A runner’s wife informed Chinese police, Pastor Kim recalled, prompting the arrest of seven 10-year-old orphans who were hiding in their home.
He admits that Covid has made his rescue missions much more complicated since the Chinese and North Koreans responded to the pandemic by seeking to isolate themselves from the outside world. Both sides have built new security fences along the Yalu and Tumen rivers. Leaks are estimated to have decreased by more than a third. The same is true in the south. According to official South Korean figures, 1,047 North Koreans arrived in the country in 2019, a figure that dropped to 229 in 2020, when the World Health Organization declared a state of emergency. Over the next few years, fewer people managed to escape.
Accusations of outbreak leaks have also increased. “Just 20 years ago,” says Pastor Kim, “a guard could be bribed for $5 and let other people through. Now, if they are forced to accept a bribe, not only their incarcerated families, so the threat is greater. As a result, the value of a bribe can be as high as $5,000, while the total cost of a leak can be as high as $20,000.
There are also new travelers on the underground network that are increasing the value. Wealthy Chinese dissidents in Hong Kong are also looking to flee and are willing to pay a runner more to get through the jungle. “It’s very sad to talk about value. We pay when we save lives,” says Pastor Kim, “but prices restrict our business. “. Some of his donors, he laments, say they would rather fund a church.
The Chinese generation also makes their project more challenging. “We had two sisters fleeing by train, but facial recognition cameras at the station identified that they were not Chinese and were captured. A total of 300 other people are hiding in China and 30 million are in need of emergency remedies because they suffer violence from their husbands or because they have to sell their babies.
The value he personally paid is extreme. ” Previous falls during leaks mean I have a serious neck injury, a steel rod in my back, and had surgery to remove my gallbladder. My mother and brother went to jail in China. My son died when he was seven years old in a twist of fate while I was on a project abroad. I couldn’t protect him because he was far away. But that meant my wife and I had to do even more to help orphans. I don’t have faith, I’m not sure I’ll continue, but I’m doing God’s will.
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His project is not only to save Americans from a totalitarian regime and help them resettle, but also to end their rule. In fact, he considers the two to be inextricably linked. ” If a family member defects and learns the truth about the departure of “At the Gates of the World,” they knock on the members of their circle of relatives who are still there to tell them they have been brainwashed. This is the greatest risk and the most productive way to overthrow the North Korean regime. “
He compares the regime to a devout sect. The only way to perceive North Korea is to think of it as a faith. Kim Il-sung [the leader who died in 1994] is the God. Kim Jong-il [who died in 2011] is the son of God, just like Kim Jong-un. But along with the appearance of divinity, there is communism. It is to be seen as a faith combined with communism, and it is to be worshipped as such. It’s strange because Kim Il-sung’s parents were Christians. His grandfather was a pastor. Thus, the relatives kept the cult apparatus intact, but applied it themselves to the saviors of Korea.
“The regime doesn’t care if other people starve,” he says, “because other people think it’s America’s fault. They’ve been brainwashed for 70 years into thinking this. They have nuclear weapons to tell the outside world. ” Don’t touch us” – and the power of his family. Would they ever use them? He doubts it. ” If they did, they would no longer be in power. They would have died.
When asked why neither diplomatic engagement nor confrontation has replaced North Korea, the pastor smiles and apologizes, saying, “I’m not a political figure. Everyone is wondering why North Korea hasn’t replaced it yet. God never replaces. God is the same: “God needs everyone to be replaced. Kim’s circle of relatives thinks they are God and need everyone to be replaced as they please.
There are signs that Pastor Kim is possibly leading the way. Joe Biden has just appointed Julie Turner as his special envoy for human rights in North Korea, a position that has been vacant for seven years. He says he has met with other young people who need to install satellites over North Korea so that ordinary families can have their eyes open to an option to state television’s dictatorial cult regime. But there are many misperceptions to unravel, as the film shows. In Vietnam, the Woo family is left speechless as they see the lights on and a faucet constantly running. “This,” sighs one, “is a safe haven on earth. “